tulululu

monday:

We started off this week attending International Student Orientation Day at the University of Chile (La Chile). Had a fun-filled morning in the auditorium learning how to register for courses, how to use the libraries, hearing about why U. Chile is the best university in the world, etc etc.

One presenter was quite interesting because he spoke in Spanish, but his powerpoint presentation was written in English. Unfortunately, it was definitely not proofread very closely. However, the funny spelling mistakes (cooper instead of copper, engieneiring instead of engineering, etc etc) provided some entertainment to keep us alert during the endless presentations and introductions.

Met some people from other programs who are studying in Chile as well - people from California, Spain, Germany, Japan...everywhere!

Went on a tour of a few of the campuses of La Chile. Yes - not only do we have to master 2 universities (University of Chile and Pontificia Catholic University), we also have to figure out their numerous campuses scattered around the city! Boy oh boy it feels like these orientations are never going to end.

Toured around the very interesting (and not very pretty) buildings and saw just a glimpse of La Chile's token liberal flair. Even though classes haven't even started, the campuses are already decorated with protest banners, murals and grafitti all over the place. Vibrant, but kind of sad how they treat their school property.

Monday night went to a local shopping area with some friends. A few of my friends were on a desperate search for boots and I just browsed looking for some warm clothes. Found a few cute things, but soon realized that I won't be buying much while I'm down here. Most stores only carry shoes up to size 40 for women (I wear a 42-a 10 in the US). And most clothes sizes are way smaller than their US counterparts. Oh well- guess that's a good way to prevent me from buying stuff.

Tuesday:
Last day of orientation class. Sad, but a relief to be done with at least one class. Learned about social movements in Chile. At least, kind of learned about them...the lecturer was hard to understand. Then watched a great documentary about the Rebellion of the Penguins. Showed some nasty scenes of police using violence against the kids - quite disturbing.

As one of our last projects for our class, we went to the Plaza de Armas - a crowded square- in Santiago and talked to random people to hear their thoughts on Chile/Chilean politics/American politics/etc. My group was nervous at first, but we found two couples who each talked our ears off - each going on for about 30 minutes about all of their grievances. One of the couples had just returned from living in Canada for 6 years and they complained about discrimination in Chile. For example, here it is required to include your date of birth and a photo of yourself with any job application because there is apparently age discrimination and ethnic discrimination (judged purely on skin color). We were also told numerous times not to associate with Peruvians because they are "dirty lazy money-stealers." Yikes.

Came home and got a little sick. I think because I drank a good amount of tap water today- probably a bad idea. Although I thought I had acquainted myself with the water already, apparently I didn't do an adequate job. Things are better now, but last night was pretty miserable. From now on, I'll just stick with bottled water...

Wednesday:
This morning we had an oral and written exam to test our level of Spanish. The oral exam was short and sweet- my group only had to talk about the theme of women in power for about 5 minutes. However, the written exam was harder than I anticipated. It lasted a good hour and a half and just asked questions in a strange way. Oh well, we'll see what happens.

In the afternoon we went to the CIEE office to look through the La Chile and La Catolica course catologs to figure out our classes for the coming semester. I was pretty overwhelmed all afternoon because there are SO many factors we have to consider in choosing courses. For example:
-will my home school give me credit for this course?
-will I be able to understand the professor who teaches this course?
-Is the material in this course the appropriate level for my understanding of the subject?
-does this class conflict with any of my other classes?
-will I have enough time to travel from this campus to my next class' campus?
-will I enjoy this course?
-will this course have too much work?

I think I've found some good classes to take so far for La Chile. Now I just have to cross my fingers that I get into those courses! Now I have to repeat the process for La Catolica. And then I have to figure out which courses to drop so that I'm taking some at La Chile and some at La Catolica. Ahh what a puzzle this is.

Tonight I returned to the office of ComunidadMujer and read through a bunch of documents to orient myself with CM's Women in Political Leadership training seminars that they put on this past April and June. My main project is going to be compiling the information from this event to create a "how-to" guide for women who want to enter into politics. CM's facilities are really nice and they do everything with very professional quality. Logos and designs are all professionally made, their staff includes a communications director with a journalism background - I was very impressed to see a nonprofit managed like a for-profit organization.

Came home, had artichokes for dinner (I'd never eaten a whole artichoke before...yum!) Victoria ate hers with mayo. I had mine with vinegar. Yum yum. At dinner, Marcela and Victoria called someone a "tulululu." I didn't quite get what it meant, but it's a funny thing to call someone.

Gotta get up early. Night night.

Ciao,

Lindsay