orientation

1/26/07 12:52 AM

Not TOO much to say today. First day with orientation. Met lots of people. Hard to connect, though, cause most don’t really use phones, or at least I don’t porque tengo miedo. I know where I live! Luki took me to the school today on the bus, and then walk for a few blocks, and then I got home on my own. It was very intimidating but I got it! And I live on Avenida .. oh shit, what’s it called? Avenida Pedro de Valdivia. The house is pretty far from the metro or anything, but it’s a main street so LOTs of buses go by. After I came home from the first orientation thing and took a nap and stuff I went out to explore a little. Salí a little tarde, so I didn’t get to go out for a long time, but I took the bus all on my very own to la comuna Providencia and walked around some. It’s really an incredible place with all kinds of everythings everywhere. Lots of very nice restaurants and little shops and parks. I said earlier that Santiago me parece Mexico, and it does in ciertas formas, but Providencia, a wealthy area reminded me of somewhat wealthy areas of the US. I’m not sure that I’ve been to any of those areas, but it had beautiful tree-lined streets, and nicer cars and big houses behind walls, also big condos or apartments behind walls. Very clean, very nice. Not overly fancy or anything, just nice. I guess you could also call that European. Sort of English-looking, maybe. Modern English. Also, today over melon I talked about many things with Luki and Ivan, including medications, medicinal herbs, religion, and many other cosas. Luki told me before that she is Catholic, but her daughters are Athiest. I didn’t want to tell her that my religion is, more or less, nature, and that so many things that other people see in god, I see in nature. I didn’t want to tell her this because I thought she might think I was some kind of crazy hippie American, but we were sitting there at the table over lunch, and she said that exact thing; she believes that god is nature, and vice-versa. I was blown away, but very excited, of course. Ivan is an atheist, but he very much respects the natural world. Also, today we learned that in the next month or two they are completely changing the bus system in Chile. Instead of crazy buses that run all over and just have a list of the streets they go in the windshield so that you have to try and read the list as it goes by, they’re going to have a color-coded system with a different color for each district, and one color for inter-district buses. And they’re going to have all new buses, cause some of the ones they have right now are old Mercedes Benz buses from the 60s or 70s. I’m looking forward to understanding how to get around, even though now that I know some main place names and have a map (thanks to the study center) I do feel a lot more comfortable. Okay, well I need to go to bed, but yesterday I forgot that I meant to write one little thing, and that is that Luki and Ivan are not married. They have been together for 40 years and have 2 children together, but they were never married. This is partly because of Luki’s feminist point of view (though she told me that in Chile women never take their husbands’ last names. They do in Argentina, and I think they do in Mexico, too, but not in Chile), but largely because in Chile divorce just became legal in 2004, and when Luki and Ivan met, he was legally married, though separated from his wife, and now 40 years later he’s still legally married to a woman who he hasn’t seen in some 45 years or so. Luki said Ivan still hasn’t gotten divorced because they don’t feel like they really need to bother, and besides that they haven’t seen the woman in so long. Okay, esta tarde y tengo que estudiar unas cositas, I have an oral exam tomorrow for placement in Spanish classes next week.

Buenas noches,

Sophie

1/26/07 1:10 AM