Hola Todos!

Well I've now been here for more than a week and what an adventure! The last few days have been quite busy. On Wednesday night we went to Santiago to see a documentary about Ariel Dorfman. It was the premier of the film so Dorfman himself was there which was really cool. The other super cool part was that it was shown in a theater inside La Moneda, the presidential palace. It was really cool to be able to see that one site in Chile, though we got to see little of the inside. It was a very cool experience to be in Santiago, we were only there for a few hours, but I really enjoyed seeing it. It reminded me a lot of Chicago, it is very large and very metropolitan. The one place other than La Moneda that we visited was McDonalds, because it was the only place with a free public restroom :)

For those of you who don't know, Ariel Dorfman is a chilean man who was working for Salvadore Allende at the time of the military coup in which Agusto Pinochet took over the goverment and began his dictatorship which lasted almost 20 years. Dorfman was one of the only people working that close to Allende, and that involved in the Socialist party there to survive the coup. He has made it his life's mission since then to tell the story of the crimes Pinochet commited against his people. Dorfman is also the author of Death and the Maiden, a rather famous play about a woman who was tortured by her government and then many years later discovers who her torturer is. Though the play and Dorfman are rather famous in the U.S. and in other parts of the world, in Chile he is virtually unknown today. Most of our families did not know who Dorfman was when we told them about the documentary. The country today is still very divided on the Pinochet issue and close to half of the population still fully supports Pinochet. I have not yet asked my family how they feel, because of the strong emotions tied to this issue, but many of the host families we have here are still Pinochet supporters. The documentary was very interesting, and gave me a better idea of what happened during the Pinochet years. If you are interested in more information, the film is titled "A Promise to the Dead" and I believe may be released in the U.S. sometime in the next year, though I am not sure on that fact.

Today we did more sight seeing, and got a tour of Valparaiso, the neighboring city to Viña. Valpo, as it is commonly known to Chileans, is very different from Viña. It is a major port in and out of Chile, and because of this is much older than Viña. It has a many old historic buildings and also many interesting neighborhoods to visit. The neighborhoods are all built into the sides of hills and are really cool and artsy. To get to many of them you can take elevator things, called ascensors, to the top. We got to take one of those up to a neighborhood called cerro concepcion, cerro means hill in spanish. Cerro concepcion is an English neighborhood and it really seemed like it could have been in England or somewhere else in Europe. There was one stretch that was really cool, all the houses were connected, but each one was painted a different color. I think I have some pictures of this as well in my photo albums. Another cool thing was the many artists' stands that were set up throughout the cerro. There were some really cool painitings and jewelry for sale, that were really tempting. Valpo seems to be the place were most of the artists do their work, and I really enjoyed that.

Other than my two site seeing trips this week has been rather quiet. I have gone to many classes and enjoyed them all a lot. Three of the four are entirely taught in Spanish and are a little difficult but I enjoy all the professors and they do a good job making sure we understand. And speak more slowly for us. I got really lucky in my schedule and only have class on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, so that is nice as well. I hope to do some volunteering one of those days and hopefully will use Fridays to go on side trips to explore Chile.

I also joined a little jogging club through my university with some of my friends. It is really fun, even though the Chileans don't really like running. They are required to do some sort of physical education activity each semester I think, so most of them are only there because they have to, but they are still fun and very friendly to talk to. On Friday we went to an asado, like a bbq, with students from the School of Humanities at UAI, which was very fun and another great way to get to know more Chileans.

Well that's about all I have for now. I'll try and keep posting at least once a week. Thanks for following my trip!

Chao!