day one

Saturday July 11
Breakfast is delivered to the hotel room. It's awesome. Apparently Chileans eat chocolate cake for breakfast too.

One of the first things I've learned in Chile is that 15-20 minutes late is normal. Once you hit 30 minutes late, then you're pushing it and almost considered running behind schedule. So when our professor said, "Be downstairs at 11 am" everyone strolled downstairs at 11:15- 11:20ish. However, this was the one time where we were not supposed to run on Chilean time because we had a reservation to visit Pablo Neruda's house at 11:30. Therefore because everyone was late we had to literally RUN through the streets of Santiago....

We sprinted onto the metro, ran up the stairs, realized we were at the wrong stop, ran to the bus, sprinted off the bus, sped walked through the neighborhoods, ran up a hill, ripping off my scarf and jacket, working up a sweat, etc you get the idea. I suppose a light morning jog never hurt anyone. Next time we go somewhere I'll remember to bring my sneakers and sports bra just incase.

Literally every moment of this trip has been some unorganized race. Our race through the streets was downright ridiculous like straight out of a movie scene.

Anyway, Pablo Neruda is one of Chile's most popular people. He is a Nobel Prize winning poet and author who was very involved in politics. He was a part of the Communist party. One of his homes, the one we went to, was called Las Chascona. He lived there with his wife Matilda. it resembled the Swiss Family Robinson hide-out with narrow steps and secret passageways. It was eccentric and disjointed. And all the rooms were separated by the outdoors. I felt like a bull in a china shop trying to climb up the creaky spiral staircase behind the hidden doorways.

Neruda was facinated with ships which could see in the decor. There was also a 60's retro psychadelic feel with plastic furniture and bold colors. There was great original artwork. Neruda died just days after the coup in 1973. He had cancer, but apparently he just gave up due to a broken heart at the end of a political era and the beginning of the dictatorship. Anny and Valentina told me that everyone loves his poems because he writes beautifully about simple things. For example, he wrote about an artichoke being a soldier with lots of armor but also having a tender heart.

After Neruda's house we walked down the streets in Bellavista killing some time until our lunch reservation. The streets are quaint with eccentric architecture, bold colors, bright murals, etc. Our lunch was at an authentic Chilean place- for real this time - where we sampled pink clams with melted cheese, wine with diced peaches, Chilean red wine- the name escapes me now, but the grapes are only grown in Chile, escalopa (vacas fritas- fried beef- see picture), and ensalada.

My spanish is not coming back to me like I hoped it would. I supposed I need a few more weeks and seclusion from English speakers. We had a conversation at lunch about how languages change perspectives in reality. For example, the masculine/feminine vocabulary in some languages makes those objects seem to have qualities of their assigned gender. Also, in the Spanish language you can say that something happened without it being the fault of someone. In English, something or someone is always at fault an we are quick to blame. It may just be in our demeanor to blame, but our language does not help! Just an interesting thought.

We came home and took a siesta from 5-8. Then we got ready to go out to a Salsa club (salsateca?). The entire group went out together so it was a lot of fun. We all tried pisco sours- the Chilean "national" drink- just imagine a really strong margarita. And we all salsa-ed around on the dance floor with all the locals.