Monthly Archive for March, 2008

Grocery Shopping in Chile, International Students at the PUCV…

Published
by
hannah
on March 8, 2008
in Chile
. 0 Comments

Friday I signed up for my classes, which are as follows:

Advanced Spanish Grammar, 4 credits

Advanced Written Spanish, 3 credits

History of Modern Chile, 4 credits

Art and Society in Pre-Hispanic Chile, 3 credits

Environmental Law, 2 credits

These courses were the result of hours of drilling the “monitores”, students in charge of international students, on which classes would be the best for me. I am pleased with my selections and think they will help me not only to elevate my Spanish into an academic realm, but also improve my understanding of this rich country. Classes start Monday at 3:40.

After signing up for classes the PIIE, or Programa Internacional de Intercamio (International Students Office) organized some activities for the foreign students. We saw various types of Chilean dances while we enjoyed empanadas and juice. I hope to upload the videos from this event shortly.

After the event I went grocery shopping and notebook/school supplies shopping with a friend from my group, Matthieu, and my monitor Maria José. They have an escalator in the supermarket here that is magnetized to stick to the cart wheels so that you can bring your cart upstairs with you. I bought bread, cheese, yoghurt and some other breakfast essentials.

Maria José was great–I don’t know how I would have bought school supplies without her. For some reason in the university, students no longer write on notebooks with lines–only on graph paper. This was strange not only for me but also for Matthieu, who is Belgian. I kept trying to find ‘normal’ lined notebooks for my classes in different colors (a color for each class, of course!). It ended up that I bought lined notebooks intended for high school students. We’ll see if anyone laughs at me for not using graph paper. :)

In the evening all of the monitors threw a party for the international students in Viña. There was a lot Reggaeton, Salsa and maraca-drumbeat-latin music. I enjoyed myself.

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Apartment, Rotary

Published
by
hannah
on March 7, 2008
in Chile and Rotary
. 0 Comments

Thursday I had the chance to attend a meeting with my host club, the Rotary Club of Valparaiso. I along with another scholar, Susan Owen, sat with some wonderful gentlemen and a few of the Rotaracters from the Rotaract Club of Valparaiso. On the agenda was a Bingo fund raiser that the club is planning in the nearby Casino del Mar (Viña), a Rotaract event with Hogar Los Sauces and celebration of World Rotaract Week, as well as songs, lunch and the type of conviviality I’ve come to expect from Rotary. The club meets in the Club Aleman or “German Club”, and reminds me a lot of the Rotary Club of Detroit that meets at the Detroit Athletic Club. It is located near Plaza Anibal Pinto, which brings me to my next topic–my apartment!

Rotary Club Valpo1

To see more pictures from the Rotary meeting, click here.

To see a video of Valparaisan Rotarians singing to their guests, click here.

I am living in front of Plaza Anibal Pinto in downtown Valparaíso. I live with a girl from Brazil named Priscila, a Swede named Gustav and a German, Christoff. I had actually talked with the renter when I was still in Michigan and assumed he had already found someone for the room. I went with a new Mexican friend Leonardo on Wednesday to look at the room, and moved in on Thursday evening. I was greeted very warmly by all of my new roommates and feel very much at home.

departamento

Kitchen and entrance of my apartment.

The same evening I went with my landlord, a young architect by the name of Daniel, and a group of other students (some from my university) to a place around the corner called “El Boliche”. There was a wonderful duo of Argentine girls singing old Tango songs. I seem to meet so many Swedes here. When we arrived at the venue almost everyone sitting at our table was Swedish, although there were a few Norwegians. I ordered something called a Churrasco Italiano–basically a sandwhich with tomate (tomato), vacuno (beef) and palta (avocado).

I left around 12:30, yet everyone was asking me why I was leaving early–can you imagine! They stay up so late here. Maybe I will get used to this…

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First Day in Chile!

Published
by
hannah
on March 4, 2008
in Chile and Travels
. 1 Comment

This is an update e-mail I sent to my family last night:

Mom, Family and Friends,

I am on a different keyboard, so forgive me if i make a million mistakes.!
I arrived today, Pablo picked me up from the airport and we took a bus directly to Viña del Mar. We spent some time with his relatives, his grandma, his great aunts and uncles that live in the area,
and then went to my university with his cousin, Diego.
Diego showed me how to grab the “micro” which is tantamount to a local bus which runs between Viña and Valparaiso.
It costs about 80 cents, or less with a student ID, which I should get tomorrow.
(I missed the orientation in the morning because  of my flight….it started at 9:30am and I wasn’t even off of the plane until 10am)

After I spent several hours in the university seeing what I had missed in the morning, Pablo and I went and got something to eat, and then I went with Isabel (Loretos sister) to her house. I am in an internet cafe at the moment, near Isabel’s house. Tomorrow I have to be in the University at 10am to finish up more paperwork. also tomorrow i have to figure out a cellular phone plan, a bank account, somewhere to live longer term, register my visa with the police, etc. 

My Spanish seems to be doing fine, except I hear from many people that I sound Mexican. This doesn’t surprise me much, since I perpetually say “mande” (the equivalent of “excuse me”) in order to hear things correctly, pass by others in the street, ask questions, and I cannot seem to shake this mark of mexicanness–it is, however, just my first day!

Today there was a large fire between Santiago and Viña, covering some 17,000 hectares. The entire city is covered with a tinge of smoke and ashes have been falling lightly over us the whole day! It is a very strange occurrence, even for the locals. I took a video earlier of the smoke rising over the city from afar.

I am trying to type relatively fast, as well as cover a lot of material, in addition I am extremely tired. I want you to know that I am doing very well, I am optimistic for my classes and that everything will turn out alright. My classes actually start next Monday, so this week is just orientation. I will have this entire weekend to orient myself and figure out a place to live.

I cant wait to live somewhere with WiFi internet access so that i can start posting on my blog and showing everyone pictures.
in time…

besos y abrazos,

Hannah

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