Week 13 in Chile

I have no idea where the time has gone! I have now been in Chile for almost 3 months... like what??

Monday, August 26, 2013

-Uneventful, had class and updated my blog and uploaded pictures from my weekend trip to Facebook

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

-Class all day; meeting with cine professor about the essay that we have due next week; turns out I completely understood a 40 page article (in spanish) about the history and theory of art and cinema, so I was really happy about that
-Had my first soccer practice tonight; some gringas and I are joining an all female soccer league in Santiago so we can get in shape, enjoy the soccer (futbol) culture here, and make Chilean friends; we have practice once or twice a week and weekly games as well

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

-Went on a field trip to the Centro Cultural Palacio de la Moneda, which is an art museum under La Moneda which is the presidential palace; saw this awesome African art exhibit for my Arte Latinoamericana class
-Sushi and walking around Bellas Artes with friends and then we all had class later in the afternoon at the program office
-Went out for empanadas after ward and then to a hookah bar where we met some awesome people from the south and ended up sitting and talking (in Spanish) for like 3 hours until I met up with some other friends later in the evening for some drinks and dancing; I'm always meeting the coolest people in this city!

Thursday, August 29, 2013

-Class all day, but in the afternoon I felt sick so I went home early and rested and drank some tea and had Nora take care of me; spent the rest of the evening hanging out in my room and resting; seems like I had some quick 24 hour bug or something cause I'm feeling better now

Friday, August 30, 2013

-Slept in after not feeling well on Thursday night; had a nice breakfast with Nora and then headed out to the mall to meet a friend to go buy soccer cleats for our first game tomorrow!; we had lunch at the mall as well and then headed to this awesome photo exhibit with another friend; photo exhibit was called the World Press Photo and showcases the best of news photography from the past year (http://www.worldpressphoto.org/); it was super awesome and the photos were truly beautiful and told such diverse stories, ranging from terrifying to uplifting to powerful to adorable; it's a traveling exhibit, so if it comes to your city, I highly recommend going; after the exhibit we met up with other students at the program office to head over to our first Chilean Folkloric Dance lesson! We learned how to cueca, the national dance of Chile (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_Cqs4Oa5Uo) and we also learned how to do some Rapa Nui dances as well; we have 2 more classes which I am really excited for! Maybe eventually I'll learn how to move my hips like a Latin woman and not look super awkward while trying to do it! After that I headed home for a bit and then to my friends house for her farewell dinner party as she is heading back to Austria tomorrow after spending the summer here in Santiago

Saturday, August 31, 2103

-Slept in again because I am definitely coming down with a cold (again); there's something going around everyone in the program so it was only a matter of time; I spent the majority of the day working on some homework and writing a paper, but took a nice break to make hamburgers with Nora for our lunch; I made some onions and mushrooms to put on mine which she thought was kind of strange; After lunch, I headed out to my first soccer game of the season! We lost... but it was our first game and a lot of us don't really know each other (read: the gringas don't know the chilenas); we will get better with practice and once we know each other as friends and players; I have high hopes for the team (as long as I don't play that much cause I'm not as good as I remember being when I was 12...); After the game, I headed out to dinner with a few friends for one of our friend's 21st birthdays; we stumbled upon this amazing Peruvian-Thai fusion restaurant in Nunoa called Challwa (look it up! so good) where we had one of the best meals that many of us had had during our entire stay in Santiago; We then headed to a beer hall to meet up with some more friends, but I called it a night pretty early cause I was exhausted

Sunday, September 1, 2013

-Slept in again because of this cold thing I have going on, but also cause I'm a college kid and we're good at sleeping ya know; I also spent most of the day marathoning the second season of 30 Rock (complete!), and I watched a peaceful protest/march happen on my street; the month of September is very politically active here because of independence day and the anniversary of Pinochet's dictatorship; After watching the protest and eating some lunch, Nora and I went to a park called Quinta Normal which is beautiful and has a paddle boating lake in it too! While we were there, some guys were putting on a comic show for all the Chileans in the park and they called me out for being the only blonde person in the park and had me come down to the front and say hi and what I'm doing in Chile and where I'm from and all that jazz; I even through in some Chilean slang and the Chileans were eating it all up; after that Nora and I walked around and we passed the high school where he father and grandfather attended; we then went to the Basillica de Lourdes which was stunningly beautiful and legitimately one of the most beautiful churches I've seen here; there's also an outside area where they conduct mass in the spring and summer; After we headed home and 2 of her neighbors, Tom and his wife Patty, came over for once and stayed to chat for a while; I've been finishing up my blog and working on my paper. WOO STUDY ABROAD LIFESTYLE

Well, that's all for now folks! Hope you enjoy!

Besos,
Lesley