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 :)