Post- Buenos Aires post

I arrived in Viña del Mar from Buenos on Thursday. Since then, I have labeled just about everything in my room and bathroom with its spanish name, spent all afternoon toddling around Café con Letras, and had leche con plátanos for the first time. Ok, so it has not been an eventful four days, but they have been relaxing... and I believe I will be making leche con plátanos for the rest of my life. All you do is put a banana, a bunch of milk, and some sugar in a blender and voila! Try it!

I didn't take very many pictures in Buenos Aires. Five, to be exact. Why? I have come to realize that I have a love/hate relationship with pictures. I love to look at them and use them to spark memory, etc. but photos never quite do the scene justice. I enjoy the moment more if I am just focusing on the moment rather than the focus of my camera. I am kicking myself now for only taking so few pictures, though. Which brings me back to the hate... I do think that the moment is tainted if you have a lens in front of your eye.

Thus, I have a skim-on-pics blog. I will try to be better about this... but am making no guarantees.

Here is what I do have.

My new friend, Coren, and me in the center of town. We went to the Sunday market and saw all kinds of cool things. Who knew "the invisible man" really existed?

Here are Carlin and Coren in the kids section of the El Ateneo bookstore. :) Take a look here, it is quite a store!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Ateneo

One of the other things we did in Buenos Aires was take a look around the Recoleta Cemetary. Samantha went

there. Her crew did do some picture taking. Check it out:

My current life-quandary (and I do realize that in a world of real-life problems, I am a lucky dog to have this be my biggest one) is learning Spanish. I am constantly wavering between feeling no pressure - only excitement to learn, and a feeling of total deluge... like I am never going to get to "fluency," why even try? I know that that is the wrong feeling to have, though. I am here for self-improvement. For myself. No one else. I am here to learn Spanish. In the best way I know of. I am definitely able. I am just having to take a deep breath from time to time, settle down... and make some more flashcards.

So this weekend, the ISA group is having an excursion to La Serena. It will go from Friday to Sunday and should be a lot of fun. We have a good group... it always tends to make for a pretty good time, and La Serena is supposed to be beautiful (just like everything else here). Annnnnndd Friday is my 21st Birthday! Ha, I have always had ideas about how my 21st would go down. I remember talking with my roommates when we were freshman about how all of us had our 21st birthday on weekend days. So I believe this will end up being a little bit of an unconventional American's 21st, but I have nothing to complain about!

P.S. I was inspired to make a post today by my roomie, Johanna. (This is your shout-out, Johanna.)

Amor a Buenos Aires de Argentina!!!

Hola, Amigos!

Greetings from Buenos Aires! It is a truly beautiful city... I have watched a Tango show, shopped, met fun people, eaten good food... it has been a good time, hopefully with more to come.

Since it has been more than I while since my last post, I will include...
More about Chile:

Things are gradually getting easier. I can now get around Viña and Valpo rather easily and the Spanish is coming along. Watching movies in English while reading the Spanish subtitles has been really beneficient.

I can see the man on the moon better here... perhaps because the ozone is damaged, but it is beautiful nonetheless.

An excursion through ISA to La Serena is the plan on my birthday weekend. It is supposed to be beautiful. ...Wont exactly be the 21st birthday I have imagined in the past, but that may not be a bad thing. It hit me here a few minutes ago, sitting in my hostel, probably because I have been reading facebook status updates, that I am in a damn good situation. I cannot even imagine being in my little apartment in College Station studying for a test or going to a meeting or something, which is what I would be doing if I had not come here. It is really kind of a euphoric feeling I get when I think about the possibilities that this trip brings about. I found some cool quotes to possibly get you in a sentimental mood like mine: :)


“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” - Henry Miller

“Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travelers don’t know where they’re going.” - Paul Theroux

“Adventure is a path. Real adventure – self-determined, self-motivated, often risky – forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world. The world the way it is, not the way you imagine it. Your body will collide with the earth and you will bear witness. In this way you will be compelled to grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of humankind – and perhaps realize that you yourself are capable of both. This will change you. Nothing will ever again be black-and-white.” - Mark Jenkins


“A wise traveler never despises his own country.” - Carlo Galdoni

So I have been feeling temblores still pretty often since the terremoto, but less and less so as time goes on. One of them comes with a pretty good story. A couple of weeks ago, the new Chilean president was inaugurated in a building just down the street from my university in Valparaiso. I figured, hey, might as well go and check out the little parade situation they have got going on down there. It was really cool. I am very glad that I went. A historical event doesnt happen ´down the street` every day. (The new chilean president, Piñera, is the first right-wing leader since the Pinochet era. Since that time, every president has been a socialist.) Anyway, A tremor happened while I was standing out there. Everybody moved away from the power lines for a minute, but there was no need for alarm because these tremors come so often. After the president came by, I headed back toward the beach area where the buses were. Suddenly, I noticed people running the other way. I just kindof hessitated until I heard the policeman say "tsunami," and I joined the others in running. I am pretty sure that the whole town was running up hills. Like, these people were not wasting time. Even the buses (all of them) were zooming up the hill. I got toward the top and ended up running into a leader of another study abroad group. We went into a house on the hill where one of her American students was staying. It took a long time for the go-ahead to come saying that everything was safe. I stayed there for about 4 hours. You know, when I heard "tsunami" and saw what looked like a scene from Godzilla, I thought that that meant there was a tsunami and that tsunami was on its way to Valparaiso. There was no tsunami. The right conditions for a tsunami to develop were in place but there was never a tsunami spotted. What made that tremor different from others in causing "perfect tsunami conditions," I dont know, but perhaps it will be a different situation if another threat like that comes. I think that the word tsunami just scared everyone and that is why they went crazy rather than merely finding higher ground.

Classes are going well. It is a pretty humorous situation. There are 5 people, the same 5 people, in all of my classes. It is 3 guys from ISA and a Japanese guy. I really like all of my profs and they have made class interesting so far, which I am really impressed with because I dont know how I would feel about preparing a lot for only 5 students.

Chao for now, from Buenos Aires!

Where do I begin?!

A lot has happened in the last week, so I have decided to break this blog into parts. First of all:

*** The Terremoto! ***

Holy crap. This is one to tell the kids. On my second night in Santiago, on the 11th floor of a not-so-new building, I woke up around 2:30AM to a door creaking. My first thought was that one of my room mates was making a lot of noise when she came in after partying. My second thought was "Why the hell is she closing the door so many times?" The movement got stronger, now making a rumbling sound and shaking my bed. I bolted up.

The girl I was sharing a bedroom with sat up in her bed and we looked at each other in shock without saying anything. I was still in a bit of a haze having just woken up, but when my bed started rolling around and the TV fell off of its sturdy shelf and crashed face-down, the word "earthquake" finally came to mind. The picture on the wall fell and we continued to sway and bump around. Hard. Honestly, I wasn't too scared. One, because I felt like I was just on some kind of amusement ride, and two, because I was still in a bit of a haze from being asleep until the earthquake was almost over.

The plan was for the whole ISA group (about 50 American college students) to have three days of orientation in Santiago. The kicker is that we had had a safety orientation that morning. The leaders warned us not to be alarmed in the case of tremors. These "earth tremors," they said, would be considered earthquakes in the US but were totally normal in Chile. Was this a tremor?! Surely not, but it crossed our minds. We went out into the hall, stepped over large chunks of plaster, pointed out horizontal cracks, and braced ourselves during a couple of the 30 (yes 30!) aftershock tremors as we tip-toed down the stairs. After spending a couple of hours with a partly drunk, but mostly just tired-looking group, we went back upstairs. Our leaders really didn't know what to do. Someone even saw them run to each other in the hall and frantically say that they didn't have a protocol for this sort of thing. And why would they? Anyway, the next morning we realized

just how bad the terremoto was. Bad enough

to be the 6th strongest ever recorded. The streets of Santiago were deserted except for a few people

surveying the damage. It was weird to see the quake on CNN

and yahoo.com. Santiago was hit bad, but not as bad as

Concepcion. Chile has suffered and is continuing to

suffer. I thought that it was

exciting to experience an earthquake, but that is because I didn't personally get hurt or know who was getting hurt. Much help and many prayers are needed for those in the south of Chile!

***Viña del Mar***

Um, so I may still be in the "honeymoon phase" but I live in an awesome, gorgeous city! Imagine a place with California's weather and ocean, a place where it is impolite not to put your elbows on the dinner table and being 15 minutes late is the socially-accepted norm. Mullets a

nd fannie packs are in, popped collars are out, and songs

like "slim shady" and "We built this city on Rock and Roll" come on the radio. The country's flag is almost identical to that of the great state of Texas, and the men are hot. Does it get any better? Well, maybe if you can speak the language... but that is another topic.

***Spanglish***

Ugh. Ok, so I can't really complain here because I knew it would happen, but it kinda sucks not knowing the language. Asking for directions is no piece of cake. Imagine a clearly foreign girl getting lost and trying to ask for help using only hand motions. I am sure it is quite a sight to the passers by. :) I am hoping that this problem will wane after some time and classes have passed. It gives me more reason to learn, and I am getting plenty of practice!

***What else?***

After the terremoto, ISA's plans to take the group to Pucon in the south of chile Chile were canceled. School stuff doesnt begin happening until this Wednesday the 10th, so we have had a week and a half of free time. :) (A&M started back nearly 2 months ago. How badass is that?) I have hung out with my host family and their friends, gone to the beach and explored with some other Americans, and danced the night away at "El Huevo." Yep, that means "the egg".

Its a pretty bumpin place. There are 5 dance floors and is apparently the place to go in the Valpo region. I just got back from having a completo with my gringa friend, Kristen. They are huge hot dogs slathered with sourkraut, avocado, tomatoes, and mayo. Totally diet-friendly, of course. I saw the place on No Reservations with Anthony Bordain.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR_LncmNH5U

Its a total hole-in-the-wall, but makes a great hot dog! Tomorrow the plan is to go lay on the beach in Reñaca and later head to the sand dunes. ( They rent out "surf boards" for you to surf down the sand dunes on! )

First Impressions

Well Folks, I am writing this entry from Santiago, Chile! I arrived this morning and met up with the others in ISA-Chile's Spring semester program. There are about 50 of us... representing all parts of the US. We will stay here in Santiago until Sunday, the 28th, then head to our host families' houses. Honestly, I still have not wrapped my head around the fact that I am in this part of the world. I look out the window of this hotel and things look like they do in the northern hemisphere. I have not seen anything too culturally different so far. I suppose that I inadvertently expected a place that I know so little about to feel like a foreign planet. However, I am so excited to be here! The directors seem great. There are a lot of cool places to be seen in this part of the world. The opportunities are endless. :)

One thing that sets me apart from the other students (or most of them, anyways) is that I don't speak any Spanish. This was part of the plan, though. I have always thought it would be such a great adventure to simply be immersed in a culture/language before ever having actually studied it. There are a few reasons that I feel this way. One is that grammar is easier to accept if you are not constantly translating it into your native language. Babies do this. They don't have anything to translate to, and not being given a straight up english definition will do this for me, I hope. Granted, I do not have the malleable brain of a baby, but I am crossing my fingers that this concept woks in my case, too... On second thought, I do some pretty ridiculous stuff from time to time. Maybe I do have the brain of a small child... The second reason is that living here, I will have a reason to immediately learn the language. It can be applied to speak to people that I really need/want to talk to. Foreign language class (especially like the French class I took) in The Woodlands, Texas provides no motivation to actually learn the language. You (or maybe just I) do it for the grade. The final reason is that I DO like to travel and I DON'T really like to study textbooks. It may sound to some like a waste of money, but I see this as life experience. :)

As we were landing this morning, I saw the Andes mountains. I looked down at them and saw some white, fluffy stuff at their base. This didn't make sense to me... the tops of the mountains didn't have snow on them. How could the base be snowy? Also, this is summertime in Chile. Well, I was humbled when I realized that the snow I was looking at were clouds and the "mountains" were actually "mountain tops." Woah. The Andes are pretty freakin' big... Speaking of Andes, I wish I had brought some Andes mints with me so that I could eat an Andes in the Andes. Hm, maybe they sell them here somewhere...

Today, we went sight-seeing. We rode a funicular to the top of the "center of Santiago" and were able to look out at the city. It was beautiful. Santiago is a really big city! I forgot to bring my camera along, though. :/ So far, I have enjoyed getting to know the others in the group. Many of them are also juniors. We kind of did your standard "Where are you from? What is your major?" thing to each other all day. Everybody seems pretty friendly.

Tomorrow, we will do more sight-seeing and have an orientation session on theft and personal safety. This would not be an issue if they just issued out firearms for us to defend ourselves with... ;)