I have a Chilean "abuelita" (grandmother) ahora! Dice "Por la nueva hijita, ¡Bienvenidos a Chile!" which translates to "For the new daughter, welcome to Chile!" It's now been about more than a month since I've been in Chile. ¡Qué maravillosa! No puedo creerlo. A lot has happened since my last post (sorry, my goal was to post something every week and I fail, I'm not really good at this) Here's some things that have happened since my last post:- Friends and I traveled al norte en La Serena
- El 13th cumpleaños de mi hermano, Estéban.
- Have all my classes now, finally! I'm taking a Spanish stylistics class, medical spanish, health internship, and natural disasters of Chile class at La Universidad de Chile. The La Chile class es un poco dificil porque I'm the only extranjera (aka non-chilean student) there, the professor talks really fast and slurs all his words together. Dios mio.
- Just completed the seminar portion of my health internship two weeks ago at Universidad Diego Portales. In addition, last week I started my clinical rotations at Dipreca Hospital. I started in la Unidad de tratamientos intensivos (UTI = intensive care unit) and will be continuing that this week. We'll do these rotations for 6 weeks, rotating through surgeries, neurologia, unidad coronaria, emergency room, and then one of my free choice during the last week. Here in Chile, they have public and private hospitals. After the 6 weeks, we'll switch to a public hospital and observe the differences there.
- I've learned how to take the metro system to ANYWHERE in Santiago (big big accomplishment!)
- I've started exploring Santiago a little on my own. Last weekend I wandered around cerro Santa Lucia and the artisan fair/centro (fíjate en my word choice of "wandered" around Cerro Santa Lucia. I actually didn't get to climb it because I talked to this guy at the foot of the hill). He collects coins/money from all the world which was really cool.
Then we talked about random stuff, his life, life in general, and then his thoughts on problemas in Chile. He believes that too many people are having babies and that the gov't needs to implement some law that limits how many kids you can have. He was saying that young kids were just having a lot of sex (in Chile, condoms are very scarce, not many women are on the pill, and abortions are illegal). Entonces, his idea of pop. control was somehow eliminating all of these accidental babies. The conversation kind of got ugly towards the end because I said that to sustain a positive change, the gov't should put money towards educating the public (i.e. safe sex, abstinence, the like..), but he was persistent in saying education won't do anything -- "we need to decrease the population. There are too many of us." We argued this for about seriously an hour and a half in broken Spanish/English. Therefore I never got to climb el cerro Santa Lucia. - FOUND BILBIOTECAS (libraries), which are my favorite places EVER. Plus, Alison Nelson, if you're reading this, I found a biblioteca called "Café literario" that has all the natural light I'd ever want. It's located in the middle of a park, with a BEAUTIFUL fountain/wading pool in the front. Plus, get this. The whole building is made of glass windows. Did you hear that, WINDOWS!! So whilst studying, I get to look out at mere natural beauty. And if I'm there early enough, I get to see one of the homeless guys take his daily bath there.
- I've started walking to more places than using the metro/bus because a) my transportation costs have been adding up and b) the weather has been god AWESOME! Average this week was about 75 degrees (got to 82 on Wednesday. However, as many of you all know, shorts weather for me starts at about 40 degrees. Even though ahora is PRIME shorts weather, chileans find it muy awkward para las mujeres to wear shorts, although it's more appropriate to wear short mini skirts. Anyway, I'm dying because I LOVE wearing shorts but I can't. Nonetheless, it's been mucho fun walking everywhere. I've been venturing into lots of random shops, museums, centers, business places (if a company earns enough money, they are required by the government to have some sort of public museum/art gallery to educate el público de los artes y cultura chilena), etc and have been meeting a lot of new random people. One person I met this week was taking advantage that I didn't understand Spanish well. I asked him what he did for a living and he told me that he puts a pistol to people's head and robs them once a month down south. I told him 10 times that I don't think I'm understanding him correctly, but turns out he was just messing with me. He was fun.
- Last Wednesday I started teaching English at "Rincón Inglés" at the library. Fue muy divertido! Also, next week I'll start working as a TA for an english class at Universidad de Diego Portales.
- Went bowling with my family last sunday. Turns out they love to bowl. ¡Qué divertido! So awesome since I'll be missing out on bowling club this semester.
Today I got my dose of chemistry because I'll admit it, I'm a nerd and I miss doing chemistry. I got to help Estéban memorize the periodic table....IN SPANISH. Oh how I miss it so! But I'm learning all the elements in spanish. suh-weet!
Chao chao.
ps. I saw a Chilean with a "Kentucky Horse Park" shirt the other day. ¡Que rico!
Spanish lessons:
bocina = horn
mascota = pet
colita = butt
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