dia del nino

Thursday:
Went to a class about sustainable development. Teacher has some environmental background, so it looks like most of our focus is going to be on environmental issues, with a little bit about economic development too. Should be a pretty interesting class, especially having smoggy Santiago as a case study for how to clean up a dirty city.

Next was my poetry class. Talked about our impressions of some of Pablo Neruda´s poems and after debating for awhile about the meaning behind the words, our prof basically told us that poems have no specific meaning and it´s up to us to decifer what the poet is trying to say. Although I´ve heard this a thousand times, I still didn´t believe it. I always felt like poems were a Sudoku puzzle layered on top of of a cryptographic code written in a foreign language - they take lots of deciphering, but once you´ve figured out all the clues, you understand what the poet intended to say. However, that perspective was shattered after our prof told us a story about her encounter with Pablo Neruda:

Apparently, she was in a masters program, writing her thesis on a collection of Neruda poems and her advisor somehow arranged a coffee date between Neruda and my professor. So my professor is all excited to get Pablo´s personal take on the poems and she prepares all these questions in advance and when she arrives at Pablo´s house, his wife forewarns her that she can´t ask him any questions about the ¨meaning¨ behind the poems because Pablo HATES people who analyze his poems word by word. So the professor talks with him for a few hours and has a lovely time, but walks away with no further insight into his poetry! Bummer.

After she told us this story, I was quite confused. Surely Neruda made his poetry complex and intricate for a reason- surely he doesn´t want us to just skim over his works and read them like chick lit, right? Was he just sick of people butting into his personal life in attempts to figure out why he described the woman´s eyes as dark brown instead of hazel?

Or was he trying to tell us that we´re supposed to enjoy the poems like we would a beautiful painting...and not zoom in on every miniscule brushstroke, where we might lose perspective of the overall masterpiece?

After all of that artistic pondering, I bolted off to my mountaineering class, where we had our first workout day. We ran and ran and ran some more. It was tough, but felt great to finally get a nice workout in.

Friday:
Wednesday and Thursday I´d been feeling pretty crappy- coughing up phlegm (gross), stuffed ears that made me feel like I was in a bubble and raspiness in my breathing. Sooo I decided to go get some meds at student health, which for exchange students, means going to the U.Catolica hospital emergency room. I was amazed at how efficient the whole process was - my doctor spoke english to me to make sure I understood the important stuff (he diagnosed me with acute bronchitis), whenever I looked lost someone directed me where to go and I was in and out in about 30 minutes.

Spent the rest of the day filling my prescriptions, unsucessfully trying to get a student BIP card (discount for the metro) - apparently they recently changed their whole process and won´t have the new system ready for another few weeks! Gah I´m sick of paying full price for transportation!

Then came home and was pleasantly greeted by Victoria (home early from work) and Katie (the girl who lived with Victoria last semester and recently returned from a month of travelling in Argentina and Brazil). Katie gave me lots of great tips on things to do/things to avoid in Chile and let me know that I don´t need to stress about classes down here b/c even the ¨hard¨ ones are easy by US standards. Thank goodness.

Saturday:
Although I probably shouldn´t have considering my bronchitis, on Saturday I spent the day in Valparaiso with my Chilean ambassador and our little group. Bus ride only took like an hour and a half. Ate at J. Cruz Martínez Casino Social, which apparently has the best chorrillana (french fries, steak, eggs, onions) in all of Chile. The food was good..but how good can that combination of food really get? It´s essentially diner leftovers all piled together and served family style in one massive platter. Apparently the restaurant serves other food as well, but you would have never known because the entire restaurant was eating the same dish. We all decided that a place like this would make a killing on a college campus on Friday and Saturday nights around 3 AM.

After lunch, we wandered around the city and went up a hill in these cool sideways elevators that were constructed in the 1800s. At first, it was kind of scary to watch these creaky wooden boxes jet up the steep elevation, but the ride was actually quite smooth and secure.

Wandered down the hill, admiring the colorful scenery of Valpo, then we were lured by some smooth talking boaters into taking a boat trip around the bay. Although we were hesitant at first, the boat trip ended up being well worth the $2 per person. Had a great view of the city, rode up close next to big shipping tankers, saw a few napping sea lions, and we were seduced by a guy on another boat who yelled ¨Titanic!¨and tried to motion and convince us that he would be our Leonardo DiCaprio. haha...

Got home around 9 and then we went over to Marcela´s apartment for an asado (read: grill out/meat feast) to say goodbye to Katie. Ate some delicious chorizo and other meats and salads and such. Still wasn´t feeling great but I tried to keep my spirits high between sneezes and coughing fits. But by the end of the night, things got a little hectic. First, Rodrigo fell and bit his lip and started bleeding like crazy. Then someone knocked the table and caused a glass of red wine to fall all over my shirt, pants and shoes (luckily I think it´s all out now...). That kinda killed the party..so then we went home and I crashed into bed.

Sunday:
And then I didn´t leave my bed all day. Felt absolutely miserable- couldn´t speak, couldn´t hear, had body aches...it was rough. I moved all the way to the kitchen table for lunch, but then returned right back to bed for the rest of the day.

Katie left Sunday afternoon and left me with a bunch of things that she couldn´t fit in her suitcase, including: her student BIP card (hooray!), a jar of peanut butter (expensive and rare down here), an adapter and a couple of other things. Felt like Christmas! Actually...it´s funny that I say that because Sunday was kind of like Christmas for other children in Chile as well. Incredibly, the holiday hasn´t yet plagued the US, but the second Sunday in August down here is known as¨El dia del nino¨ (oh yes - Children´s Day- as if every other day of the year wasn´t Children´s day!). Obviously, it´s a big marketing scheme for toy stores to get business during the winter months because it´s pretty much just a day where you´re ¨required¨to buy your child some sort of toy or present. Marcela told me before that she was morally opposed to the holiday and wasn´t going to get RoRo anything, but of course she ended up getting him a stuffed animal. And one of my friend´s host sisters got a live bunny rabbit! Crazy crazy.

Monday
After sleeping all Sunday, I woke up Monday feeling a gazillion times better. Still didn´t have a voice, but at least I could move without feeling pain. Went to my Feminine in God class, which was interesting at first but then got a little off track when people started participating in the discussion and going off on little tangents. Spent the rest of the day working on my essay for my Contemporary Chile class and writing a poem for my Neruda class.

Tuesday:
Went to my LatinAmerican Politics class and the professor was actually there this time. Seems like it will be an interesting class, despite it being full of gringos. Gotta go read some Neruda.

Besos,

Lindsay