Week 2

The diversity of Chilean terrain is astounding. Within two weeks I have traveled and experienced valleys, mountains, deserts, rock lands, and miles upon miles of gorgeous coastline. The cities I have seen range from the bustling and heavily polluted Santiago to the windy cliffs of Valparaiso to the sandy beaches of La Serena. It will never cease to amaze me the diversity that is found in this skinny, yet extremely long (it’s about as long as Texas is wide) country.

  

This week was the official time to start looking at and choosing classes. The Pontifica Universidad de Chile (PUC) allows exchange students to “try out” and experience as many different classes as they like within the first week before officially registering. I took advantage of this opportunity to see if I could even understand the professor, let alone the material! After some thinking and finagling, I have settled on the following schedule:

M,W,F      Sociology (at PUC)

M,W         Spanish (required, at IES)

T,R           History of Music 1 (at PUC)

W             Chorus (PUC)

Going to school in Ithaca has made me fairly oblivious to how large universities work. While I can roll out of bed and be in class in five minutes in NY, school in Santiago is a whole different story. There are no dorms for any students, so I’m in the same boat as everyone else with my commute, but it’s definitely been a new experience. My classes are in three different locations, the closest fifteen minutes (walking) from my house, the furthest over an hour. Since public transportation is expensive when used frequently, I bought a bike to make my daily commute(s) faster and to save money. Many Chileans have bikes, and there is even a bike lane built into the sidewalks of major roads to facilitate pedestrian traffic.

Below is a picture of the building I have music classes in. It’s a converted monastery, and one of the prettiest places I have ever seen.

Being the last chunk of time I’ll have before classes really start, I took this Thursday, Friday, and Saturday to make a trip up to La Serena, about 7 hours north of Santiago. The buses here are very comfortable: it felt more like a flight than a bus ride! (You could borrow a pillow and blanket, seats reclined and had footrests, you were served a snack, etc.) While it was a long ride, the scenery traveling North was incredibly scenic. La Serena is the second oldest city in Chile, complete with some pretty churches, craft fairs in the central plaza, and 6km of beach-filled coastline.

There were seven friends from my program that made the trip to La Serena. We stayed in a hostel together, where we met other American exchange students, as well as travelers from around the world, including Holland, Germany, Switzerland, and Brazil. During our day we experienced the local cuisine, visited the Archeological Museum (see picture of Easter Island Head!) and camped out on the beach, enjoying our last few days of relaxation prior to the beginning of classes.