It's Been Awhile Since

.....we've contacted the world. And I know last time we left you all with some interesting news. It's true damas y caballeros, Hannah and I were robbed. But fear not, we are fine, we finally got our credit cards replaced and I just recently replaced my camera. Let the lack of photography end. Sometimes a girl just has to have a bad week. And a bad week it was. After being robbed at bottle point in Santiago, with our now good friend, and part of team robbery Kevin, we returned to Santiago poorer, and a little worst for the ware. Over the next few days, I was sick, accused of being an illegal immigrant, and unfortunately for our host mom Mirta, her dog died. Never have Hannah and I done anything more flaite than bury a dog at 1:30 in the morning.  But enough about the downers finally the week from hell was over and things have much improved since then.

We've started classes and while some of them are more enjoyable than others, its good to be back in the swing of things. Some of our teachers are a bit sassy, and I think I love it. Our Politics teacher has taken to asking himself questions he thinks we have and then answering them. It's quite fun to listen to. All in all I think our Spanish is also improving, so that's wonderful, I wasn't sure it was going to happen, but we're definitely getting there.

So after Valparaiso we started class, and that weekend we experienced the santiago pub crawl. It's an activity for the foreigners where this company takes you around to three bars and club after feeding you lots of beer, wine, and pizza the first hour. We danced, we drank, we had lots of fun. It was a great release after the previous week. The next week we visited the Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos. It basically took you through the dictatorship of Pinochet and the atrocities that were commited against the people. I would recommend that anyone who comes to Santiago go to see it. It's very eye opening, and since it's more recent history the museum does a great job of integrating media into the displays.

                                                              Hannah and I at the Pub Crawl!

That Thursday I had an interview with Youth For Understanding Chile, that went really well. Paola is working on getting all of us internships and I can't wait to start wherever it is! Hannah could possibly be interning at Centra de Estudios de Justicia de Latinamerica. We can't wait to figure out more about it.  Then Hannah and I saw Los Juegos Del Hambre (aka the Hunger Games) which was fantastic! I enjoyed it very much, and it was nice to be able to see it here in Chile. This is also the day that I replaced my camera, so yay for pictures! I can't wait to get started taking photos again! Then you can all more easily stalk us. I know it's becoming difficult without the pictures.  The next day Hannah and I went to a house party with some of the other students in the program. We taught some of the chilenos there how to play flip cup, and after some language barrier complications, they finally understand and really enjoyed playing the game. The party was very relaxed and it was great to meet some chilenos. Afterwards we returned home and experienced our second (and the next day third) earthquake here in Chile. However, both of them were under 8 on the richter scale, which in Chile is just known as a temblor or tremor. Apparently these are no big deal. So while I was scared out of mind, everyone in Chile was calm. In the words of Mirta "It happens."

On to the third week of school. Classes are getting into more of a rhythm, but a lot of is still don't have internships so we still have Tuesdays and Thursdays off to do what we want. Hannah, Megan, and I went to the mall on Tuesday, but didn't have much luck finding cheap things that we wanted. So on Thursday we invited some more friends to come with us to Calle Bandera. It's honestly one of Santiago's best kept secrets. It's a street filled with thrift stores that sell some really amazing cheap clothing. We picked up some awesome clothes for lollapalooza and found ourselves at La Piojera. This is where we finally tried the Chile famous Terremotos. It's a wonderfully strong and tasty drink involving sweet wine, pineapple ice cream, and a shot. Delicious.Here's a couple of photos of this wonderful day!

Thrifting and breaking our terremoto and tsunami virginity. 

FANNY PACKS FTW.

So here we are, all caught up mas o menos. Sorry if I skipped out on the details, but it's been awhile. This weekend is Lollapalooza Santiago and we're so excited! We're going both days, so we'll have to let you know how that goes. Then Hannah and I have a trip planned to Cordoba and Mendoza Argentina. Sightseeing and Wine Tours here we come! After that is our trip to Easter Island, so we've got lots of traveling to do! But don't worry, we'll keep ya'll informed!

                                                                                                        Team Robbery thrift style.

Orientation, travel, y otras cosas

The past two weeks have been incredibly busy!! We completed orientation with our program, which consisted of Spanish grammar classes (that were debatably successful), trips around the city to see a lot of the historical landmarks, and cultural experinces (we read a poem by Pablo Neruda and then discussed our feelings about it in Spanish). This has all been taking place from 9am-1pm everyday in the university's library. University of Diego Portales is goregous. It's worked into a few blocks downtown-sort of like GW-but is so modern looking and oldwordy at the same time. Almost building has a courtyard like area and there's a river that runs through a couple of the connected buildings. While orienation has been fun I am excited to start real school tomorrow! Our earliest day of classes starts at 10 (thank god, we are not morning people).

Orientation trip to the top of Santa Lucia!

In addition to fake school we've been doing a lot of traveling. Last weekend we went to Tongoy, a small beach town about 5 hours to the north of Santiago. We laid on the beach, ate 61 fried empanadas between our group of 13, and went to a carnival. We rode the mini montana rusa aka a child sized roller coaster. It was the best.

Thursday-Friday of this week our prgram took us to Vina del Mar and Valparaiso to end orienation before school starts! We went to Isla Negra to see another Neruda house and it was goregous. He had the most amazing view of the Pacific and rocky beach. Allende visited him in that house so that was also totally cool. Megan totally thinks Neruda was a hoarder, he just had three houses to put all of his stuff in, instead of one. She's a little sensitive on this issue... Then the program took us out to a nice dinner in Vina and then on a walking tour of Valparaiso the next day. It was beautiful-a lot of hills and colorful houses. Our tour ended with lunch at a resturaunt on the 5th floor of a high rise. Valpo is more of a shipping port town than a beach town, so we had a great view of the bay and we're fed wine, piscos, ceviche, and steak! Good to see my AU-abroad dollars at work!

We also discovered a fun game that Kevin and Megan like to play. Everyone tries to find the most inspiring piece of graffiti and then we decide if the graffiti is fact or poetry. So far the count is 2-2 with one disqualification for vulgarity. Megan's personal favorite was besame amame soy un pirata. (aka kiss me, love me, I am a pirate) You can not imagine how much conversation ensued on this point, but just so everyone knows, it's poetry.

We decided to stay for the weekend in a hostel in Valpo with the other kids from AU. Our hostel was charming and we found a great Chilean kitchen nearby. But unfortunately we don't have any pictures of the weekend. On Friday Megan and I and one other person from our program were jumped and robbed while we we're opening the door to our hostel. We're okay-so there's no need for anyone to worry. But we're a little shaken up and back home resting. Sorry for springing this on everyone at the end of our blog post but we honestly didn't know what the best way to tell our friends and sisters who we wanted to know. We will have more ( and less dangerous) stories to come soon!

Back to Santiago, On to Host Family Life!

On Wednesday we returned from a wonderful extended weekend in Buenos Aires. As Megan said, I am so in love with Buenos Aires that coming back to Santiago was a little bit difficult. However, there are many new and exciting things to look forward to!! After recovering from waking up at 5am for our flight, immigration and customs we had an amazing dinner and a few strong pisco sours at La Mar, a Peruvian resturaunt in a trendy neighborhood called Vitacura. Not only was this meal one of the few times we have had Latin American food thus far (there is an absurd amount of Italian, Mexian, ect resturaunts but finding Chilean food or really any time of South American food is hard) but this neighborhood was less overwhelming for me than the downtown, "Centro" neighborhoods we had seen so far (I need trees and personal space.  Smog so thick you can't breathe/see the scenery, stray dogs, and people/cars literally filling up every available space are just too much for me).

The next day, we visted some well-known toursity Santiago sights, such as La Plaza de Armas, La Catedral Metropolitana, Palacio de la Moneda, Cerro San Lucia, and the Chilean history muesum. After this whirlwind sight seeing, Megan and I said goodbye to my mom and set off for our first dinner alone (but together!)

Here is a picture of me and flat stanley outside of the palacio. It's houses the president's and a couple other important people's offices. It's been around since the early 1800's but was rebuilt paritally after being bombed during the coup in the 70's. 

Today the real excitement started!! Megan and I moved in with our host mom, Mirta. Mirta lives about 30 minutes outside of the downtown area in called "Las Condes." We took the metro from our hotel downtown to the end of the red line (odd coincedience, though I will say the Santiago metro is SO much more efficent than the one in DC). Mirta picked us up and the metro stop and took us home to get settled in! The house is tiny, but comfortable and cozy. Megan and I each have our own rooms that we have already unpacked and settled into. We have wifi, a little dog named Lulu, and a host mom who has already fed us two delicious meals, is more than willing to speak to us in Spanish very slowly/repeat herself/rephrase to make sure we understand. Mirta has had over 100 American students stay with her in this house before us over the last 20-something years so her efforts to make us comfortable and her overwhelming experience helped to make me more comfortable and put some of my concerns at ease. 

Here are a picture of my bedroom at Mirta's. Night y'all!

Somos turistas.

Well everyone, Hannah and I have arrived. We've been in South America for about a week now, and we've discovered just a couple of things about our time here. For one, 10 hour plane rides are the worst. I'm pretty sure that none of us got any sleep on the plane. We arrived in Santiago sleepy, grumpy and hungry. Lucky for us, our taxi driver plowed through our lack of spanish, and was possibly the best tour guide we  may ever have. The three things I was able to pull from his conversation:

1. the neighbor hood Renca la Lleva has a lot of unsatisfied youths, who don't like the name of the neighborhood
2. after dark, all the neighborhoods are dangerous for gringas
3. go to the plaza de armas for tourist things.

Also we've discovered that our spanish skills may be quite a but rusty. It's been frustrating trying to figure out all the words and have conversations with people, but most people are patient. We've come to appreciate the simple things in life. Being able to figure out the simple things, is difficult without knowing the language intimately. We've been getting better at it, but sometimes the frustration gets the best of it. I suggest a good cry to sort it all out. Below is an example of ill translation at it's finest.

It was a good try..... really what is the difference between get and make?

Anyways after checking in and a nap we explored the "bohemian neighborhood" of Patio Bellavista. It had a bunch of nice shops and neighborhoods. Now, what I have to tell you is that the Latin American definition of bohemian and the US version are different.

Bohemian in US: free love, hippy style elton john


Bohemian in Latin America: rich yuppies and modern bars.


We also traveled up to see the statue that overlooks the valley in Santiago We went on the funicular, which is a 100 year old cog rail type thing. There were very pretty views of the city and it's definitely worth doing. We also went to Pablo Neurda's third lover's house, La Chascona! That was really interesting and we learned a lot. Later we had dinner in the Lastaria neighborhood at a really great italian restaurant. Chileans have an interesting view on Italian, it's.... hard to describe.

The next day we went to Buenos Aires. Our plane was at 1:00, or at least we thought it was at one.  What that really meant in Latin American translation was, we will board the plane, when we feel like it. Our plane finally left at 2pm and we made it to Buenos Aires. The culture of the city, is definitely like the "Paris of the South" and we enjoyed such restaurants as La Cabrera and Geronimo. Argentinians really know how to do their meat! We took Buenos Aires by storm and saw El Teatro Colon, the obelisk, La Casa Rosada, we walked down Defenda, toured El Zanjhon, el Cemetario Recoleta, and had the best gelato on Los Estado Unidos.

Feelings about the Cemetario, it was creepy!

All about flat stanley loving!

Lastly we went to the park of the infamous John Shea kidnapping story. If you've ever met my mother, she'll have told you this story, not once, but probably about 10,000 times. Once upon a time when I was 2 and John was 3, we lived in Buenos Aires. My mother would take us to La Plaza del Liberador de San Martin to play and frolick. This is also the place where my mother would learn some spanish and one of the things the locals told her, was to keep a good eye on John. Apparently his ginger locks of silky hair made him attractive to kidnappers. One day at said park, my mother looked around and there was no John to be found. She thought he had been taken and in a fit of emotion panicked and ended up crying on a bench. Not two minute later did that little rascal John pop out of a bush and say "don't cry mommy, I is just hiding" THAT JOKESTER. So in remembrance of this family story etched into the Shea family minds, here is a picture of said park for all to see. 

I think Hannah is in love with Buenos Aires, something to do with the trees. I'm working on her love for Santiago. I think we just need it to grow on her. She's not used to the mountains.

Now we are finally back in Santiago, we had the best Peruvian food ever tonight at La Mar. (Picture Below) It's summer, here, which makes me so happy, but even Hannah thinks it's hot. Tomorrow, there's more adventure to be found, and friday we're moving in with our host mom Mirta! I'll let Hannah tell you about how it went when we first met her! Hasta Luego!

TODAY IS THE DAY!

Like Megan said, we're finally packed, ready to see eachother again and begin our adventures! We fly out of Atlanta today at about 9:00pm. The flight is a little under 10 hours and will put us in Santiago at 9am Santiago time (7am EST)!! My mom is flying down with us to get us settled and buy us the things we inevitably forgot or forfeited because of the baggage weight limits (haven't weighed my bags yet, I'm nervous).  But we have a week before our program officially starts so we're going to do a little bit of traveling and sight seeing. The most exciting things on the agenda are:
-my real mom is going to get to meet my host mom (too cute for words)
-we're flying to Buenos Aires, Argentina for 4 days
-we're taking a boat (AH) ride from Argentina to Uruguay for the day

Here it goes! Wish us luck! We will try to check in with everyone tomorrow morning, besitos!!!!

HERE IT COMES!

I've finished packing! That's right, everything you saw on those two beds, is now in two bags! WOOT WOOT! I didn't think it would happen. But now I'm sitting awake, freaking out because I am so ready to go. Probably I will not get any sleep tonight. Oh well. There's always the plane!

AHHH! So excited to see Hannah and so excited to finally be going!

Life Before Abroad

If you haven't heard me and Megan complain about it already, our program starts late. Very late. As in we don't start classes until the second week in March, late. We both decided to leave DC and stay in Kentucky/Colorado until we leave. There have been some good things about this decision: we've gotten an unbelievable amount of sleep and we've spent more time at home than probably the past two years combined. However, after living on our own and going to college in a city that's as exciting as DC, this whole relaxing thing got real old, real fast. To make the time go by faster we've been doing a lot of this:

That's right, not only are Megan and I going abroad together, but we have been using our "vacation" time to sit at home and complain about how bored we are and how we just want to go abroad already. After so much boredom, it is almost time to leave, TOMORROW and we will soon have more excitment than we can handle! 

Packing....

is the worst and best thing to happen to me in these past two months. I've been sitting at home, volunteering in the hospital, and doing absolutely nothing. Needless to say, it's weighing on my nerves, and that of my parents. My poor parents, having to put up with all my attitude problems while I sit around bored and frustrated for lack of things to do.

But now, I'm packing. This means a couple of really amazing things are about to happen.

1. My trip to South America is about to begin
2. I'll soon be reunited with my biffle Hannah Bryant (coauthor of said blog)
3. I'll be studying abroad in Chile so so so soon.

That's right Hannah and I are going to Chile. We're going to learn spanish, stay with a wonderful spanish mother, have internships, and fraternize with Latin American me. (That's right I said fraternize... can you say Raoul anyone?) Less than 48hours to go and all of my stuff is sitting on the guest room beds waiting to be unceremoniously shoved into a suitcase. It's going to be summer down there, so hurrah for summer clothes! This is the best part of packing, knowing that soon the anticipation will be over and I'll be on my way to the best study abroad experience ever.

The worst part of packing, cut to the picture below.

I'm not quite sure how I'm supposed to remember to bring everything. There will be three seasons while Hannah and I are down there, so that means an inordinate amount of clothing, shoes, and accessories. Just because I'm studying abroad doesn't mean I can't be fashionable right? Not to mention, the other bed holds all the other necessaries, medicine, electronics (adaptors included...), passport, toiletries, and other random things I can't go without. Here's a list of just a few things Hannah and I need down there:

1. t-shirts/tanks
2. jeans
3. shorts
4. sweaters
5. long sleeve shirts
6. belts
7. scarves
8. business clothes for internship
9. no less than 10 pairs of shoes ( 2 heals, 2 boots, 3 sandals, 2 flats, sneakers)
10. sorority t-shirts (Represent!)
11. Dresses
12. Other stuff, that I'm sure I'm not thinking of right now.

And that's just clothes! I have to think about how many bags/purse types I need to bring. What types of makeup I'll need and so on. How is a girl supposed to survive. Logically I know that everything I'll need will be down in Chile. Emotionally (that's right I said emotionally) I just can't bare to leave my wardrobe behind. #firstworldproblems

Soon I'll be packed up and ready to go live la vida loca. The first week we're going to Buenos Aires, Uruguay, and Santiago! Wish me and Hannah luck and follow us here!