Here's what's happened in the last month...

Sorry it's been so long since I last wrote anything!
I'm going to do two posts, one about school and another one about the things that I've done outside of school (the school one will probs be longer because I've been in school like 24/7 for the past couple weeks) Enjoy...

cute street dog in Valpo

The last month has been pretty busy with school work. The way that the SIT program works is that we have classes for the first half of the semester and get more or less 3 courses done in 7 weeks and then the second half of the time we spend traveling and working on our independent study.  Because of this I've had spanish class monday-thursday for 4 hours and 2 hour seminars every afternoon, with excursions to Santiago and beyond on fridays and saturdays.

Spanish classes have been going well, while I still feel like an idiot about half the time when I'm speaking I think that the reality is that I've progressed a lot.  While most of our classes took place in Casa SIT (the home base of the program) we would often go out to coffee shops or markets to have class.  One of my favorite classes was when we went to the local fish market at the docks and had to talk to the fishermen about the problems they face in their industry.  It was really interesting to hear how the progression of big industry fishing has basically wrecked it for the individuals and to learn how rapidly over-fishing has changed the quality/size of the catches they're bringing in.  For our last real class we went over to my Spanish teacher's house and made french toast which we ate w/ manjar (dulce de leche), fruit and jelly it was super delicious and her house is actually AMAZING I want to live there!! Then on thursday we painted a mural on one of the walls in Casa SIT, this was a really interesting experience not only because we got to work with a relatively famous muralist called Pajaritos but also because he (or maybe our academic directors I'm not sure) chose to put Salvador Allende up on the wall.  If I have one major critique with this program it's its complete disregard for anything other than leftist, specifically socialist/communist, political ideology. It's very frustrating because even though I agree with most of what they say I know that there are some students that don't and that they have often felt very uncomfortable during classes and especially with the painting of Allende on the wall.

A ruca (Mapuche house) in Santiago

the youth center was in a train car...

The seminars have mostly been interesting but not too different from a seminar in the states except for the fact that they are in Spanish.  The excursions have been great for the most part.  Our first one was a total bust because we were supposed to visit migrant workers at a farm 3 hours away but the farm decided at the last minute not to let us onto their property to talk to their workers which meant that we had basically driven 3 hours for nothing.  Needless to say I was pretty skeptical about our second trip.  Luckily it was much better, we went to Santiago and visited a población, which is an community formed on unused land that was stolen from wealthy land owners in the 60's and early 70's.  The community is very well developed now, although there are still lots of problems with drugs and poverty.  We got to talk to an artistic youth group that puts on programs in an attempt to keep the kids out of trouble.  It was really interesting talking to these guys because they are our age but almost none of them have been to college or even have the chance to go but they recognize the fact that this doesn't have to keep them from doing what they want to do.

lots of good chill music... oh and we played musical chairs!! 

Our last excursion was yesterday, we went back to Santiago but this time it was to visit Villa Grimalde (Parque por la Paz) a detention/torture center during the dictatorship of Pinochet that was converted into a memorial.  We were guided by the lady who organizes our community service, but also happens to have spent 2 years being detained during the dictatorship at Villa Grimalde and other camps in Santiago.  It was super interesting and really sad but also inspiring to see how she has managed to accept the fact that what happened is a part of her life but not necessarily a defining factor.

So that's that, while I haven't totally enjoyed every minute of the program so far over all I know I've been learning a lot and I'm in Chile so I can't really complain too much!  The next part of the program is much more exciting for me, I've got one more week in Valparaíso and then I'm headed North to do a two week excursion with half of the group (the other half goes South) and then I'm on my own for a MONTH!! I'll be living in Arica, which is basically the northern most city in Chile, studying border issues and the situation with migrant workers in that region.  I'm pretty excited but also nervous, although I will miss my host family a lot, I'm definitely NOT ready to leave them yet :(

YAY my camera worked on the first try!!

so i went skiing last weekend, here are some pics from the trip...

view of the mountains from Santiago

getting closer,

and closer...

almost there!!

I think I could get used to this

SUPER BIEN

yay snow!!

the Andes are beautiful.

Skiing In September

This past weekend was awesome, I got to go skiing and visit a different part of Chile for the first time this semester!

Saturday I woke up really early, at about 4:30 to go to Santiago with a couple friends.  In Santiago we caught a shuttle bus up to a ski area called Valle Nevado (which is actually a sister ski area of Big Sky in Montana...) The skiing was absolutely amazing! It was super warm and probably some of the best spring skiing I've had in years.  It was textbook corn snow (I had trouble explaining how good it was to the chilean fam because corn snow doesn't sound nearly as cool if you don't know what it is) and the conditions only got better as the day went on.

The Andes are HUGE, way different from any mountains I've ever been around before.  Where as the Rockies are pointy and dynamic these things are just gigantic.  They rise up really fast from the coast, we were able to go from sea level in Valparaiso to over 9,500 feet in about 2.5 hours! But more importantly they are just plain big.  They stretch on for miles and miles and the snow covered peaks end impressively way above tree line.

After a great day of skiing we met some new friends  on the bus ride back to Santiago, one guy was really friendly and we spent most of the ride talking about language and cultural differences.  He was pretty much fluent in Spanish and English so he gave us the low down on some more Chileanismos.  We learned that foreigners should probably never say hueon - a word that can mean both dude and asshole - because we'll probably use it wrong even if we can speak fluent spanish... it's something about cultural understanding).  We were all completely wiped when we got back to Santiago though and so we booked it to the hostel that our friend Laura recommended called La Chimba which was pretty sweet and definitely a nice place to finish our day.  For dinner we just went across the street to this Peruvian place that was recommended by the hostel.  While it was slightly lacking in atmosphere, there were lots of odd Chinese decorations and the waiter was a little overly attentive, the food was absolutely amazing.  Peru has a fair amount of Chinese/Asian influence we learned and this was definitely apparent in the dishes we ordered (lots of rice and some yummy sauces).

The next day some of the group stayed in Santiago to attend a human rights march with Danko (one of our program leaders), while Peter and I chose to go back to Valparaiso.  The march sounded really interesting but I was a little stressed about the amount of work I had to do for Monday and I was also pretty tired. Unfortunately when I got home instead of doing my homework I somehow ended up at a BBQ with my family and about 6 other families that lasted for most of the afternoon.  I'm not sure exactly when I agreed to go to this thing but my brother left specifically to come pick me up so I didn't really feel like I could say no... It was really fun though, much better than doing homework so I guess I can't complain too much!

That's all for now though, I'm tired and I'll post pictures as soon as I get a chance to download them from my camera...

Sept. 11th

September 11th has a completely different meaning here in Chile.  9/11/1973 is the day that a junta forced a military coup and placed General Pinochet in power.  This dictatorship lasted almost 20 years and affected every aspect of Chilean society.  During Pinochet's reign there were many human rights crimes committed and hundreds of thousands of people were detained or tortured under the excuse of 'state security', or for no apparent reason at all.  Because of this long history during which they were denied a voice Chileans now remember Sept. 11 with human rights demonstrations and other forms of protest.  It was very interesting to learn about and experience a completely different tragedy that just happened to occur on the same day.  It made me realize how different experiences and events can effect our perceptions of the world and what we consider to be important.  

On Friday to remember the coup we watched a really good movie about the friendship of two boys during the last months of Allende's reign and the coup.  It was called Machuca and I definitely recommend it if you can find it!  

Mi Familia

Well, I LOVE my family here. I'm sure that this is due in part to the "honeymoon" period of culture shock that we learned about during orientation, but it's also just because they are awesome. They are super caring and very welcoming.  My mom's name is Rosa, but everyone calls her Rosy (very similar to Roxy) and my dad's name is Ulises.  They have two kids but neither one lives at home any more.  The son, also named Ulises, is very nice though.  He lives in Santiago but comes home every weekend...   My mom makes me lunch every day which I usually eat at school or if it's nice out I take  it somewhere to eat. I'm extremely well fed here but the upside is that I live 4 blocks from the sea and it's a great place to run and they have a BIKE PATH, that's right a bike path. Chile is actually very advanced, they have bike paths all over Santiago too, but you have to be careful because lots of cars use them as an extra lane. 

This evening I went to yoga with my mama, it was kinda funny and not at all like the yoga classes I've been to in the states but it was really fun to do that with my mama.  There are tons of ways to be athletic if you want but that doesn't mean that I've been all that motivated, there are a couple of other people on the program who like working out too though so that helps a little!  

Classes started on Tuesday, I'm in a spanish class with 6 other kids from the program and we have classes with 2 different teachers, for 2 hours or so each with a break in between.  My teachers are really nice and so far the classes have gone pretty fast.  Today during the second spanish class we went on an excursión with our teacher and we had to talk to people in stores and on the streets to figure out about the history of the place we went, it was kind of scary at first but everyone is really nice and willing to help if you make an effort to talk in spanish.  The other day, for example, my homework was to talk to my family about Chilean perceptions of the US and also Chilean perceptions of other Chileans.  My papa and I had a huge discussion about the way in which the as a whole US is seen to be like a powerful bully who abuses its power, but he was also careful to qualify this by saying that it's interesting because all of the individuals from the states that he's met were really nice and helpful.  Our conversation ended with a long debate about the education systems of our two countries and while I'm not totally sure of all that was said, by me or him, it was really interesting. 

I'll post more pics soon but my camera is kinda a pain so it's not going to happen tonight!

Ciao

some Photos

here are some photos...

el ascensor

un gato

sunset

(one of) my schools!

"seawolf"

Address

My address for this semester is:


Roxy Pierson

c/o SIT Study Abroad

Bellavista #1263, Recreo

Casilla Postal 8009, Viña 2 

Viña del Mar 

Chile

I'm not sure if this means that it will go to a PO box or the street address because I was kinda tuned out when Danko explained it but this is what they put in our handbook.  Cards/packages would be super fun to get and I'll try to write some post cards too!