San Pedro Salt

The Desert of Chile

PHOTO ALBUM 1: San Pedro Trip- link

This past weekend we took a trip up north to San Pedro de Atacama which is a desert in the north of Chile. I went with some of my gringo (american) friends from UNC. The 24 hour bus ride took us to the small but fairly touristy city of San Pedro. While there we got the chance to do some sandboarding on the dunes near the city which was quite entertaining. We did a little bike riding through the mountains and zipped down the hills at lightspeed. On one of the days, we got up at 4am to go to the geysers in the high altitudes of the mountains around there. I don't think I've ever been so cold in my life. Maybe camping once or twice I was as cold, but not much. I had to jog in place the whole time to actually be able to feel my feet. But it was pretty cool. It was basically like 60 Old Faithfuls in the canyon area with bubbling geysers everywhere. There were some hotsprings nearby where you could take a little dip in water that was actually pretty warm. We were too cold to undress to swim, but our legs were revived by taking a dip. When we went for the bike ride, the guy who was leading us told us about all the celebrities that had visited San Pedro and how a number of them were pretty rude. I wish I remembered specifically which ones he mentioned. He talked about his crazy teenage years. He said that 10 years ago, he gave tours in which there was all you can consume pisco sour (chilean alcohol) and marijuana after the bike ride obviously with a higher cost. He said he didn't do that anymore. So that was basically our trip to San Pedro.

AIESEC Leadership Development Conference in Buenos Aires

PHOTO ALBUM 1: LDS Buenos Aires (link)

This past weekend I was in Buenos Aires for an AIESEC conference (link) which was quite entertaining. We found cheap flight tickets form Santiago to Buenos Aires. I was with people from 12 countries including Portugal, Russia, Czech Republic, Poland, Uruguay, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Canada, and Germany. It was a weekend of learning about how to be a better leader, meeting lots of cool people, doing some AIESEC dances, and just having a good time. We were in an ex-monastery on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. The parties included one that was Cowboys which made for some interesting costumes. The second night was people with costumes such as cross dressing to get some laughs and have a good time. It's always fun to meet new people from so many different countries that all have the motivation and desire to create a positive impact on society.

University Life

The university where I study, the Pontifica Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, has about 7 buildings or so distributed among the two cities of Viña del Mar and Valparaíso. There is no campus that exists, so it's pretty much like an urban campus. I'm taking a couple classes including: General Sociology, Fundamentals of Social Work, Social Violence, Spanish, and Choral Practice 1. Generally there are very few gringos (North Americans) in my classes. In Choral Practice, I am the only one which makes me stand out pretty well. In the universities of Chile, all students enter a major (or "carrera") where they take the same classes with the same group of people for all 5 years. So this makes for a tight-knit group where everyone knows everyone pretty well. This also means that classes can be rescheduled like its nothing because everyone in the class has the same schedule so there wouldn't be a problem. For the gringos (like myself), this can be problematic if we have a class scheduled during the time that the class was rescheduled. This has happened about 6 times so far. Or you'll show up to class and there will be no one there because either class was canceled and you didn't find out about it or it was moved to another room and you didn't find out about it. The communication between the professors and the students is pretty limited. The professor doesn't send out emails or notices of changes because if you just tell one member of the group everyone else in the class is going to find out because they all have the same classes, but not the gringos. One day, I showed up for class and the chileans of the class had done presentations which us gringos had no idea that we were supposed to do that. The professor was calling on people to present what they read about, and we were just lowering ourselves in our seats to try to hide behind the heads of the people in front of us so she wouldn't call on us. Knowing our homework assignments is quite unorganized because you aren't given a syllabus on the first day of class with all the homework assignments of the year. If you miss what the assignment is during class, you're kind of screwed. That's why it's really good to have Chilean friends in the class that can let you know what up. The classes that I'm taking only meet once a week so it leaves for a lot of free time. The homework load is a lot less than UNC Chapel Hill which is quite nice. It's kind of hard to understand everything that the professor says, but it's getting better.