So I've been back in Santiago for a month now and I never blogged about my travels, but I figure the pictures I posted are sufficient. Most have captions so it kinda explains what I did. But long story short, basically it was about 2 months: 10 days traveling through northern chile, then a few days break in Santiago, then 10 days in the south...PATAGONIA (the BEST) with one of my best friends from California, Ali, then back in santiago for a few days break.
Then Ali and I and her boyfriend Mike who flew in to meet us crossed the border Chile from Santiago to go to Mendoza, Argentina. 8 hour bus ride. One night in Mendoza. 12 hour night bus ride to Córdoba, Argentina. Stayed in Córdoba for the day to see my friend Belén from rotary in Germany. 12 hour night bus ride to Buenos Aires. Stayed in BA for 2 nights with Ali, Mike, and their Argentine friend Nico. 18 Hour overnight/half day bus ride from BA to Iguazu waterfalls. Went to the waterfalls, crossed the border to Brasil (yah, without problems! Good thing my visa worked out well). Stayed one night in Foz do Iguacu. 16 hour overnight bus ride to Florianopolis, Brasil. Took short bus ride across the island (it's the island of santa catarina in southern brasil...connected with a bridge to the mainland) to the small town of Barra da Lagoa. Ali and Mike have been there before so they knew people and got us a hook up in a beautiful house up on the hill, away from the noise and lights (not that there was much, its a small town, but still touristy), each with our own room..and a queen size bed!!! Giant french doors, kitchen, mosquito net...the best! And CHEAP! It pays off to know people. We stayed their from about the 2nd or so of feb till Ali and I both flew out, the 15th of feb. Beach, sleep, rest, beach, swim, beach, surf...it was so amazing and gorgeous. I loved it!!! Also got to meet up with Bruna from rotary in germany because she lives near there!!
The 15th of feb I flew out headed to Ecuador while Ali went home. I had two 12 hour layovers, blech. Arrived in Quito...stayed at an awesome hostel there and met lots of cool people. 2 night there, then took an 8 hour bus ride through the andes, rainforest, etc, to portoviejo where I met up with Jaime, also from rotary in germany (these are all kids that were in my district in germany, but from these respective countries, ie argentina, brasil, ecuador). His family so kindly offered for me to stay in their home. Stayed there a couple nights and then met with Tito, also from rotary in germany, but not my district, and we went to Montañita...beach surf town a bit further south with them and Jaime's little brother. Went surfing, got smacked pretty hard in the nose with a surfboard, that hurt...but I surfed in the best surf of ecuador so it's all good. Stayed there one night then went to Baños while they returned home because they had university. Baños is a little adventure town in the mountains...went mtn biking, saw waterfalls, and white water rafting...rafting was SOOOOO COOL! Except I got smacked in the chin in the same place...first with a paddle by the uncoordinated english kid next to me, then with his helmet. And then the scrawny kid fell overboard and I had to pull him back in!! It was a lot of fun tho...I'm ready to go when I get back to California now in the Trinity!
Finally I headed to Guayaquil, largest city in ecuador, where i did my volunteer work with vosh (volunteer optometric services to humanity). We we about 10 from the US. 3 doctors, 6 others part of the org. and myself. I was the only optician, woohoo! There were a few that had minor experience dispensing glasses but I think I came in handy. Also there were only 2 of us that could speak spanish well...so sarah and I did a lotttt of translating. It was a really amazing experience. We gave eye exams to about 1000 people more or less, in the slums of the city. The lions club and a community center was who helped organize it all. We got glasses to everyone we could/needed them. I remember one man, probabaly around 50 years old and he'd never had glasses in his life. He measured to be extremely near-sighted...about -6.00 or -7.00 prescription...if you know anything about Rx's, that's pretty much blind without glasses. And hed never worn any. When we gave him a pair, which were'nt even dead on cause they were all donated, he spent the entire rest of the afternoon staring at everything. His hands, the wall, other people, just looking at everything ...he'd never known how it was to really be able to see. Well that lasted 3 days and then I flew back to chile, a week after the earthquake.
I've felt some good aftershocks, but not many in a while now...there have been lots of little ones that aren't always felt.
Oke I'm going to post this now and verrry soon I will blog about my latest experiences...volunteering with chile to help the earthquake victims.
So I'm back in Santiago...and I've just put up pics (link to the right) of Patagonia in Chile and Argentina, Central Argentina, Iguazu waterfalls, southern Brasil, and Ecuador. Check em out!
Okay. I've sat myself down to blog because I've been slacking so badly in that department for the last 2 months. I have relatively legit excuses though....SCHOOL.
First, before I start, note that sometimes a word that usually has an "s" may not have it because my S key is kinda messed up and it only makes the s if i press really hard. So if i miss it, sorry.
Now...alas,....where do I begin. Well, I'm done with the semester. Seems like it went really fast. Maybe it did? I had my last final last thursday and now three whole months of vacation!!!! Woohoo.
I suppose I will start where I left off last time. I had mentioned how Chile had been in some soccer game and won against whoever they were playing, I don't remember...colombia, ecuador, i think, and so they will be going to the world cup in south africa in 2010 for the first time in 12 years i think. Since then I really haven't done much, hence my not blogging. I left Santiago once on a little excursion that was planned by my CSU program. We went to a teensy town on the coast called La Isla Negra...and no, its not a black island. It's just a coastal town. It's where Pablo Neruda, the most famous poet of Chile, had one of his three houses. We toured his house. He reminds me a bit of Grandma Jean...has a lot of things. But his were relatively organized collections. For example, he collected African masks and artesenal trinckets. As well as ships that are inside glass bottles. He had a massive shell collection, including a Narwal horn that was about 9 feet long. Also had a shell from the Philippines that was about 3 feet in diameter, it was pretty sweet. Appeared that he just had a lot of things...he was quite wealthy and also people would just give him things. The house was pretty, the bedroom overlooking the beach with the wallbeing a massive window alone. It was cool. After the house, we wandered around the rocky beach and then went to a restaurant on the beach (the bus driver had some difficulty finding the place, but eventually we made it down there). It was okay-food. Not as good as i thought' it'd be for it's location and snazzy-ness. Funny how the CSU program includes these fancy restaraunt meals for us in our "program costs". If i could decide, I'd prefer to save the money...i'm sure that meal was AT LEAST $50. Appetizer, coctail, wine, entre, dessert, the whole shabang. It was a nice day though.
And other than that I've been in Santiago...studying pretty much. There were a few fiestas I went to...there was a Halloween party and I dressed up as mother nature, by far the best costume in the party. I was going to be gone that weekend, but the plans fell through so I had to find a last minute costume that would be original and cheap. It randomly occured to me in the middle of the night while pulling a late-nighter studying for a Borges exam. The day before halloween i went to Patronato...an outdoor shopping market with tons of vendors that stretches about 7 city blocks to look for things. Pretty much I just wanted green fabric and a bunch of fake flowers and maybe some vines. I found a store that sold me soem perfect green fabric and some yellowish fabric that has a very nice texture for about $3. After that I ran into a fake plant shop which was perfect, and got all my flowers and vines for about $6. And that was it! I robbed a big palm frawn from the short fat palm tree downstairs in the courtyard of my apartment building and made a sweet head-dress type thing with it, fabric, and duck tape. It was the highlight of my costume by far. I now have a forest-theme decorated bedroom...i already have green walls and now i have all the flowers and vines draped around my room. It makes it more homey. Now with my free time with school being over, i am going to make things out of the fabric. I intentionally did not cut the pieces up, or as little as possible (i had to do a little hand sewing for the costume, but the pieces pretty much stayed as big chunks...it was a wrap around dress with lots of safety pins). I don't have a sewing machine here obviously, but i have time, so I'm going to hand sew a skirt from the green and a top from the yellowish fabric. Something to occupy my time.
I also had my birthday party. It was a joint birthday party for me and Felipe. Anyway, we had our birthday party together because his birthday is the day after mine. I wanted to do a theme to make it more interesting...so we made it a black and white party. Obviosuly the idea was that everyone dress up in black and white. It was quite good! The girls were the best about being color coordinated, naturally. We made black russians and white russians to continue with the theme and got black and white balloons with streamer thing and felipe got some black lights. It was in the backyard garden/patio of his house and the weather was really nice and never got cold at night. It was a fun party and everyone pretty much danced all night long and had a good time. It was much better than my 21st birthday, in which I had to take an exam for my online psychology class and didn't really celebrate.
Otherwise I've just been doing school things. Well, not now, but up till last thursday. I had my final in Borges 2 weeks ago, got ALMOST an A. I got a 5.4 and a 5.5 to a 7 is an A. Oh well, doesn't really matter because even had I got a 7 I woudn't have got an A in the class. But I got a B in the class so I'm happy. I studied my butt off for that exam...I even went to a startbucks to study because, even though it's a bit more expensive, for the cuantity of coffee you get it, its cheaper. There is a nice café downt he stree from my apartment but you pay about $4 for a coffee thats 2 inches tall with some cream plopped on top. NOT worth it. For about 3-4 weeks straight, monday through saturday from 9am to 8pm there has been construction going on in the apartment 2 floors down from me so I had to leave. They just finished on monday, FINALLY. It was excrutiatingly annoying, really loud, and banging shaking always going on. I studied quite well though.
Last thursday was my phonetics final, which was hard. I had a 4.3 or somethign going into the class...a 4.0 is passing (its a 60'% but equivalent to a C- in the states). The class just irritated me, and I wasn't the only one...there were plenty of chileans who had the same complaints as me...the teacher honestly only taught us one thing in class after the midterm exam, yet there would be 5 or so concepts on the 5 quizes we had during that unit. The TA's made the quizes and it appeared that they werent necessarily on the same page as us or the teacher. therefore i did pretty badly on most of the quizzes but on the final project I made sure to get a good grade. We had to do a paper in the form of a hypothetical research project that was about 10 pages long in the end (1.5 space, so pretty long). I ended up with the theorectical research part to back the ideas and hypotheses, don't ask my why or how. There were 4 of us, and me and one other guy pretty much made sure thigns were getting done. And then the day before its due at 5pm in the evening when we meet to put all the parts together and make sure everything is good, this kid from my class Marco shows up in the study room. I say hi and he asks me if I saw Martin. And I said, yeah, he's right there. Marco says, oh I'm meeting him for the final project. And I said, oh, ok, well martin's in my group, and marco says, well, then i'm in your group! He laughed and I was mad. I knew this kid was a slacker. I asked him why he was suddenly in my group after we chose our groups 6 weeks before. He told me because the girls he was with dropped the class. Irrelevant, the drop date was 2 or 3 weeks before that, so he would have already known. And because he's a slacker, he intentiionally asked martin to be in our group at the last second so he could get points for the project, which was worth 15% of the final grade. So since he adds himself to our group, I ask him that because he had done absolutely nothing to contribute to the project, if he could add mroe to my portion. I had written 2 pages and the page amount for this section was to be 2-4 pages. I said, PLEASE see if you can write one more page. All he had to do was that, and the abstract, a one paragraph summary of the project, which would take 10 minutes. And since I wanted to put everything together and print the thing to turn it in (i wanted to make sure it was perfect and looked good, those points count...and seeing i was working with 4 boys i was sure that none of them would be that picky, no offense, males). , anyway, i asked him and the others that were still finishing up their parts, to send me what they had before midnight so I could do it and sleep and then just turn it in before my soccer class at 10am. I had been working on very little sleep for the previous few nights. Well, i stayed up till 1am and only 1 of the 3 had sent me their stuff. So i go to sleep and set my alarm for 8. Marco calls me at 7am---still hasnt done his part , and asks to send him something to help him write the abstract. I was so irritated. I hate working with people like this...SLACKER. Needless to say, he finally sends me his thing at 8, i had to put everything together still and ended up missing soccer becasue i didn't finish it all till 10am at my apartment. Oke, that was all said and done...but still the presentation remained. And the deal with that was that one person would present, and it was supposed to be 10-15 minutes. But the person who wass presenting did not find out until the day of the presentations. They started on a thursday, and this kid marco calls me at 9.35 am that day and says "oye, kari, i dont really understand what the project is about" REALLY???!!! 30 Minutes before we have to be ready to present and you're calling me asking me wahts its about?!! Might I add, he had the paper document for a week before this, so he had time to present! I was so mad and just told him sorry i cant help you, you had a week to call me and ask questions.
We didn't get called the first day of presentations and had the entire weekend to prepare more...I was scared to death i'd get picked cause it wouldbe hard in spanish etc...so i made sure to be ready. I had notecards, practiced, etc. Go figure, when we continue tuesday she calls him. Not only did he only speak for 6 minutes, but he couldnt answer the teachers questions. I had to give him my notecards cause he wasnt ready and otherwise woulda just read from the powerpoint. We scored a 3.7 on the presentation which is a 50-somthing%. We got a 6.2 on the written document, the best grade in the class. Came out to a 5.7 on the project in the end. Now i'm just waiting my grade on the final...we'll see. 7 pages of torture...needless to say it was nothing like the practice exam that they gave us. No joke. oh well, thats life.
Otherwise...here I am. I suppose I should comment on the weather, which has been fabulous. It's been the the mid to lower 80's lately, and I'm loving it. Went swimming the other day to the public pools that are on the big hill in the city., They were pretty.
So this isn't really a legit blog post, but it's very interesting. Right now, in addition to the presidential elections that are going on right now, my university is having student government elections. And they go NUTS over it. I don't have a clue about student presidents or anything at SFSU because no one campaigns so for all I know, they don't exist. The state decides what they do with our funding anyway...
But anyway, it's quite interesting. Banners and posters everywhere, signs, rep's (students) going around trying to get their word out, debates, and legit elections that are going on today and tomorrow. AND my friend Flavia, who is from UCLA but from Chilean/Italian parents (she speaks fluent Spanish, lucky girl), just happened to write an excellent summary of everything that's going on. She posted it on facebook as a "note" --like blogging on facebook. I asked her if i could post it here because it was interesting and she did an excellent job. Here it is:
"And everything is the same... except the country, the language, and the t-shirt colors"
Just because this stuff blows my mind, I thought I would share my thoughts with you all; some chileans, some study abroad students, and some alumni...
At the most prestigious university in Chile, political parties are basically having a run-through and facing off via the students... Lista1a (Ready first), NAU (New University Action), OI (Independent Option), a socialist party, and Voto Nulo (Vote Null) are currently throwing it down at the voting stations all over PUC's four campuses.
The best part is, this is actually an incredibly accurate reflection of the country at large. Lista1a is a major conservative party- without blinking. Their presidential candidate (according to a conversation I eavesdropped) is a law student (law is a major here) who defended Pinochet's coup in class with a natural law argument. NAU is center left, OI independent, etc. etc.
And yet, the issues are all the same.
Lista1a is "proud to believe in the UC" (Universidad Catolica), "proud to believe that students come first", "proud to believe that participation is service", and just basically... "proud to believe". I read through their flyer, and I couldn't find any platforms. Thanks. Next!
Compared with NAU- whose slogans are, "Alguien tiene que hacerlo" and "La universidad es tuya!" or, "Somebody's got to do it", and "The university is yours!" (that sounds particularly familiar). Their posters feature not only their candidates, but inspiring figures like Father Hurtado (a social liberationist priest from Chile), Albert Einstein, as well as Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump and Uma Thurman as The Bride. Okay.
They state, "The university is yours, for a community that makes sense". They tout campus wide activities not just for students, but for campus service workers and academics, like a week of culture, a festival of music, and a college Olympics. They state, "the university is yours, a university for Chile". They tout a center for campus service workers and a special immersion program in Mapuche (indigenous) communities. There's more, but the best one is that they're going green: they want an Office of Sustainability, green grades for different campus buildings, pilot programs for green-friendly technologies, a campaign for Environmental Conscience, and a Sustainable Practice Guide for distribution.
It's just student elections, but here, these are the sons and daughters of Chilean elite (have I mentioned this is THE most prestigious university in the country?). In a few years, they will be the elite. It's like watching the entire psychological development of a country unfold. It's a barometer for Chile's present and future...
There were easily at least 300, 400 people packed into an auditorium to hear the debates. It was more like a soccer match than a debate, with drums, flags, tshirts, whistling, hooting, cheering, cussing, and direct attacks between candidates as well as audience members.
The most fascinating part is how incredibly present is Chile's past. Whenever Lista1a started cheering or chanting, the entire crowd supporting NAU would make fun of them by making military salutes, and there were several chants calling them out for being Pinochetistas, or Jaime Guzman demagogues (Jaime Guzman was the godfather of the conservative movement in Chile). Lista1a didn't even fight it- they just rolled right along with it. It has also become pretty clear that UDI, Chile's conservative party, gives Lista 1a money to run their campaign.
It's hard to forget that the university is run by the Vatican. NAU said that this isn't a school for priests anymore, it's a university for intellectuals. The presidential candidate for Lista1a didn't understand a question about anti-contraceptives and their on-campus distribution- she went on to say that while there still exists doubt about the validity of the methods, we shouldn't put at risk the lives of innocents. When the presidential candidate for NAU closed the debate, he recounted how at his internship, the person working above him denied legal services to a woman because she was divorced.
The right (Lista 1a) contended that if you don't like the educational formulation that the university provides, then you should go somewhere else. If you don't like the university's censorship, you should go somewhere else. "If you don't like it, then why are you here?" was the recurring meme. The entire concept that students should be at the receiving end of their education, as opposed to a more formulative role, is very entrenched for conservatives everywhere.
NAU kept discussing access to the university by students in municipal schools, referring to those who get left behind by the system. They showed a profound interest in reforming how people enter the university. The PSU (SAT equivalent) is held nationwide and is pretty much the defining factor in university acceptance. Naturally, the students in private schools score high, and the municipal schools score low. Sounds like a familiar issue.
The country's more controversial issues entered the debate- NAU wants to create an immersion program so that students from the university can immerse themselves in Mapuche communities. "The press calls the Mapuches terrorists, but the United Nations is scandalized with the way we treat our indigenous citizens", stated one NAU candidate.
Also of debate was how to help students with financial aid, those in the third quintile, etc. The university is expensive, the scholarships are few- it's a difficult issue for them to grapple with, and I think there was the most confusion about how to deal with this than with any other topic.
What really moved me, and is something that I feel lacking at my own university, is the expressed relationship NAU has with service workers at the university. They stated that they are trying to build a true university community, one which is composed of three parts: academics, students and workers. They talked about worker capacitation, about investigating the living conditions of workers, about dealing with subcontracting and the fact that because many workers are subcontracted, they don't have the right to unionize. They went off several times describing the condition of university workers, how poorly they are paid, and how more attention needs to be paid to them. Regrettably, this relationship is extremely weak at my home university. We show up for the big events, but we are not involving them as much as we could.
One candidate for NAU said, "people tell us, if you want to make a change, go to U. Chile. We go to PUC, and we want to make some change here and now" U. Chile is the country's official state university, and is known for being more rabble-rousing than the elite at PUC. They're definitely on an upward battle as far as fighting a hierarchical structure goes.
NAU's candidates were pretty frank- yes, their vision is utopic, idealist- but they're willing to lay out the programs to at least try and take the university there.
It's the same stuff everywhere. It's the same crowds, the same problems, the same discussions. At the root of the debate, the discussion is the same. Do students have power? Should they have power? Should they exercise that power if they have it? Lista 1a kept insisting that we're students, that we're here to learn after all, that we're preparing to become leaders for tomorrow. NAU insisted that we're adults, that the time is now, that we need to be leaders today, not tomorrow.
In another note is the complete text of a flier that some people were handing out. It's in Chilean spanish, try and read it if you dare...
The blog of my international adventures.
July and August 2011: traveled to Chile to visit my boyfriend. Traveled through the Northern Desert and went to Buenos Aires to see a close friend.
July 2009-July 2010: Studied abroad in Santiago, Chile at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, finishing my Spanish major before returning to my university in San Francisco to finish prerequisites for medical school. Traveled through Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and Ecuador.
May 2008 - August 2008: spent the summer in Masan, South Korea tutoring English to young Korean students and eating lots of spicy things and rare delectables from the sea!
September 2005 - July 2005: was a Rotary Youth Exchange Student in Bad Säckingen, Germany; made lasting friends, learned German, and traveled through 9 countries in Europe.
