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went to orientation, terremotosJuly 31, 2009 at 3:03 PM
the orientation the campus central of the UC is impressive! it's a massive old colonial style building, very well kept, in the middle of santiago centro. as soon as you enter (through the entrance i took) you see a lush green garden roofless garden with palms and other regional vegetation. we had most of orientation in a meeting hall that seemed like a chapel mixed with a library; there was stained glass designs in the long and narrow two-story room and the walls were not walls but bookshelves full of important books (they were leather-bound, afterall). i have until august twenty-something to wander around classes and decide what i want to take. i think i'll end up with typography, finance, spanish, football, and maybe 1 more (mountain climbing?). la piojera after the orientation was done a bunch of volunteer students brought us foreigners to a local pub called the piojera, supposedly 'if you go to santiago you HAVE to go to la piojera.' spanish lesson: piojo = lice piojera = place of lice. the piojera fits about 300 people by my estimate. their signature drink seems to be the 'terremoto' - which is, if i'm not mistaken, a mix of pineapple ice cream, wine, 'fermet', and umm something else. lots of people didn't like it but i went through the following process: this is ok, this is distgusting, this is quite good. my judgement have been somewhat impaired however because the beverage itself is strong. later i took the metro home and got walked the wrong way down america vespucio (a main street that circles santiago) , then talked to a friendly guard man from the park in the middle of the street (for now use your imagination or google, i'll post photos of the street later) and took the micro (the name of a kind of bus) back to where i live. (i'm the one on the left with the cup of coffee who looks like he's crying)
 arrived in chile; hilarious bureaucracyJuly 27, 2009 at 4:52 PM
to get you up to speed: i'm on exchange in chile, just arrived yesterday, will be attending pontificia universidad catolica (orientation thursday, classes next week), living with a homestay, and will be here (other than small trips to brazil, argentina, and paraguay) until decemberish when i go to colombia, then back to canada in january. so i'm in my house with matty, jaime, and felipe (mother, father, son in host family) in las condes, one of the nicer neighborhoods in santiago, and enjoying myself aside from the constant nagging feeling of the essay i need to be working on pretty damn quick for an sfu course i still haven't finished. buying a cellphone today i went with matty on a walk to change currency and buy a cellphone. jaime dropped us off at the 'claro' branch in his ciotren van/truck type thing with two real seats and some cushions in the back for any extra passengers. we spoke to a lot of people in order to just buy a prepaid cellphone. when we got into claro the first thing matty did was head towards the "Venta" (Sales) sign, which made perfect sense to me, but apparently that's too easy for chile.
okay so it was really only 5 people because the 6th person was the same as the 4th, oh well, still a lot! time to get working on that essay.. chau |
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