Week One

I have now been in Chile for one week, on one hand I can't believe its been a week already but on the other hand I feel like I have been here for awhile, I guess I am getting used to life in Chile. I have decided that the metro is the best way to travel whenever possible. It is much easier to use and a little more accountable than the buses which don't really have a schedule, they just come when they come and are often very full, especially in the morning. Today I got/bought my student metro pass so I will get half off the price of the metro from now on so that is good and will save a bit of money since I will ride the metro at least twice a day if not more. In about a week we will get our bus passes so when I can't ride the metro I can get a discount on the bus. I'm still working on which buses to take where.

On Tuesday night almost the whole group went out to dinner at a Mexican Restaurant called Margaritas. My table got two fajita platters to share- they were delicious!! The chips and guac were great too. I cannot even begin to guess how much avocado I have eaten since I have been here but they have it at least twice a day (usually breakfast and onces). One thing we got a kick out of was on the menu, which was translated into English, it listed acid cream as a condiment. Acid cream is really sour cream just poorly translated, we laughed about this all night... please pass the "acid cream"- ha ha ha

On Wednesday our group took a quick trip (6 hours in total) to Santiago to see the premier of a documentary called El Largo Exilio de Ariel Dorfman: Una voz contra el olivido (A Promise to the Dead). It was shown at La Moneda which is the Chilean equivalent to the White House. It was a big deal. One of our directors was a student of Dorfman's at Duke and that is why we were able to go. It was a quick but fun trip. The bus ride there was neat because unlike on the way to Vina del Mar (when it was raining) we got to see the snow capped mountians, vineyards, etc.

Our directors Christina and Corey and their two kids, Matilda- not quite 2 months and Felix who is 3.

Today we went to a welcome bbq at the school. It was pretty fun but since it was only for students in "humanities" there weren't a ton of people. A few profs came too. At the bbq (asado) they had these huge sausages (not sure of their name), hot dogs and burgers. Of the three (yes we all ate everything) the sausages were the best. It was interesting b/c a lot of the music they played was American but from the 90s.

After a week of class, I have decided I have my work cut out for me, especially in senior sem. We are going to be reading a ton and have 200 or so pages for next week along with a writing assignment. The readings are not easy either, they are very intellectual and dense. I'll also have many other tests, research projects and papers for my other classes, so much for an easy study abroad. I think history and cine will be my favorite classes. Literature will be interesting to say the least, the prof is an interesting guy and to top it all off he is the brother of one of our Spanish profs at CSB.