first goodbye

Although I should be studying away to cram in the modern political history of all of Latin America and to read about 200 pages on sustainable development, I need to celebrate making it through my religion class. I´m also done with mountaineering too. No more classes at Pontificia Universidad Catolica :( With about three weeks left before my flight home, this is my first in a long series of goodbyes I will have to say to all things Chile.

Today I took a final exam for my "Lo Femenino en Dios y el Ser Humano" class. We basically had to summarize the the entire semester´s worth of material into a three-page long essay. It was tough, but I felt prepared so hopefully it turned out okay. I´m sad that class is over because I really enjoyed the reading material and the professor-- even though she teaches at a fairly conservative Catholic university in a fairly conservative country, she has some pretty progressive views. And a surprising number of the Chilean students in the class have either an apathetic or a atheist view towards religion. It will be interesting to see how Chile´s religious leanings change as the years go on.

In other news, Chile was recently featured in the New York Times with yet another positive portrait of the country. Apparently, the public health system failed to notify about 2,000 carriers of H.I.V. that they were had the virus. The problem was due to disorganization and miscommunication between different partner organizations...can´t say that´s an uncommon problem down here. It´s just too bad that this mishap might cost a couple thousand lives.

Okay back to work.

un abrazo,

Lindsay