Futbol!

Yesterday I went to my first soccer game here in Chile.  It was Universidad Catolica vs. Audax Italiano, played at the stadium of La Catolica.  (Even though La Catolica has the name of the University in its title, it is a professional sports team; there is also a team called Universidad de Chile.)  I went with my gringa friend Hattie and my Chileno friend Marco.  We drove to the stadium, which is in the outskirts of Santiago, in the foothills of the Andes, at around 5:30 in the evening.  The neighborhood that the stadium is in is upper-class, Marco said that it is one of the nicest neighborhoods in Santiago.  The stadium was almost full by the time we got there, (it could probably hold around 12,000) and there is no assigned seating, so we sat behind one of the goals because it was one of the few places left.

 As those of you who are soccer fans know, the seating behind the goals is where the most rowdy fans sit.  The opposing teams fans sat in a section of the stadium separated from the rest by a 15 foot high fence to prevent any violence. As the players took the field, all the fans around us started doing a combination of yelling, singing, whistling and chanting in semi-unison.  The opposing teams' goalkeeper had just recently killed somebody while driving drunk and had also previously played for the arch-rivals of La Catolica, Universidad de Chile.  Whenever he touched the ball, fans would whistle and yell "boracho" at him.  When I say whistle, I mean the loudest, strongest whistle you can imagine.  It is the kind of whistle you get when you stick two fingers in your mouth and deafen the person sitting next to you.  When the whole crowd is doing it at once, it can be pretty distracting.

"We aren't God, but we're everywhere"

Despite (or maybe because of) all of the whistling, the goalkeeper played out of his mind, making some spectacular saves.  La Catolica hit the crossbar 3 times, but lost the game 2-3.
Going to the game was a really cool experience, I thought that the soccer was similar to the MLS in the United States, with a little more emphasis on the technicality.  The fans in Chile definitely deserve the "Fanaticos" name that they have.    

Lighting up the flares

   

Bicentenario

This past week and weekend have been very busy. Over the weekend I traveled with 10 of my American friends to San Pedro de Atacama, a town of less than 2000 people that is in the Atacama Desert. We got up at 2 AM on Friday morning to catch our flight to Calama and then took an hour bus ride from Calama to San Pedro. The Atacama is the driest desert in the world; there are some spots that have never registered rainfall. San Pedro is at an altitude of 9000 feet, which means that the temperature during the day rises to about 80 and drops to about 35 at night.
After we arrived on Friday, we checked into our hostel and then decided to go sandboarding. Sandboarding is just like snowboarding, except you are descending a dune with a snowboard strapped to your feet. After every run, we would rub candle sticks on our boards to make them slippery and then hike back up the dune to go down again. (There are no ski lifts in the desert, unfortunately) After sandboarding, we drove to a cliff overlooking the valley of the moon and watched the sunset over the desert. We were on the far east side of Chile, so the sun cast its shadow over the desert and the Andes, which made some really interesting colors. The next morning, we slept in and in the afternoon, four friends and I went on a tour of the salt lagoons. San Pedro is located about 30km away from a huge salt flat, and snow melt from the Andes collects in some parts and makes a bit of a pool. The salt pools have 40%salt content, which is higher than the Dead Sea! We went swimming, and it was amazing how easily you could float on your back without moving at all. After that, we drove farther out into the desert on a very bumpy dirt road and arrived at a site called Ojos de Salar, which means the eyes of salt. These are two round pits randomly located in the middle of the desert and they are filled with water from the Andes. The water was about 3 meters below the lip of the pits, and we had fun jumping in to clean some of the salt off from our last swim. After the Ojos, we drove to another lagoon to watch the sunset and drink pisco (a popular Chilean liquor). The desert is an amazing place, especially when the sun is setting. The land surrounding you is desolate, there are no plants or animals, and the wind is very strong because there is nothing to stop it. After watching the sunset, we began our drive back to San Pedro in the dark, through the middle of the Atacama Desert on a little dirt track that was hard to pick out. To my right were the Andes, and just over the mountains was Bolivia; as it got dark, we watched cars that had just crossed the Bolivian border snake down a road into Chile, their headlights bobbing like fireflies. The driver was playing Andean music through the radio as we all relaxed and bumped our way back to the hostel.

The Andes in the Atacama.  Bolivia is on the other side.

Valley of the Moon

There was a debate among our group about what we should do Sunday. We all finally decided to go see the geysers in Tatio, which is located in the middle of the Andes. This trip involved waking up at 3:30 in the morning and then taking a 2 hour drive into the mountains. We arrived at 6, the coldest time of the day and the best time to catch the geysers. We got off the bus into -13degree Celsius wind and the thinnest air I have ever been in. Just walking around looking at the geysers was enough to make me light headed. No one had thought to bring winter gear with them to the desert, so we were all freezing inside of five minutes. This being a trip in Chile, our guide took us on a walk through the middle of the field of geysers, and we were able to put our heads over the holes in the ground and breathe in the sulfur-tinged steam that was coming to the surface from many miles below. Not all the geysers were the kind that erupted in huge bursts like Old Faithful in Yellowstone. The highest geyser in this field went off every 12 minutes and reached heights of 8 meters. We had breakfast up there, the guides had brought along ham and cheese sandwiches, tea, coffee, milk and eggs. The milk was heated by dipping it into one of the geysers and the eggs were cooked the same way. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to eat the eggs because the geyser decided to go off as they were cooking and they disappeared. After breakfast, we took a 10 minute drive to a natural pool that formed when hot water from the geysers mixed with cold water runoff water from the Andes. The two streams created a pool of water that was just right for swimming and I put on my swimsuit and got in. You could control the temperature of the water by swimming closer to the mouth of the hot stream or away from it. The stream wasn’t always steady, so sometimes you would hear a few shrieks from people who had gotten too close to the mouth when the stream picked up and brought more hot water into their area than they wanted.
The next day was Monday and the last day in San Pedro. We rented bikes and rode out into the desert, only turning around when we ran low on water.

I spent the rest of the week going to asados (barbecues) with my family and hanging out with some new Chilean friends that I made. After a few days of hanging out with Chileans, I was invited to go to Vina del Mar with them for a night and dance at the clubs there. I went, and we had a great time. I will have to tell you more about it when I get back.

I am planning on going to a professional soccer game on Saturday with my Chilean friend Marco, and I am really excited for that! These next few weeks should be more relaxing, I have a few projects/presentations to do for school.

Classes and Strikes

Well, I just ended the fourth week of classes here in Santiago and I am enjoying them as much as it is possible to enjoy a class. I am taking four classes; Español and Derechos Humanos (Human Rights) with my program, and Latin American politics and Chilean Culture at the Universidad de Chile (or, as it is called here, “la U”). There is definitely a different style of teaching here in Chile and a different atmosphere at the University. My classes at the IES center are with all other gringos and are very small, about 7-8 people in each class. These classes are pretty similar to classes at a University in the US, but there are more group project assignments than I am used to. The classes at U Chile are very different. The professors usually come in and start talking about the topic for the day without any powerpoint or notes written on the board. There is not a specific lesson plan that the students have so it is pretty much the teacher talking about his subject however he wants to. There is also the issue of strikes. Whenever the students don’t like a policy that the university or government is doing, they go on strike, which means that they don’t come to class. My first experience with a strike was last week, when I showed up to Latin American politics on Thursday and there were 4 other gringos waiting for class. We asked someone what was going on and learned that the students (Chilean students at least) were on strike and the professor wouldn’t be coming today. The professors here about the strikes from their students and then decide whether or not they want to show up. There was also a strike today, but this time we knew about it before hand and the professor came to class, which consisted totally of Gringos) and answered questions we had about the class. Classes are much more free form here, for our group projects, our topics can be anything that has to do with Latin American politics in the 20th century. Anything. There are no guidelines or rubrics.
I enjoy only having 4 assignments for the semester and a final exam because it cuts down on the busy work that I am often assigned in the U.S. It is a little worrying that my grade hinges on five presentations but I am sure I will be ok. It is also nice having class four days a week! I can’t imagine students in the U.S organizing a strike and the teachers being so supportive of it that they don’t show up for class. Así es Chile.