study-abroad
The week of September 18 is the time Chilean independence is celebrated with cook-outs (asados), outdoor festivals (fondas), and strong drinks including the terremoto - pineapple ice-cream with grenadine and alcohol. There is a military parade in O'Higgins park in central Santiago and outdoor celebrations all over the city.
Read MoreI finally got my last film roll developed. Giving English lessons basically fuels my film developing fund... I'm very excited with these, especially the ones taken on my first long (4-hours up, 3 hours down) hike in Reserva Tricahue, in the 7th region (Maule) of Chile. These are all un-edited negative scans.
Read MoreA view of the Andes mountains, night photos from a high-rise building, and a location 5 miles closer to my university than my home-stay: I'm pretty dang excited to be living in an apartment building for my second semester abroad. And my laptop + Lightroom again. Thank god. All I need now is to stop lighting microwave popcorn on fire...
Read MoreI think Nunu deserves her own post, for being the big presence she is in my life. Personally, I prefer dogs because they're a little more durable, but she holds her own for weighing all of 5 lbs...maybe a bit more, but most of it is fluff.
Read Moresmoggy Santiago skyline
The things I'll probably miss. Food vendors on the street: sopaipillas, empanadas de queso, eggrolls (but only near the bar scene at 2am)...all of it fried. Sugar roasted peanuts, hamburgers made with carne de soya, the little push carts near the metro station...
Read MoreIsla Negra, translated as Black Island, is not an island. Paradoxical Chile. This small town by the ocean is known for being home to one of Pablo Neruda's eclectic house-turned-museum, and is where my Chilean culture class went for a field trip. We had lunch on the beach, went sort-of-trekking, and visited a smaller town known for its artisanal pottery. There were many wild dogs and 1/2 kilo empanadas.
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South of Santiago three hours on Ruta 5 highway is Talca, a medium-sized city of about 250,000 people. From there it's an hour and a half bus ride east (towards the mountains) to get to Armerillo, small town and home of Parque Tricahue, where two friends and I spent a long weekend hiking, eating peanut butter, and somewhat-successfully building fires in our cabin's stove.
Read More19 april 2015 // flying back to Santiago from Calama, post-Atacama trip
It's the small things, like writing the date on class notes 22.4.2015 or saying I live half a kilometer up Irarrázaval. The ways in which you've changed but don't really know when exactly it happened; they just kind of sneak up on you. Elbowing my way into a metro car (forget Midwestern nice, if you're making it into that car you gotta squish), strategically placing myself in the metro car depending on how many stops I have to go to avoid having to wade through 20 people to get out of the door before it closes at my stop. Keeping spare 100 peso coins in my back pocket (damn no front pocket in womens' jeans) to give to street performers or musicians on the metro. Knowing to hold up the number of fingers you want for thousand pesos you want charged to your Bip - holding up 3 fingers for 3000 pesos - because the card rechargers can't hear very well through the glass. After three months abroad, two of them in Chile, a lot of things have snuck up on me. And it's nice to know you've learned something, especially if they're the small things.
Study abroad CIEE excursion to the Atacama Desert and San Pedro de Atacama
Read MoreAs beautiful of a city it is and as much as I love speaking Spanish, the transition to living in Santiago de Chile has been rough for me. I went from volunteering on a farm in rural Bolivia - to living and navigating a city of 7 million people in Chile, a country with an average income triple that of Bolivia. Taking the Metro, navigating the bus system, and just being immersed in the energy of 7 million human beings has been like constantly leaning on the accelerator pedal: feeling constantly drained. After a month it's definitely getting better, thanks to wonderful friends, host family, and my parents taking my calls with their never-ending patience and love. Here's to becoming a big city fish sooner than later...
film. taken from Santa Lucia hill in the middle of the city. beautiful.
I live with my chilean host family in one of many apartment buildings with a large central park area where families and groups of school kids gather to talk
Skyline of Santiago's business district, affectionately known as "Sanhatten"
Flowers Outside the Bellas Artes metro stop // nature and concrete
Manquehue metro stop // steel and light
Gustock music festival raising money for the public park // good music and even better veggie pesto ravioli
Camila Moreno performs at Gustock music festival // love the sparkly blue dress
"Bienvenidos! El museo ahora es gratis" (Welcome! The museum is now free) did not apply to the dog who followed us in. He was not welcomed by the museum staff :(
NuNu's derp face // no animals were harmed in the taking of this photo
Fruit from the Vega market, known for its cheap, fresh produce. I bought a kilo of strawberries for less than 2 dollars and a small box of huge juicy blackberries for the same amount // nomnom
Shadow of a palm tree on the concrete in Parque Uruguay
Buildings in the older sector of Santiago
More photos to come...semester ends in July.
film. Sunset from a friend's balcony.
From high vantage points it's apparent that the city goes on and on, in layers of buildings and cranes that get blurrier as the distance increases, due to the smog.
