Now without a cold but still without a washing machine

Yesterday Chile and I had our 1 month anniversary. We had planned a nice and relaxing day but I had “la mufa” (= Chilean for bad luck)

Julia and I had an involuntary “tour” of Viña and Valpo. We skipped class because we had to do our student visa. We left the apartment at 8 AM and followed the directions from the university – big mistake! After walking 40 minutes we founded out that the office had moved. We were told to go to the other side of town, so we took a micro – which by the way just as well could be called buses of death!

The state of the buses are questionable and they do not follow speed limitations. There’s a sign in the bus that says that the maximum speed is 50 kilometres per hour – but no way José – it goes at least 80 kilometres per hour – at each corner you really have to hold on for dear life! I have already fallen once in the bus. Since arriving in Chile, I have seen 3 accidents with micros in Viña and Valpo on the news. But they are cheap – the maximum price for a ticket is about 0,6 euros/5 kroner.

Well, we took one which went all the way up in the mountains of Viña. After 30 minutes of driving, we found out that we should had gotten off earlier. So we took another one down the mountain. Annoying, but at least we did get to see a different side of Viña, which we normally never would have seen. In the mountain neighbourhood lives the poor population – we saw a horse cart! The buildings are in poor conditions and the area is quite bleak. After getting of the second micro, we found what we thought was the correct office, but NO!... We were told to go all the way to Valpo to get the visa. So then we took a third micro for 30 minutes to get to Valpo. After 20 minutes of walking we found the office, just to get told that we have to make an appointment before coming! At that point I was about to explode!  To cool down we went to get a coffee and I remembered that my teacher from my courses “Doing Business” and “Marketing Trends and Strategies” owns a café close by. I didn’t think about that I had just skipped both his classes to do the visa – so meanwhile sitting at his café of course he came in! With a big smile he told me “Mette, you didn’t come to class today!” UPS!! I started to explain, but he told me that it was okay hahahaha!

He is very chill fortunately! All my teachers are nice and understanding with exchange students, young people and whatever comes with that haha! Even though my teacher in “Expresión escrita” said that “I am notorious for being the old witch” and “In my right hand I have a whip and in my left hand I have a big heart”, she seems very passionate about teaching and very intelligent and that is what is most important. I think that if you try to do your best you won’t feel her “wrath”. Up until now my favourite teacher is my dance teacher. Clara and I went to his class Wednesday with salsa, merengue and reggaeton and he made us laugh so hard – for example he said about dancing that (translated): “you have to heat up the soup, sell the soup, but don’t let him touch the soup!”

Besides taking dance classes in my spare time, I have been going out (getting to know the good party places in Viña). I have also seen “The Dark Knight Rises” 3 times. 3 times is a lot, but it very good. The first time I was actually pretty sick, so that justifies seeing it the second time. And the third time I didn’t pay for the ticket, so that justifies for seeing it the third time :P But I think that 3 times now is sufficient!

“No” is another film I really want to see. It is the first Chilean film about the campaign in the 1988 plebiscite which ended Pinochet’s dictatorship. In the plebiscite, the Chilean people had to vote in favour or against Pinochet’s dictatorship. The different parties (from the Communists to the Liberals) joined forces in the party La Concertación and created the campaign “No” which despite it is negative title had a positive message - as you can see in the YouTube video.

The video says that if you vote “no” you will give Chile a future and its honour back. On October 5^th 1988 55.98 % of the population voted “no” and this eventually led to the return of democracy in 1990.

The movie has premiere on Thursday and Gael Garcia Bernal stars in it!

Clara and I have planned to go see it together - I just hope that I will understand since they will be speaking fast Chilean without subtitles. If I don't I can just go see it 3 times like "Batman" hahaha!

Up until now, the weather has been nice with few rainy days. But then again – when it rains here you noticed it. The streets are filled with water days after the rain has stopped because they don’t have the proper infrastructure. Not because they don’t have the money, but simply because it rains so few days a year that they have not bothered to create the infrastructure. On one of the rainy days I went to my local supermarket and it look like a tornado had passed by; it was dripping from the roof, there were buckets filled with rainwater and one of the entrances were closed because the rain had ruined its roof. And it wasn’t even raining that much! Haha!   

Speaking about the weather and nature; I have now experienced 2 earthquakes! Or that’s what I call them, but my teacher in “Arte e identidad” almost laughed at me and told me that that was just tremors. Since it was the first time I have experienced an earthquake I refuse to belittle it so I am going to keep calling it “an earthquake” hahaha! 

I will leave you with the exciting news that it’s now for sure that I will be going to San Pedro de Atacama and Salar de Uyuni. Sunday Julie, Clara, Paula, Jennifer, Juliette and I bought the bus tickets and paid the tour to Salar de Uyuni! We leave on the 13^th of September and come home on the 23^rd! I am sooooo excited! 

Until next blog!

Kisses

First day of school

I’m back – now sick, with a cold! :( Everybody else in the apartment has had a cold, so I think I just have been lucky until now. It doesn’t help that our apartment doesn’t have any heating… I only have an electric heater which I desperately try to heat up my room with.

Monday has my first day of school (with the cold… great way to make a first impression :/). I had “Doing Business in Latin America” and “Marketing Trend & Strategies in Latin America” both with the same teacher. He seems friendly, intelligent and understanding with exchange students.

Yesterday I had “Arte e Identidad Latinoamericana”. The teacher wasn’t able to come so another teacher came instead. He knew a lot about Chile and Viña, but nothing about the curriculum so I still don’t have a clear picture of that course.

Later I had “Expresión Escrita” (a course to help you express yourself better in written Spanish) and I was the only foreigner – it was full of Chileans! Finally! All of my other courses are with exchange students and I would like to get to know Chileans. The people were nice, but the teacher never came so after 30 minutes of waiting, we left. A pity – I have that course again tomorrow so let’s see if she shows up then. Unfortunately, it seems to a “trend” here, because the same thing happen to Thibault and my Spanish friend Paula Monday – their teachers never showed up.  I hope this doesn’t go on. If we, the students, are obligated to attend 75 % of the classes, so should the teachers.

Yesterday I also had “Fundamentos de Personas y Organizaciones” which is about culture and behavior in organizations/companies. The teacher speaks with a VERY thick Chilean accent so it was hard to understand him (combined with the fact that I was sick and the course was from 17-19.30 PM!). Luckily he also seems very friendly and said that he would try to speak more clearly next time. Even though the course is difficult because of the Chilean Spanish, I’m not going to change it, because it’s very interesting curriculum and because it will definitely advance my Spanish.

So, all of my courses seem interesting with good teachers, but I think I have been lucky. Jennifer (my roomie) and another friend of mine, Clara (a French girl), have other classes than me (but which I easily could have chosen) and they are not happy at all. We have been told since we came here that we easily would be able to charge courses if we weren’t happy – but that is not how it really works!! Claudia, which is the coordinator for exchange students, seems very reluctant to charge them and when Clara and Jennifer went to assign new classes they were told that wasn’t possible since all the courses are already full! So now they are stuck with the shitty end of the stick.

Campus

The maze of Adolfo Ibáñez

What is not shitty is the university campus. It is brand new, only about 1 year old. It is in the mountains so the view of Viña and Valpo is spectacular. The building is like a maze so it takes about 10 minutes to find my classrooms. It has free gym with yoga, Pilates and dance classes (also trekking, football, basketball, and spinning) which I’m looking forward to start! The problem with the building being in the mountains is transportation. The university “provides” free buses, and I put that in quotation marks, because there are not a lot of busses and for example last night only one came. So the rest of us had to wait 20 minutes outside (5 degrees and I was sick) for an extra one to come.

As written above, the apartment doesn’t have heating. Other annoyances are that we still don’t have a working washing machine (which we hopefully will get this week), I don’t have curtains in my room – only blinds, and one of the showers doesn’t work. But apart from that the apartment is so nice. All the furniture and the decoration is in a 60’s/70’s style – it’s kind of kitsch but it has its charm.  It’s about 120 m² and has 3 big bedrooms and 1 small, 2 bathrooms and 1 small, a kitchen with a view of the sea, a living room with a balcony with a view of the sea and Valpo and a dining room as well with the same view. And what a view!! We live right on the beach on the 15^th floor and everyday at sunset the view gets better and better and we can’t stop taking pictures. Pictures of the apartment are coming soon :)

Viña is a nice town, but very touristic. We went out to the big discotheque, Ovo, Saturday – it was fun because we were a big group of friends, but the place is nothing special. There is one like this in almost every town in the world, so now we are planning to try the discotheques in Valpo, which I have been told are better and cheaper. Valpo is much more interesting than Viña, but also more dangerous and dirty. Last week we went to La Sebastiana which is Pablo Neruda’s house in Valpo – it was very beautiful and interesting with an amazing view – I could see myself living there. I still have not seen his house in Santiago or the one in Isla Negra. And I still haven’t begun “Confieso que he vivdo” by Neruda! My parents gave it to me for my birthday like “an assignment” and it’s still lying on my bookshelf. But I’m going to read it! Yesterday I took home free books in Spanish from the university library so now I can’t avoid reading Spanish hehe.

In my last blog I wrote that we might be going to La Serena, but it turned out to be too expensive so we just stayed in town. Our new plan is San Pedro de Atacama and Salar de Uyuni in September. We have researched prices and it seems possible to do for about 450 euros! I just have to prepare myself mentally for the cold – it can get down to minus 20 degrees there at night! But I know it will be worth it :)