An October Spring

Friends, it's been a long long time. I'm glad to be back writing here, mostly because I truly enjoy looking back and talking about what's been happening in my life. I also enjoy reaching out, albeit electronically, to let you guys know how I'm doing. So I've said it before, and now I'll say it again: sorry to neglect my blogging duties.

Please know that I've been having a really wonderful couple of months since last writing. Being in Chile for an academic year continues to feel like a good decision, not just because I can devote more time to traveling and getting to know this country, but also because I'm just enjoying myself more than I was at the beginning of my time here. Part of this has to do with language--I feel that I'm speaking the best Spanish in my life right now, which is really exciting. There are still lots of moments where I open my mouth only to emit a confused jumble of sounds, prompting bewildered looks from the people I'm speaking to. Another big factor in my enjoyment of my time here has been the feeling that I now have a more solid network of friends to share my time with. Looking back on my first couple of months here I realize how worried I was about making friends and if I was being sufficiently social. And while it may have taken me a little while, I am really happy within my small network of Chilean, American, and assorted international friends here in Santiago. In the past month and a half I've hosted four asados (Chilean barbecues) on the roof of my apartment building. The first couple attempts were a little rough going, particularly in the fire set up, but the last asado was particularly successful because two more charcoal fire knowledgeable friends took over the fire set up from this city slicker. Also I used some liquid gas--it stunk a little, but the fire sure burned! Also, it's finally spring here! I know the northern hemisphere is busy making pumpkin spice latees at the moment, but I haven't seen spring since May of 2013 and the sight of blossoming trees and flowers has been welcome.

Some of my early attempts at stoking the fire by getting my face right up and close to the flame. Safety first!!

 The crew from my birthday asado two weeks ago. 

Another element to my recent happiness was the extended visit made by Holly, my lovely girlfriend. Holly and I started dating in October in spite of the fact that we knew that I would be spending the next year away from the University of Chicago, where we both study. In January and February, during the time that I had left Chicago and was interning in Washington, we both visited each other, and then knew that it would be a full six months (or 180 some days if you're counting, but only real masochists would do that, right?) before she could come to see me here in Santiago. Clearly Holly's visit was eagerly anticipated, and our month together was fantastic. There's something very special about showing your new home to someone you love, especially someone you haven't seen in so long. Holly and I cooked in my very limited kitchen (usually I did what I could to help without getting in the way of a much more accomplished cook), explored Santiago and its surroundings, hung out with some of my friends here, and took two wonderful weekend trips to northern Chile and to Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Merluza a la Gallega (Hake fish with chorizo sausage, peppers, potatoes, and onions in a white wine sauce.)

Buenos Aires' combination of supremely affordable food and wine, excellent weather, beautiful people, and exciting cultural opportunities made it immediately one of my favorite cities. A country wide strike shortened our trip by a day, but in just a short weekend we were able to catch a performance of the Buenos Aires Symphony at Teatro Colon, eat impressive amounts of Argentine steak, take in spontaneous tango dancing in the San Telmo neighborhood plaza, and hang out in front of la Casa Rosada, the residence of the Argentine president. Our other trip was to Valle del Elqui, a valley just east of La Serena, a city six hours north of Santiago. Our weather on this trip wasn't quite as good--we managed to be there for one of the 40 days of the year that it isn't sunny (we got torrential rain), but we managed just fine. Valle del Elqui is renowned for all of its different distilleries for pisco--the Chilean/Peruvian brandy liquor made from distilling white wine and commonly served in cocktails--so Holly and I toured and sampled a bunch a lot of the local product.

 It wasn't just work: we did have time to take a selfie in la Plaza de Mayo in front of La Casa Rosada

Somebody had to flaunt his cowboy boots in front of the Argentine Congress.

But as I wrote above, part of the fun of Holly's visit was in just showing Holly what my life is like here. We went rowing together one weekend, we ate empanadas, and tried a lot of the excellently cheap local wine. Saying goodbye (she flew home almost two weeks ago) was tough, though it was made easier with the knowledge that instead of six months apart we'll be separate for just three months. On my end, I've been able to distract myself by (finally!!) starting my internship in the Foreign Commercial Section at the US Embassy here in Santiago. Right now I'm working there three days a week in an office with three American employees and seven Chilean employees who work to help U.S. companies export to the Chilean market. On the plus side this means that I've been learning a lot while meeting intelligent and interesting people; on the negative side, though, this means that my four dress shirts are getting a heavy rotation. I might even have to iron a shirt at some point soon.

 Holly and me with our (food) baby: 1 kg empanada filled with beef, onions, olives, and egg.

Holly showing up the Chileans at Laguna Aculeo, southwest of Santiago

Thanks for your interest, guys. A special thank you to everyone who reached out on my birthday, too--hearing from so many great people on my day was really special. I hope you're all doing well. Look out for more posts soon, as I couldn't cram nearly enough of the last few months' events into this single post.

Back to school

Hello, neglected readers! I'm back to blogging now, and ready to once again define your internet reading experience from this blog. Actually, I'm sorry that it's been nearly two months since I've posted anything on this blog. I'd claim that I was EVER so busy, but we all know that's not true. It would be impossible to do a full summary of the last two months, so here's a quick highlight reel with some pictures.

First cool piece of news: I'm going to be interning at the US Embassy in Santiago this fall! I'll be working in the Foreign Commercial Section (FCS), which helps both American companies trying to expand into Chile and Chilean companies looking to invest in the US. I'm still waiting for clearance to begin working, but I hope that I'll be able to start in the coming weeks. This photo is of me with Ambassador Mike Hammer at the Embassy's Fourth of July celebration.

Another highlight of the past month was getting to ski for a number of days. This first picture was with fellow Embassy interns Hannah and Jason at Valle Nevado on the Fourth of July.

 Later in the month my brother and parents visited. We spent three full days skiing at La Parva, another Santiago-area ski resort. The mist/smog in the background of this photo is covering metropolitan Santiago.

 My brother Sean is a little hesitant to take photos with his older brother. Sometimes I had to resort to surprising him with quick selfies on my phone.

Later in the trip we made a quick trip to Valparaíso, the port nearest to Santiago and Chile's third largest city. 

 After saying goodbye to my family, I enjoyed my final couple weeks of vacation by doing some exploring in and outside of Santiago. Here's another great selfie of me on Cerro San Cristobal (St. Christopher Hill) overlooking northeastern Santiago.

I took a wonderful trip to Chiloé, an archipelago about 600 miles south of Santiago that hugs the Chilean coast. It's normally super rainy there, so when I had a sunny day I took advantage of it with a long hike along the Pacific coast. There were penguins on the cliffs near me, which was a special highlight of the day and totally made up for the enormous blister I got afterwards.

This is curanto, the most famous Chilean dish. It was originally conceived as a one pot dish that fishermen could take with them and make at sea in these funky pots that they would cover with dirt and cook for long times. This one wasn't "authentic" in the sense that it was cooked in a modern kitchen, but it was super tasty and filling. In all it includes clams, mussels, sausage, chicken, corn, and different types of potato. 

 This is my favorite souvenir that I've managed to find in Santiago so far. I'm not certain if it was a hat that was originally made for Texas and then just recycled for Chileans or if it was made for a very special audience. It's pretty special, regardless.

Then on a related, here's an ad that I got recently on Facebook. It would seem that my Chilean-Texan connection has become pretty obvious to the advertisers Facebook sells my information to. It's definitely one of those moments when I marvel at, and then am disturbed by, how well Facebook knows me.

In other news, classes started again last week for the southern hemisphere's spring semester. I'm taking two different poetry classes, a nineteenth century history course, and a seminar on Chilean history and culture designed for exchange students. I've already signed up for another climbing course, and managed to arrange my class schedule so that I can work at the Embassy in the large chunks (most of Tuesday/Thursday and all of Friday) when I don't have class. Look out for further updates in the coming weeks about the internship, classes, and the eagerly anticipated visit from Holly, my lovely girlfriend. As always, thanks for reading.

Copa Mundial

Dear eager followers,

I apologize for being absent for so long. But fear not: I'm back on the blogging train.

Wait, I've already said that before? Alright, just accept that I'm posting again and will be hoping to post a bit more frequently in the coming weeks.

Today marks the end of regular classes for the semester; I have three exams in the next two weeks, and then I'm FREE! I'll have the entire month of July off from classes. During that time I'll get to see my parents and brother, who will be visiting Santiago for ten days. The plan right now is to travel around a bit with them when they come here and then after saying goodbye to them to do some more traveling on my own outside of Santiago. Plans are very much in the air at this point, though. This month has, overall, been a good one. I finally felt like I had a hold of my workload for my classes, was able to see some new parts of Santiago, raced in a rowing pairs' event in southern Chile, and recently, have been able to enjoy the craziness that is the World Cup (Copa Mundial in Spanish) in a soccer-crazy country.

In regards to the rowing, my friend Rodrigo and I decided, after only having rowed together in a pair once, to attempt a race together at last weekend's competition. For the non-rowers, the pair is a notoriously difficult boat to row because it requires a lot of technical skill because it's a small boat that is easily offset by small movements. Many rowers would have tried to row a few times before beginning to think about racing, but not us; no, with a lot of faith in luck and our ability to rapidly improve over time we registered. Our training was not ideal: we managed to row together twice before getting to the race site, and we finished that first outing together by flipping the boat. The second outing had to be called off only an hour into the row because of wind and rain. So we got to Concepción, the southern Chilean city where the regatta was held, with somewhat tempered hopes for success.

Shocker of all shockers, we didn't win our race, we both felt good about how we rowed together. We're at an excellent part on the learning curve where there's a noticeable improvement from every time we get into a boat together (approximately six times in total by now), so that definitely helps. But I also really enjoyed being able to attend a regatta in Chile. The sport is centered in this part of southern Chile, so I loved seeing all the different rowing clubs from the neighboring cities and to learn about Chilean rowing culture in general. Rowers are a funky enough breed that I think we stand out in most settings, and Chile's no different. High school rowers were getting together to compare blisters while competitors complained about the regatta running behind schedule. We were on the receiving end of some wonderful generosity from several different people: one man entrusted his beautiful boat to us both for a practice session and for the race on Sunday, never having met or spoken to us before. And we had a comfortable home to sleep in on Saturday night thanks to the hospitality of members of the club I row at in Santiago. Clearly, in addition to being a weird in similar ways, rowers are exceedingly generous in the Southern Hemisphere as well. In fact, my only disappointment from the weekend was learning that Chileans say, in English "Ready, Go!!" at the start--I'd been hoping to learn the Spanish translation of "Attention, Go!".

The dream team

Just before we left for Concepción the World Cup began. I consider myself a pretty serious soccer fan at home (i.e. I watch all the US games and know most of the line-up) but I quickly learned that that is just a minimum level of devotion for most Chileans. When Chile plays the country comes to a standstill--classes are cancelled, work stops, and there is a true feeling of tension in the air. The security guards who works the front door of my building normally uses the flat screen TV in the lobby to watch security footage, but that night the channel was switched to game and an enormous Chilean flag now hangs under the screen. The best explanation I've found so far is that since everything stops in Chile during the games, crime must go down as well. I got a feeling for this a week ago when Chile played Australia, but the whole experience was ramped up about seven notches for Wednesday's game against Spain. Spain, the defending champions from 2010, had already lost its first game and was seen as vulnerable against Chile, so the game was super heavily anticipated. I left the practically empty library on Wednesday afternoon and made my way to the viewing areas, where the university has set up two marquees with jumbotron screens. The marquees were entirely packed with tense Chileans, but the environment quickly became less tense and more celebratory as Chile scored in the twentieth minute, again just before the end of the first half, and never gave up control from there. As this youtube video shows, you didn't even have to be watching the game to understand the progress: each goal was greeted with horns and general shouting. This video (follow this link if the in-post link isn't working) was shot from near my apartment in central Santiago, and in addition to the cool sound effect, it also has a pretty wonderful view of Santiago's smog and the Andes.

In what may have been a bit of an error, I skipped the celebrations yesterday to go to my class (which had been rescheduled so as to not conflict with the game). Then again, I read today that the "celebrations" resulted in the hijacking of six buses, damages to 40, and the burning of one bus stop. So yeah, Go Chile!!! Really, though, it's pretty exciting to be in such a soccer-crazed country that's enjoying what hopefully turns out to be a long run through the tournament.

Coming up soon I'm looking forward to writing some final papers (haha, I'm so funny) followed by a Fourth of July ski trip to one of the ski resorts near Santiago. And I will of course be shouting myself hoarse for my beloved USA for the duration of their time in the World Cup. Until my next (hopefully sooner!) post, thank you for reading. It's been a pleasure sharing these first months of my adventure here with you, and I'm looking forward to this next stage in my time here.

May Showers

Hello again, eager readers. In this post you can look forward to more than just an update on the mundane topics of weather and food: prepare yourselves for a deep look into my last two and a half weeks of personal exploration and self discovery.

Or we could just go with the food and weather and maybe that could be a cute metaphor for personal discovery? Yeah, that does sounds better to me. If it worked for college essays, it damn well better work for a blog!

I'm thinking about food because I've just finished making and devouring a meal of salmon, broccoli, brown rice, and white wine. If that isn't adult food then I don't know what is. Maybe I should have incorporated brussels sprouts or kale or blueberries to get all the super foods in? Whatever I don't care. In fact, I was so proud of myself that I rewarded myself with one or two (or four) Oreos. At least the junk food here is cheap too.

Back to good food. Santiago has a network of enormous grocery stores, smaller stores with seven or eight aisles of food, corner shops with a scattering of offerings, and fantastic markets where you can get enormous quantities of produce at incredible prices. It's late mid-fall in the Southern Hemisphere, so I've been enjoying kiwis, pears, and apples (apples are usually a little less than $.50/lb), as well as Ecuadorian bananas. A friend of mine tipped me off to a fantastic market that takes up about three blocks on Fridays near my apartment, so walking over there and doing my produce shopping for the week is now part of my weekly routine. I've learned to bring my empty enormous trekking backpack and then fill it up as I go along from stall to stall. Most of the food is locally/domestically sourced, but there are some obvious foreign exceptions: bananas come from Ecuador, some of the oranges are definitely not Chilean (though I'm not exactly sure where they come from), and I'm assuming that the almonds, walnuts, and pecans for sale are American. Last week I managed to fill the entire bag with apples, bananas, oranges, lettuce, spinach, eggplant, bell peppers, onions, and some fish on ice. Yup, this market is anchored by three different booths of fishmongers who, I found, can be accounted on to help an American figure out what he can easily cook up for himself.

This is one of the fishmonger stalls

I could honestly go on for far too long about how fun it is shopping at these markets. I love listening to the salespeople hawking their products; I particularly love when I hear them say "¿Qué quieres, mi reina?" (what would you like, my queen) to the little old ladies doing their shopping. A couple of weeks ago one guy called me flaquito (little skinny dude) as he sold me a bunch of onions. It's a cool environment to do your shopping, to say the least.

Another fun recent development was a trip I took to Mendoza, Argentina, last weekend. I went with a bunch of other foreign exchange students on the trip, which was great as it gave me a chance to meet some of my fellow exchange students while we explored a part of Argentina. Mendoza is the closest major Argentinean city to Santiago, sitting about seven hours away in a bus. The distance is probably a lot less than that indicates, though, because the bus crossing involves a somewhat harrowing ride over the Andes, with the border crossing at the highest point between the two countries.

The customs process takes a long time so we had a chance to walk around before getting our passports stamped--definitely better than standing in line at an airport

A definite highlight to Mendoza was learning about Argentinean wine (which mostly comes from the Mendoza region) while touring a vineyard. 

 The view from the vineyard's second floor. It's fall here, so the leaves are changing color and falling. The trees are olive trees.

Greek wine makers realized a long (long, long) time ago that placing a rose bush at the end of the row of grapes will distract bugs and diseases into attacking the rose first. This trick has survived into modernity, though apparently it's now more of an aesthetic move, as many modern bugs aren't distracted by the roses, no matter how beautiful they are.

At the risk of waxing poetic, I was struck by a sense of past grandeur in Mendoza. The railroads, plazas, old buildings, and cafes seemed like another era's idea of modernity. Argentina's going through some pretty tough economic times right now, making it a quite affordable country for people with access to dollars, but that doesn't make it much easier to see a country with such a pessimistic outlook on its future. I'm really looking forward to going to Buenos Aires in a couple of months, especially to learn a little more about this great country. Don't worry, dear reader, you'll get those iPhone photos in due time.

As always, thank you for reading. I hope your summers (almost there, UChicago!) are getting off to a great start. I'm thinking of you northern hemisphere dwellers as the leaves fall down here and I start thinking about skiing this winter. Clearly I'm finding ways to survive. If not, well, at least I know where I can get some decent food to eat.

Return to blogging

Dearest readers,

I know how much you have missed my blog. You set your routines around my normal biweekly posts on life in the southern hemisphere, you anxiously awaited my missives on language acquisition, and wrote down particularly astute observations from my blog for later use in regular conversation. And then, horror of all horrors, nothing; you survived nearly a month of no posts. Friend, confidant, voyeur: I'm here to tell you that the wait is over. I'm back on the blogging train and ready to share the minute details of my excellently interesting life. I was kept away from blogging by my seriously busy life down here (re-watching Mean Girls on Netflix to celebrate the 10th anniversary of that film, catching up on the NYTimes, eating in general), but I look forward to including my followers in my life once again.

But in real life...

Thanks for indulging my imagination of myself as a thought-leader. Maybe one day I'll have a column on the Huffington Post, but that is not this day.

I wrote in my last post about getting set for a trip to San Pedro de Atacama, and that trip turned out to be a wonderful experience. I traveled with Ailsa, an exchange student friend from the US; we quickly made friends with another foreigner (Constance, from France) at the bus station in Calama, Chile. Calama is the closest town with an airport to San Pedro de Atacama, so we flew there from Santiago and, hoping to save on the (to us) expensive $25 transfer in a van from the airport to the town we opted to catch a bus from the town of Calama. As you can of course anticipate, this was ultimately a bit of a fiasco: the four bus companies in Calama are located in the four corners of the town, each operating a different bus schedule. We trudged around the city for about an hour and a half trying to figure out which company would leave first until we resigned ourselves to waiting about two more hours for the next bus. The only redeeming factor to this misadventure was meeting Constance, who, like Ailsa and me, had hoped to save some money taking the bus. At the end of the day we made it to San Pedro de Atacama, but we'd learned our lesson: the $10 we'd saved by taking the bus didn't really make up for the three hours we'd spent hanging around in a nasty bus office.

But this grim start was quickly redeemed by our quirky hostel and crazy town of San Pedro de Atacama. It seems obvious when I write it here, but I wasn't prepared for the kind of dessert I was traveling to. As we drove around I was blown away: as opposed to desert in Texas or other parts of the US Southwest, the Atacama Desert is dirt with some cool rock formations. No cacti, no scraggly trees, no bushes--the distinguishing features were tiny shrubs growing close to the red ground. It wasn't a sand desert a la Sahara, but it was still crazy dry. There are parts of the Atacama Desert that haven't seen rain in the more than one hundred years of weather keeping there.

All of that combines to make a totally crazy environment. Ailsa, Constance, and I signed up for various tours in SPdA, taking us to see some of the most popular sites. We visited a valley where each of the rock layers was exposed, creating a half rainbow of rock colors from red to green, hiked around salt flats and swam in salt water lagoons, as well as visiting a series of hot springs and geysers about an hour from SPdA. Not your typical desert fare, right? The explanation for this diversity, at least as I understood it in Spanish, is that the desert lies between two mountain ranges, one that used to be heavily volcanic, and while the other is called the Salt Range (Cordillera de la Sal). Glaciers carried the salt through the area, melting away but leaving all the salt.

Two of the biggest highlights of the trip were renting mountain bikes to explore the surrounding area and, on our last night, taking an astronomy tour. My biggest regret going into the tour was not having a better idea of what the night sky looks like in the northern hemisphere, because there were some definite changes. As you might expect, my iPhone camera was completely useless in the total darkness of the desert sky; you'll have to take my word that it was amazing. Using strong laser pointers and telescopes our guides pointed out Sirius, the planets Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn (we could see the rings of Saturn through the telescope!!), and explained some of the differences between indigenous American and Greek astronomy. Apparently the Aztecs, for example, imagined constellations in the dark spaces of the sky instead of completing links between the bright stars. At least that's what I understood--the tour was in Spanish, and the English translation was definitely lacking.

Following that weekend away we got back to Santiago, with Ailsa and I both remarking at how weird and cool it is that returning home now means coming back to Santiago. I got back to a small mountain of school work and have been digging myself out in the past week and a half. Next week I'm taking a trip with the campus exchange student activities group to Mendoza, Argentina (about 7 hrs in bus from Santiago). Meanwhile I've been perfecting my recipe for borracho beans (500 mL of chicken broth, one beer, two pork sausages and several mini chorizo sausages, one chili, and seven garlic cloves later, I can assure you I had some flavorful beans), rowing more at Laguna Aculeo, and exploring the cool street market options in Santiago. Somehow between apple sauce and lunch apples I've consumed around 5 lbs of apples this week, so I'll be back for more tomorrow. Some things don't change, though: I've run out of peanut butter again, so I think I'll have to stop by Líder to pick up another jumbo jar.

Here's some shots from the past month. Thanks for reading!

 Thanks again to my buds at home for getting my the Camelbak water pack! It came in really handy on a camping trip in early April and while bike riding in the desert.

 The interior of the church in San Pedro de Atacama. The plaque outside the church says the first mass was said here in the 1500s.

 Valle del Arcoiris (rainbow). Erosion has weathered away each of the different rock layers, creating the cool color effect.

 The rocks tasted like salt, so I had to give them a try.

 The stunning Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon). 

 Tough times on the bike path

 The view was worth it, though!

Here's a shot of me in the salt flats. The spot here had about six inches of spring fed water covering it. Everything that's white on the ground is salt though. I walked around tasting everything like the five year old I truly am.

Taking a plunge in the lagoon. 

Wait, I have to do schoolwork too?

Hello again, faithful readers. To begin with, thank you to everyone who checked in with me over the last couple of days after hearing about the earthquake off the Chilean coast. I'm totally fine--the earthquake's epicenter was off the coast of Iquique (ee-KEY-kay), a city about 930 miles north of Santiago, so we didn't feel anything here. Chile is really seismically active (you'll remember hearing about the super destructive earthquake in 2010), but the result is that there are super strict building codes and orderly preparations for earthquakes. There was a feel-able earthquake (around 6.0) on one of my first days here, but I'm somewhat disappointed to say I completely slept through it. Yeah, I'm a rather heavy sleeper. Anyways, that's all to say that there's a good chance there'll be another feel-able earthquake like that while I'm here, but the risk is significantly lowered by good planning and preparation here.

On that note, I'm in even better position, as since writing last I've moved into a studio apartment in a new building near Palacio de la Moneda. Mine is a studio apartment with a bathroom and a kitchenette that I've been using the heck out of. I'm thinking about making a t-shirt that says "Ask me about my borracho beans". Yeah, they were really good. However, this was challenged by the fact that I have the patience of four year old, so the beans took about three times as long as normal because I kept taking the cover off the pan to stir them. I'm learning.

This is La Moneda on September 11, 1973, when Augusto Pinochet, Chile's Defense Chief, staged a coup d'etat (golpe de estado in Spanish) against Socialist President Salvador Allende. Allende killed himself during this attack and Pinochet led the country until 1990.

Here's a view of the present-day Palacio de la Moneda from the south (the previous image is from the north I think). Chile's President Michelle Bachelet works, but does not live, in this building.

But as I subtly hinted in the title, the apartment hasn't been the only change in the past couple of weeks. This week I turned in a group essay and took a mid-term test based on around 400 pages of reading (don't worry, I didn't read all of that). To be clear, I've had readings since Day 1 of class, I just couldn't get around to doing them. But by the time I moved to this apartment reality had started to set in. The lowest moment probably came in my lit class when the professor assigned the group essay, in which we were supposed to use of the two assigned novels and one of the two theoretical texts to talk about Latin American cities, all in 2-4 double spaced pages. Upon hearing this, though, I started to hyperventilate. My thoughts were:
1. Oh this is gonna be really hard. I should've started reading for this class before now.
2. Shit, who'd want to be my partner. I'm stupid!
3. This is awful, I'm a lost cause.
4. I'm dropping this class, I'm stupid and can't write in Spanish.

After hitting rock bottom things started getting better. I made eye contact with a Chilean girl from the class who seemed to be having a somewhat less intense version of my freakout. I managed to read the entire novel over the course of that weekend, and we worked together to turn in a rather decent essay on Tuesday. An even bigger test came today. In my 20th Century Latin American History course we were assigned a book and six articles and given a month to get through them. Dearest readers, I'm proud to say I got through about 75% of the readings, which I estimate to be much more than my fellow classmates. And when the test came today, I didn't cry. I sat down and wrote out the answers in somewhat broken Spanish, but all the same that felt pretty good. I've got basically a test per week for the next couple of weeks, but I think that should be fine. I'm finally getting into a studying routine and am in the wonderful post-test, pre-receiving grades period where I feel very confident right now.

I've signed up for a rock climbing class in the campus gym, which has been really fun and incredibly exhausting. Rock climbing requires strength precisely in the areas I'm weakest, so I've been humbled and sore this week. Looking ahead, I've bought plane tickets to the Atacama Desert in northern Chile for Easter weekend. Atacama is by some accounts the driest place on the planet (there are spots where rain hasn't been seen in the time since records began around 90 years ago), creating some cool geographical formations and making it one of the best spots for star gazing. I'm really psyched for that trip.

Photo cred: Lisa and Alan, from the blog "There and Back Again." This was easily their coolest shot.

That's basically it for me right now. As always, thanks for reading and keeping up with me.

Moving Forward in the Southern Hemisphere

Hey kids,

An initial draft entry for this blog was pushing 750 words, so I decided to scratch it all and start anew. Besides that discarded draft bing a reflection of sloppy writing, I realized it might also be an indicator that I should post more often, with shorter posts. I'll work on making these posts happen more often.

Much has happened in the almost two weeks since I've posted: I've explored some new areas of Santiago, registered for classes, done some (but not nearly all) of my class readings, and, I like to think, started to make some friendships here. I've also been enjoying the somewhat adventuresome task of figuring out what food to make for myself (hint: avocados tend to be a main ingredient). This weekend I'm moving to an apartment in downtown Santiago on Saturday and I'm hoping to maybe go rowing for the second time on Sunday and perhaps find time to search for a bike. I also have a short essay/reflection due in a week and a half on a novel I haven't read yet (Brazilian author, Spanish translation), so I think I should maybe crack open that book at some point too. No guarantees though.

Getting into the routine of academic life has been a bit of a process down here. The first problem I encountered revolved around course registration: we international students received a big blue book on the first day with class options, schedules, and classroom locations. I dutifully went through the book highlighting classes I wanted to go to, then trying to find the classrooms indicated in the book. The problem with this, of course, is that the schedules and classroom locations are often changed after the printing of the book, with an email to everyone who has electronically registered for the course letting them know the changes. Those emails never reach international students because we can't register online like Chilean students. The result, as you might imagine, is somewhat frustrating and confusing.

On the first day of class I had arrived early for my first scheduled class, tracked down the indicated classroom, and dutifully took a seat in the back. After jotting down notes as the professor explained the syllabus, it suddenly occurred to me that what I thought would be a history class really had no need for a linear algebra section in the syllabus. That realization that this wasn't in fact a history class was followed by a couple of minutes of steeling myself to walk out on the lecture (from the back of a 100+ person class). When the prof paused to open a classroom window I thought I should take my chance, only to be interrogated by the prof (who was more watchful than I'd have given him credit for) as to why I was leaving only fifteen minutes into class. I then explained to everyone, in somewhat broken/nervous Spanish, that I was an exchange student and had already taken the last math class in my life and had no interest in taking any others. At least I think that's what I said.

Needless to say, I quickly learned to check with my neighbors to ensure I was in the right class. And, as of last week, I am successfully registered in four classes here: Populism in Latin America (PoliSci), The City and the Novel in Latin America (Literature), Twentieth Century History of Latin America and Chile, and Nineteenth Century Themes of Latin America and Chile. So far I'm most excited about my populism and 20th century history classes; the readings for those classes (a combination of texts in Spanish and English) have been super interesting.

I feel like things are slowly moving forward down here. An exchange student who's been down here for a semester already described to me a phenomenon about figuring out Spanish language skills that I think is actually applicable to being an exchange student in general: There are good days and bad days. While at first they seem to alternate perfectly, with time, the space between the bad days grows to several days and then to weeks at a time. The bad days, when you miss friends and family at home, get frustrated with Chileans, or just feel crummy, don't ever entirely go away, but there will be fewer of them. Deep, I know. But what that really means is that while there are times here where I'm overwhelmed by the proposition of creating a new network of friends, making a different city home, and being away from my base of support, I'm also exhilarated by the opportunity this presents. I've got a list (in my head, at least) of Chilean and South American destinations I want to make it to, of new dishes I want to try to cook, and of skills I'd like to have by the time I leave. I'll be lucky to make it through half of them.

As always, thanks for reading. Check out some of these shots from the last couple weeks of wanderings.

I joined the university's bike advocacy group for a bike ride up an extinct volcano in Santiago. Cool view of the Andes east of the city and the smog that Santiago is blessed with. Photocred: VoyenCleta UC

 The boat storage area on Lago Aculeo where the rowers from Universidad de Chile row. They use a combination of vintage Argentinean- and new Chinese-made boats.

 After rowing, we had a barbecue at one of the rower's time-share houses overlooking the lake. Photo cred: Manuel Reyes

View from the patio looking down on Lago Aculeo at the Cordillera de la Costa (the shorter, westernmost mountains running down the length of Chile parallel to the Andes). Photo cred: Manuel Reyes