¡Adiós Santiago!

I leave tomorrow night to go back to the good ole USA. As much as I've enjoyed my first experience in South America, I couldn't be more excited to go back home. I miss the heat, I miss throwing toilet paper away in the toilet, I miss flavorful food (and spice!), and I definitely miss my family and friends.

However, when I leave, there are going to be a ton of things in Santiago I am going to miss too. As lame as this sounds, I'm going to miss the Castaño bakery where I get my favorite delicious queso empanadas. I am going to miss how important soccer is to this country, a trait that I'm afraid the US will never acquire. I'm definitely going to miss my host sister, Carolina. I'm going to miss IES and the wonderful staff (namely Ricardo, Claudia, MariCarmen, Angela, and Señora Sonia). But most of all, I'm going to miss the Andes. I loved seeing la cordillera through the cloud of smog covering Santiago everyday, and I especially loved seeing the mountain range clearly after rainy days. They're honestly one of nature's greatest creations.

My experience here has been a bit of a rollercoaster. While I was mainly here to study public health, I was disappointed with the organization of that particular aspect of this program. However, I am leaving here with much more knowledge than I came here with. Chile has such a rich history and I was lucky enough to learn about it through Chileans themselves. Also, I'm [hopefully] leaving this country speaking Spanish better than ever (I'm not entirely sure this is true: I feel like now I try to think if my grammar is correct before I speak whereas before I would just feel confident enough to speak, assuming I knew what I was saying was correct...). I was also fortunate enough to travel throughout Chile, even though those trips were a bit of a rollercoaster ride of their own.

Thanks so much for following my blog! I tried my best to capture the excitement of all of my South American adventures. While there is no way to capture the beauty of the Andes in a picture, I'll leave you with the best picture I have of my favorite part of Chile.

Concha y Toro ("wine night!")

Last Friday, we got to visit a winery! Chile's natural barriers (the Andes mountains and the Pacific Ocean) make it a great country for wine-making. These barriers also allowed Chilean vineyards to stay free of a bacteria/virus that killed Carmenere grapes all over the world! Therefore Carmenere wine can only be made in Chile. Unfortunately, because it is winter here, no grapes were on the vines.

I was hoping to learn a lot about wine and wine-making, however, our tour guide unfortunately was not a sommelier nor knew anything about how wine is made (even though he had been working there for 7 years!) He did know a bit about the history of the vineyard, which was a bit hard to understand with his heavy Chilean/English/German accent.

We got to sample two types of wine, red and white (I forgot the names of the wines I sampled, oops!). The white wine was delicious! The red wine...was a little dry (and not oak-y enough for my taste, hehe, jk!)

Where the vines usually grow.

Barrels and barrels of wine.

Our souvenir/tasting glasses

Look how clear the white wine is! It was sooo good!

¡Salud!

Semi-Final de la Copa Libertadores 2010

Exactly last week (Aug, 3) I went to the semi-finals of the Copa Libertadores. Universidad de Chile was playing Chivas de Guadalajara. The IES student coordinator, Ricardo, is a huge U de Chile fan;I am an occasional (verrrrry occasionally) Chivas fan; therefore, we decided to go to the game together.

I have never been a professional soccer game, so this was quite an experience. The game started at 9pm, we left at 6pm to get to the stadium. We had to go super early because tickets to go later were more expensive. We ended up getting there 2 hours early, but there was still a lot to see.

90% of the crowd was made up of U de Chile fans. I was routing for both teams (a) because I wanted the Chivas to advance to the finals and (b) I wanted to see this huge crowd celebrate when their team won. 2 hours before the game people were already cheering for their team, I couldn't even imagine how they would react if they scored a goal, let alone win.

I learned a lot of cheers, many made fun of the opposing team. Ricardo taught me all about the stadium (it was used to torture people during the dicatorship, a bit of the original stadium is kept in memory for those tortured, the earthquake in February destroyed part of it so it was under renovation and was especially opened just for this game...).

Finally, a little before 9 the crowd got really pumped. Their team was about to get on the field for stretches and warm-ups. Suddenly, everyone whipped out their contraband flares and lit them in anticipation to welcome the players onto the field. Fireworks went off, chanting got louder; it was incredible, I've never seen anything like it. Here, see for yourself:

Finally, the team came on the field and every went crazy. Ricardo was already starting to lose his voice. When the opposing team came on, everyone boo-ed and directed pretty mean chants towards them.

The game finally started. The crowd cheered the whole time first half. Of course, they were mad when Mexico scored the first goal (which was quite lame, if I do say so myself) but still cheered their team on. Check out the goal: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJa9VjPgJ4M&feature=related. I was conflicted. I raised my arm in excitement and wanted to cheer my team on when I saw the goal, but I also didn't want to be pummeled by all of these fans around me... I held my excitement in.

During half-time the fans were all bummed and nervous and almost everyone pulled out their cigarettes and began smoking. It was kinda funny, however, I'm tired of all of this second hand smoke...

The second half started and almost right away the Chivas scored another goal. Everyone was furious. The chants changed from excited "yeah we can do it" cheers to somber "it's okay, we still love you, we will always support you" cheers. Those continued for the rest of the game. Everyone kept chain-smoking, and finally the game finished. It was around midnight. We all walked somberly, caught a free bus to the central plaza, and Ricardo took me home via taxi from there. It was a sad night for Chile but I had a really good time.

San Pedro de Atacama

(for all of the pics I took, check out my facebook album: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=30863153&l=9c7eab82fd&id=1255890018)

We had our third and final long weekend this past weekend. Everyone decided to go up north to get a little warmth and sun. Up north, as I've mentioned before, is the Atacama Desert. It takes a couple of hours to get there by plane and 23 hours to get there by bus. I chose bus (partly because it was cheaper, but mostly so I could see more of Chile). I actually had to leave a day earlier (and skip my Spanish class on Thursday) so my trip up north and the 23hr bus ride wouldn't be wasted.

Wednesday night:

I was excited I didn't have to go to class the next day, but alas, I had a paper due is Spanish. I grocery shopped for bus snacks, packed, and finished up my essay.

Thursday:

My bus left at 11am. I woke up a little before 9 so I could eat and shower and pack the last minute essentials. I ended up leaving the house a little after 10. I bought sandwiches, and met my travelling buddy, KC, at the metro station nearest the bus station. I didn't trust her to get there in time so I lied and told her our bus left at 10:30. Luckily, she got there just before 10:30 and we found the bus station/bus.

After boarding the bus, we settled in. I got the window seat. We talked for a while, they turned on the movie, we passed out. This was our next 23 hours...

Friday:

We get to Calama, our almost final destination. We got there 5 minutes too late to catch the bus to San Pedro. This meant, we had to venture into town to find a bus that would take us. We bought tickets, ate, and wasted time at an internet cafe (Where KC ended up forgetting her NorthFace). Finally, the bus left. Another hour and half on a bus...

We got to San Pedro and after a few minutes and a little bit of asking, we found our hostel just in time. We dropped of our things and joined our classmates on the trip they had organized to La Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley). This is the one thing I most wanted to see so I was very excited we made it just in time.

Valle de la Luna has it's name because it is supposed to be the only place on Earth that resembles the moon. NASA tests out all of the machinery they send to the moon here. Also, because this is the driest desert on Earth, many meteorologists calibrate their systems here.

Valle de la Muerte:

it's called this because this is the only place on Earth

where there is absolutely no life of any kind at all

Valle de la Luna

The volcano in the background is in Bolivia!

Salt Cave

Valle de la Luna

It was really windy, therefore sand got everywhere, especially in our shoes.

Later that night, we went star gazing. It was beautiful. I tried to take a picture but my camera isn't that talented.

Saturday

KC and I rented bikes and rode around San Pedro (an activity our classmates did the day before, before we had arrived). It was great. We were looking for ruins but got lost and had a good time. I even got some of my Spring tan back!

ICE! because deserts get so cold at night...

That afternoon, we walked around San Pedro and showered (we were covered in sand from the day before and our bike ride. We took it easy for our long bus ride the next day. This is when things started to go wrong...

Our bus left at 8am Sunday morning. We had to find a way to get back to Calama to catch our bus, however, but nothing ran that early in the morning. We asked the lady who had taken us to Valle de la Luna and she agreed. She was ripping us off though, charging us $20 each, a rate she charged for transfers to the airport, which was twice the distance from San Pedro then the bus terminal. We wanted to pay with credit cards but she didn't let us. We had to go find an ATM and take money out, and by the time we returned to pay her she was gone. We figured we could pay her in the morning because she let us pay for the Valle de la Luna trip afterwards.

That night, we just hung out with our classmates (Ben taught me to play Euchre!!) and went to bed.

Sunday

We woke up at 5:30 am to wait for the lady (we had agreed to meet at 6am). She never showed. We frantically tried to wake the hostel people up and find any means we could to get to Calama to make our bus. Alas, we did not. We waited in the freezing cold for 2 hours (because deserts get really cold at night as the ice picture shows) before the hostel people could let us back into our room. We had to buy new bus tickets back to Santiago. We did not leave until 2:30pm.

Monday

We got home at 1:30pm. I missed a Public Health meeting I had that morning (luckily, most of my group was there to explain what had happened and why I couldn't make it) and I also missed my Spanish class that day. At least I made it back to Santiago safely (albeit, with considerably less (and almost no) money left to my name.

While the trip did not end in the best way, I still had a good time. However, I must advise people who go to San Pedro to use Turbus and to not go to the Hostel/Restaurant Chiloe. They work with the evil tour people that treated us all horribly, the hostel service itself wasn't that great. Infact, most Atacamians were mean and tried to rip us off. They were also very discriminatory against Mexicans. Besides all of that, I really enjoyed Valle de la Luna and our bike ride.

Atacama

So, I just got back from my trip to the Atacama Desert (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atacama_Desert). I must say, it didn't go as smoothly as planned, but I did enjoy some parts of it. I'll put up a post either tomorrow or Wednesday.

As it is my last 2 weeks here in Chile (!!!) I have quite a bit of work to do for classes and stuff. This week will be particularly stressful, but I am going to go to a Chivas de Guadalajara v. Universidad de Chile soccer game (it's like the "Latin World Cup" semifinals) tomorrow night with the student coordinator of IES tomorrow night. It should be fun. Anyway, I'll try to post pics of that and the desert up soon.

La Moneda

La Moneda is the Presidential palace of Chile. You could say it is like the White House, except the president (currently the Chilean president is Sebastián Piñera) does not live there. We got to go on a tour of La Moneda, which was really interesting.

La Moneda got its name because it was originally constructed as a coin mint (and La Moneda literally translated means "the coin"). In 1845 the president decided he wanted to live and work there, so he did. In 1973, La Moneda got bombed by the Chilean Air Force due to the military coup d'état, Salvador Allende committed suicide there and delivered an on-a-whim amazing speech (translated: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Salvador_Allende's_Last_Speech) (again, due to the military coup d'état), and from then on presidents were not allowed to live there. It has an interesting history, although I gave you the most interesting tidbits. You can read more about it on wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Moneda_Palace.

Now here are some pics:

The entrance. It did not have gates of any sort. However, it is really hard to get into (like, we needed to show our original passports to get in (they wouldn't even take copies).

One of four courtyards. This one is called "Cannon Patio." It houses 2 historic cannons.

One of many halls. I think it was for when the president held parties or something. Each hall had a different purpose; for example, there was a hall simply for meeting with other presidents (and important people like the nation's soccer team when they came back from the World Cup).

The press room.

Each president gets a coin made after there presidency. Pinochet does not have a coin.

The big coin in the middle is a coin of Santiago.

A model of La Moneda.

A chapel inside. Chilean law seperates church and state but La Moneda was originally built with a chapel inside because that's how the Europeans wanted it and it has remained that way since. They hold Catholic and Evangelist (as those are the 2 most practiced religions in Chile) services there once a week that La Moneda employees can attend.

Santa Lucia

I while ago I visited the other hill in Santiago. It's called Santa Lucia. This one is considerably smaller and took only 20 minutes to climb. It has a great view of Santiago. There is an artesania (or handmade crafts-is artisans a word in English?? bc if it is, it means artisans market) market very close by, so I obviously checked that out, and, in fact bought many presents there.

There's not much to say so I'll just show you the pictures.

Fountain at the base of the hill.

Patio half way up the hill.

At the top of the hill.

View of the city.

On our way down.

The handcraft market.