March in Santiago
I waited longer than expected to write this update. Here I'm sharing some photos and happenings from March in Santiago.
Campus
I promised some campus photos, and so I want to deliver some. I don't think I captured the place I have seen the most of (which is somehow the humanities quad) but I have a few photos:
"Bat Jesus", who greets students at the main entrance
Climbing Wall at San Joaquin campus - I haven't found it open yet but I made it into the climbing club group chat. Tomorrow I hope to climb here and meet people!
The ceiling of one of the main buildings on campus - I don't go in here for classes but it was worth a picture.
Classes
I have now figured out my classes and I'm getting the sense of how they will go this semester.
Política y Cultura- With only ND students and taught by the director of our program, this is a laid back class where we can ask questions about current news (or anything else on our minds for that matter) and get thorough answers from Estéban. He has a PhD in Political Science from Notre Dame, where he studied the political parties of Chile, and has been teaching this class for a long time, making this a very informative class that is easy to understand. Estéban is so used to talking with gringos that he says sometimes he speaks clearly enough to be confused as a foreigner.
- My spanish class is only half of my cohort of Notre Dame students. Here we're invited to ask our professor any grammatical question that confused us the past week, and in turn we get fantastic answers. I think there's technically a lesson plan, but we have yet to have a (70 minute) class where we ran out of questions.
- This is a small class that is split 50/50 between Chilean and Gringo students. We are working our way from poetry influencing the independence movement in Chile (early 1800s) to present-day. Right now, that means we are facing Spanish words that even the Chilean students don't know. I always leave this class with a lot of new vocabulary words (although I skip the antiquated ones).
- This class is 3 hours on Tuesday mornings at a different university, the Jesuit Alberto Hurtado University. Made up of only exchange students (6 from ND, another 6 or so from various universities and countries), I still feel like this class is tailored to my level of Spanish. We are working our way through various definitions of poverty and strategies to develop our society past it. Soon I'll start volunteering once a week with children and older residents of a lower-class neighborhood of Chile as part of the class. Although I don't really have any experience in studying poverty and economics (something I can say about many courses I'm taking), I can tell there are unique aspects to taking this course in a different country.
- This is my second philosophy class during my time with Notre Dame, and my biggest challenge for the semester. I am one of two exchange students in a class of ~50 students, meaning the Spanish, already full of technical philosophical speech, is not tailored to my level at all. It has motivated me to really spend time with the readings, and it helps that I enjoy the topic. So far the biggest challenge has been group discussions, where my goal has just been to try to follow what the other students are saying rather than necessarily being able to contribute. Young Chileans speak quickly and with a lot of _Chilenismos (local colloquialisms). I can't imagine the difficulty of the exchange students who come to Notre Dame and have the same feelings in all of their classes at once, without a university program and friends supporting them the way I have.
Climbing
I've been climbing a few times a week still. It keeps me moving, gives me a routine and has slowly been opening doors to climbing with Chileans! Soon I will climb at the wall on campus (which has only just opened), and just recently I climbed with Estéban's son, a recent college grad who works at a local climbing gym and was extremely welcoming. This also led to me making it on Felipe Contreras' (a Chilean actor) instagram.
Climbing at "El Muro"
Pi Day
Pi day was aptly celebrated with Nick, seemingly the only other one who remembered to celebrate... perhaps this has something to do with our respective choices to study CS and Physics.
Pichilemu, "Surf Capitol of the World"
Last weekend I went to Pichilemu, a surfing town that's only a three hour bus ride from Santiago. I discovered that marisco empanadas are not that good, stayed in my first hostel (Sudeste Hostel, right on the beach). I tried surfing (to the surprise of nobody reading this, I found it absolutely amazing and I will be going back), and spent two hours talking with the owner of the surf shop about his life spent surfing and embracing his Mapuche heritage while he shared Mate and Coffee with us to warm us up.
Eric (an exchange student at La Catolica from France), and I
What's that thing on my head?
The day before leaving for pichilemu, I got in a terrible fight (I turned too quickly) with a treacherous foe (a soccer goalpost) while valiantly upholding a glorious purpose (watching a shot miss the goal by ~5 feet). My first instinct was that I was unharmed, until I started to bleed all over the poor turf and my adrenaline went through the roof. Thankfully, I have had absolutely no type of internal head injury, not even a headache, just an unlucky cut on my forehead that required superglue at the clinic a few hours later.
Before heading off the the clinic, bandaged and drinking juice to keep me from passing out after my adrenaline crashed
***NOT an invitation to start Harry Potter jokes
Museums, cultural experiences
This month I went to the precolumbian art museum (in the photos), the Museum of Human Rights (about the recent dictatorship here in Chile) and had the chance through the program to go to a site of torture with a man who was tortured there as our guide. The last one was extremely powerful.
Although I didn't take photos of them, the Precolumbian Art museum was probably 70% handmade clay pots. Extremely well preserved, very valuable history to preserve, and very similar looking. I don't blame anyone here, there are only so many ways to make pots.
A typical day
After a month of settling in, I also wanted to share more about a typical day in my semester here:
Mornings in the apartment
- In the morning, I wake up with ample time to have a "desayuno tranquilo" with Rosita. She gets up much before me and eats her own breakfast but very sweetly times her cooking/preparation to make me either eggs on toast or minute-oats with a banana just as I am coming out of my room. We have also started making real coffee rather than instant coffee as I turned her on to the wonders of the French press. I am somehow one of her first students to share her appreciation for coffee.
- I have about a 35-50 minute metro ride, depending on my luck. I certainly spend a lot of time on the metro/micro here (micro being the buses that function with the same card), but it's not like I can change that, nor do I want to stop going the places I go, so instead I listen to music, do my spanish flashcards, and generally try to soak in more of my limited time here.
- At school, I have classes M-W from about 11-4, with a long lunch break in the middle. The entire university shares a lunch break, and most students pack their lunches from home. Outdoor spaces on campus fill up with students sitting at tables and in the quads. I usually eat with whoever I am coming from class with and eat my salad, yogurt, and main dish from Rosita.
- After school, or on days without classes, I'll go climbing, meet people out for coffees, or plan an activity that takes more commitment. Kate's family came into town one week this month, so I spent time with them. It's a balance between resting, taking advantage of the small spontaneous things to do in a massive city, and making bigger plans with bigger groups. I'm still getting this balance right.
I carry around a notebook with me that I'm constantly filling with new vocabulary learned.
Back to the apartment
- My days usually finish with dinner with Rosita, or getting back later if I left after dinner. With nobody else besides Rosita and I, and her early bedtime of 9-10pm, I have full range of the apartment but I usually spend some time in my room reading, decompressing, or finishing up homework before
mi pieza
Other photos from the month
Rapid fire now:
Asado with host families - this is Felipe (academic director), Katy, Kate, Kate's host mother Leti, Mary and I enjoying our coffees after lunch
Photo of the mountains from the corner of my street
Coffee made dripped through an orange. The barista played mac miller the whole time, but I forgot to ask him about it.
I am slightly concerned about my coffee budget on this trip
A Colo-Colo futbol game, this is where I learned the most Chilean swear words so far. Very different than a big game in the US, people are a lot less possessive about their own game-watching experience and instead want to elevate it for those around them.
A view from the micro
An evening to celebrate the end of the first full week of classes.
Honestly, I don't remember where I took this photo
Pensamientos (with no particular rhyme or reason)
There's a lot to learn from a semester abroad, and I know that I won't fully realize it all until well after this experience is over. Some days I'm firing on all cylinders here, speaking fluidly, acting decisively, and feeling like I'm taking full advantage of my time. Other days I feel like the language barrier and constant planning and balancing are catching up to me and I feel sapped. I miss family, my communities at Notre Dame, and the familiarity of my routines back home. At the same time, I know the hard parts are also the things that will give me the most growth, and I haven't regretted coming, even though I wish it could be a different experience a times.
I think a lot of the skills I'm learning here also have to do with living a much more "post-grad" life than I'm used to. I can no longer walk 10 minutes to all of my usual spots, I'm not surrounded by 8000 people my age 24/7, and I'm spending real money a lot more often rather than swiping into a dining hall. It is far more likely for my life beyond next year to look like this semester than my time at Notre Dame.
The most powerful day so far (and really one of the few to truly merit "powerful") was the tour of the torture facility location with Pedro, who had been a prisoner there himself during the dictatorship. His ability to speak about it and vision for a future afterwards were impactful and probably takes more strength than most people have. I'm grateful for the program setting that up.
This month, although I only left the city for the weekend in Pichilemu, I planned several trips that I'll be taking in April and May.
- Finalized details for backpacking in Patagonia, leaving Wednesday
- Trekking to Machu Picchu, visiting Cuzco and Lima at the end of April during a ten day trip.
- Bought flights to Buenos Aires with Kate for the end of May