Touring Santiago and Isla Negra

Good morning. I'm writing to you from my desk in my Santiago bedroom. I've got a huge picture window facing East with a great view of the Andes Mountains. They seem almost close enough to walk to. For a little geography lesson, Santiago is situated between the Andes range to the East and the coastal range to the West. As a result, the city pollution doesn't have an opportunity to escape and the city is usually covered in a layer of smog (as it is this morning). I'm told the smog is worst in winter, so I'm looking for it to improve as the seasons change here. Because of this smog, Santiago is often under an exercise warning where is is inadvisable to exercise outside. Gym classes and school sports teams are prohibited from practicing outside as well. This also means that I have not been able to go for any runs here in Santiago. I would love to take a jog exploring Las Condes, the neighborhood of Santiago where I am living, but it is currently just not an option.

Through our program here at La Catolica, we have gone on several tours of Santiago. In two jam-packed days, we explored a better part of the central part of Santiago. Unlike many huge cities in the US, Santiago (with about 5 million people), is not really a city dominated by skyscrapers but instead is built much flatter and extends much farther. I guess skyscrapers aren't a very good architectural design when your country suffers some of the most frequent and strongest earthquakes in the world. In our tours we explored the Vega Central (huge open air fruit & vegetable market), the Mercado Centro (another huge market, but dedicated to fish & meat), the Plaza de Armas (colonial center of the city, containing the early government buildings and the Cathedral of Santiago), a couple of museums, and some surrounding

neighborhoods. We also rode a funicular up to the top of Cerro San Cristobal (a really tall and steep hill that would probably be considered a mountain in Minnesota but is dwarfed here by the Andes). Even with the smog (which was particularly bad on this day), we had a great view of Santiago. There was even an outdoor altar beneath the feet of a white statue of the Virgin Mary where Pope John Paul II said mass in the early 80s.

Friday started off with more administrative work as we had to go to the International Police to register our visas (or something like that) and to the equivalent of a DMV to apply for our Chilean ID cards (cedulas). Friday morning also provided some excitement as I woke up and left the house before the rest of the family was awake. When I returned, I found out that Dunkel, the huge dog that plays watchdog in the gated yard by night, got into the house. Upon leaving that morning, I did not put him back into his kennel and he is smart enough (and big enough) to open the door. Leticia told me that she awoke to find him in the kitchen scouring through the trash. Oooops! I know now the procedure though.

I met up with my Linares family for lunch, as Doris was in Santiago picking up her granddaughter Camila to bring back home. We ate at Carlos and Kelsey's appartment and I got a chance to see more of the "downtown" section of Santiago near La Moneda, the building that houses the presidential offices. During lunch, I also found out that the apparently harmless word maraca is not used to refer to a musical instrument as much as it is an extremely offensive word for prostitute. Oooops again! At least I messed up in a setting with family and not something more serious.

Friday night I (as well as Shu and Katy, two other students on the program) met up with Sergio, one of our good friends from Notre Dame and my roommate next year, who recently moved from Costa Rica to Santiago with his family. He and his dad picked us up and brought us to their apartment where we had a fantastic dinner of asado (grilled steak and sausage). Many of his friends came over and we later went to a different friend's house as experience has shown Sergio and his family that apartment security gets called if they make too much noise. After meeting more friends we went to el disco. After a long night of dancing and socializing, we headed back to Sergio's at 4:00 am, only to wake up the next morning a little after 8:00 am to head on another tour. All in all it was a great time and we'll surely hang out with Sergio again before he heads to France for his semester studying abroad.

Our tour the next day started frantically, as we almost missed our bus. Luckily we just made it and headed West to Isla Negra, a small coastal town South of the major cities of Vaparaiso and Vina del Mar, most famous for the favorite house of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. We enjoyed a very informative tour of this very unique house. Neruda loved the sea (his house was built with a great view over the ocean) and modeled the inside of his house like a ship, complete with small doors, rounded ceilings, and actual carvings that once served as the decoration on the bow of great wooden ships (those "hood ornament" things for lack of a better way to describe them). It was probably one of the most interesting houses I have ever seen. After the tour we headed to Kaleuche, a nearby seaside restaurant for the best meal I've had yet.

Before we arrived, we were asked to chose our entrée from a list that included steak, chicken, fish, and in my eyes the obvious choice, Paila Marina, a seafood soup that is hard to find anywhere in Santiago. I didn't really know what I had ordered until we got to the restaurant and I found in front of me a great steaming bowl of broth filled with every imaginable type of seafood. This included several types of clams, mussels, crab, fish, octopus, shrimp, scallops, abalone (a very specific sort of mollusk that is a rare delicacy. Shu, my Japanese friend on the trip told me that abalone is among the most prized and most expensive seafood available in Japan), and probably something else that I am forgetting. It was delicious, took forever to eat, as everything was still in the shell, and probably grossed out a good number of the fellow students on the trip. After lunch we boarded the bus again and headed back to Santiago. Just as we had on the trip to Isla Negra, every single student fell asleep.

That's all I've got for now. I'll try to get you guys a link with more available pictures. Also, my SKYPE name is patkissling. I'd love to talk to you guys. Just let me know.