Mujer Maravilla

Hello again. I only have a limited time on the computer and there´s an angry looking french guy waiting to use it so this update won´t be able to fully encompass the past few days, but hopefully you can fill in the gaps with your imaginations. Actually the gaps can mostly be filled in with me just wandering around Baños, eating taffy straight off the post and staring at the ridiculously beautiful hills and waterfalls that frame the town.

So, I´m in a town called Baños now. I was originally planning to stay for a day or two, but five days just went by and I´m still here. It´s a magical town in more ways than one. The scenery is incredible, the people are unendingly sweet and helpful, and the hoards of vacationing ecuadorian families that flock in on the weekends make for good people watching. The town is right next to a huge and very active volcano, but so far they´ve been pretty lucky. If you talk to a big fan of the church, they´ll tell you that Baños is protected by the Virgen de la Agua Santa, and if you talk to someone who knows something about volcanos they´ll tell you that Baños is surrounded by mountains that block the lava from being routed towards the city. Besides all that cool stuff, there´s tons of adventure-y stuff to do too. A few days ago I rented a motorbike quad thing and rode through the "path of the waterfalls" to get to this big bridge where I got to jump off (with a bungee cord, obviously) and experience the incredible and frightening sensation of free-falling face first into a rocky white water river. Similarly exhilarating, I went rock climbing with a new friend from my hostel yesterday. The climbs were really hard, and our guide was great. He free-climbed (no ropes) up in order to attach the ropes before we started. It was nuts. He also did this one path that I swear involved several feet of flat rock. I definitely challenged myself, and am pretty proud of what I managed to do. Afterwards we got to do this awesome zipline where I flew superman style over the river. New vocab word: Mujer Maravilla = Wonder Woman.

Now I´m entering my sixth day in Baños and wondering what to do next. I originally thought about going to the coast, but I´d also like to check out Cuenca, a very pretty colonial city in the south nearby a very beautiful national part. I also made friends with some "engineers without borders" students who are working on a project in a nearby jungle town that they want me to come visit. It´s kind of fun to have no idea where I´m going to end up for my last 3 days.

chilling at the center of the earth

Hola from Quito.

First, a few quick notes about the desert --

The highlight was a stargazing tour. Due to the location of the zodiac light or something like that, the Atacama desert has one of the cleanest skies in the world. It was amazing...you could see absolutely everything. It was weird seeing the different constallations in the southern hemisphere. My friend Vik asked where the northern star was. It was hilarious. We even got to get a close-up on Jupiter and a few crazy colored stars with the telescopes. There was this really hilarious french man giving the tour in spanish, while most of the people on the tour were portuguese speakers from Brazil...so it was a linguistic experience. I met a lot of brazilians in San Pedro de Atacama. It´s really funny how they would talk to me in slow portuguese and I would respond in slow spanish, and in the end we sorta understand each other. I made really good friends with a really awesome and funny brasilian girl named Paula at our hostel (who thankfully spoke both english and spanish), but she had to leave before me. It´s so weird how people can come in and out of your life so quickly. This girl and I bonded immediately, we definitely could have been best friends if we weren´t born a bajillion miles apart. But we´ll keep in touch via facebook.

Anyway, we went to the geysers which were beautiful, but really cold and REALLY early (I´m talking 4 am), but we got to swim in hot springs which was incredible. I´d love to post pictures but sadly I´m without wireless internet now and I can´t upload at the internet cafes. Anyway, we got a steal on sandboarding. Paid 3 luca (6 bucks) for bikes and boards and a map, and then followed a BEAUTIFUL trail through the Cordillera de la Sal ... basically imagine a tiny trail surrounded with huuuuge and crazy rock formations on either side. It came out right at the ´valle de la muerte´(literally the valley of death) where we began our sandboarding adventure. No one had any idea what they were doing, and climbing up the dune was intense in the desert sun, but it was a good time. I made friends with some kids on an exchange program through umich, also studying at La Catolica. We eventually figured out that it´s more productive and more fun to just run down the dune without a board.

So flash forward past my hectic journey to Quito, and I´m wandering around the city trying to find a hostel because the one I thought I booked online bailed on me. The taxi driver was super nice and took me around to all the places listed in my Lonely Planet until we finally got to this little place that looked more like a house from the outside. I ring the doorbell and this girl who can´t be more than seven opens the gate and immediately starts rambling to me in spanish and convinces me to ´play cooking´while we wait for her mom to finish up with talking with another gringo. I got a room, and it turns out this place is the number one recommended in my guidebook but I had somehow overlooked it. The people are very friendly, although it is a bit lonely being alone. I made friends with a guy who is on vacation from being a guide in the galapagos and he´s going to take me to the tourist center and talk to some of his friends in the tour places to help me find a cheap 4 day trip. How incredible would that be?? Apparently it´s possible if you´re traveling solo and at the last minute to fill a spot on a boat that´s leaving in the next few days. But even if that doesn´t happen, there´s plenty of great wildlife stuff to do around here so it should be fine.

I doubt anyone is still reading but I´m sure you´re all very glad to hear that I´m still alive. The updates will probably be more sporadic from now on since I don´t have constant internet access. Miss you all! Also, I promise an extensive update about the flushing of toilets after visiting the center of the earth monument.

- L

desert - the kind that you don´t eat

In the days since my last post, I finished up my studies in Santiago, took some finals and wrote some papers, did some final touristy things and said goodbye to my host mom. Then I hopped on an airplane and flew north to the Atacama desert -- the driest desert in the world. It´s amazing here. We´re staying in a town called San Pedro that´s basically just a giant gringolandia (gringo=foreigner), completely full of backpackers, hostels, restaurants, tour companies and legitimately nothing else. There´s people here from all over the world. Vik, the friend I´m traveling with, and I met a cool guy from Spain who we´ve been traveling with.

Today we rented bicycles and a map and went out to explore some ruins. They weren´t the best ruins ever, but they were the first I´ve ever seen so I was impressed. I just stared at them thinking...someone walked through that door, or cooked dinner in that room, or was like totally annoyed at their sister for stealing their clothing while they sulked in that other room...and these people lived 2500 years ago. Maybe minus the stealing clothing thing, I dunno. Anyway, if I´m so impressed by these tiny and not particularly interesting ruins, I can´t imagine what Macchu Picchu would be like. That´s definitely on the agenda for my next trip to South America. Tonight we´re going on a tour to watch the sun set in valle de la luna, which is supposed to be an amazing experience. Personally I don´t get what makes a sunset worth $4, but it´s one of those things you´re supposed to do here.


Hope everyone´s doing well!

- L
-- Lauren

Santiago smog = 10 cigarettes a day. YUM!

Today I made a new best friend named Oscar. He's 4 years old and pretty much the most awesome kid I've ever met. Oscar lives at the Josafina Martinez hospital, which specializes in children with respiratory problems. Oscar has a trach (http://www.tracheostomy.com/faq/what.htm) in his neck, so he can't talk, but he certainly knows how to get his point across. We played soccer and watched Barney, and he made me clap when the kids on the TV were clapping, dance when they danced, etc. He kept pointing to his mouth when we were playing so I asked the nurse if he was hungry but she assured me that he was just making fun of the way I talk in Spanish. It was so hard to leave...I wanted to take him home so bad. Oscar's been living in the hospital since he was 2 years old, and sees his family about once a week, unless they can afford to take more time away from work and their other children.

The hospital was actually really awesome, considering the fact that it's entirely free, but considering how many kids they have to take care of and how few staff, I can't help but wonder what sorts of developmental problems these kids are going to develop from being left to hang out in bed by themselves all day, with no one but their mechanical ventilator to talk to. It was so sad to see so many kids depending on machines in order to survive. In the play/school room almost all the older kids were wheeling around those big oxygen tank things that you see old people with in the commercials against smoking. It's a lot easier to handle seeing that sort of thing when you feel like the person could have seen it coming, or avoided it somehow. Not so easy with kids.

Speaking of smoking, I'm doing a research project on the health effects of smog in Santiago. It's really fascinating and I'm talking to a professor in the Evironemental Studies department about continuing it with an independent study/research project in the fall. Here's a gem from one of the papers I'm using: "...in winter in downtown Santiago of Chile we have detected 5 ng/m³ of benzo(a)pyrene (BaP), the most studied environmental carcinogen in respirable particles. Thus, a non smoking inhabitant breaths benzo(a)pyrene BaP levels equivalent to smoking 10 cigarettes a day." It makes me so angry how little is being done about it. Environmental pollution shouldn't be viewed with the sort of complacency of a far-away problem -- like a storm that we know is coming but we have plenty of time to prepare for. The storm's already here, and the kids can't friggin breath without inhaling particles of imminent death. Ya, I'm being super dramatic. But still -- I just feel like it should be viewed as a lot more of an emergency, but it's hard to convince people (let alone a government that has the power to institute emission regulations) that something they are already living with daily is actually killing them and something needs to change immediately.

The picture is one that I took from the top of Cerro (hill) San Cristobal on Sunday, which was a day after it rained. They tell us to go to the Cerro the day after a rain because that's when the smog is the least obstructive of the view. In other words, this is the smog on a GOOD day. Enticing, ya?

A few years ago Oberlin introduced me to the idea of responsibility being associated with privilege. It's a concept that I think I've always understood subconsciously -- that I've been giving a whole lot of opportunities and I should use them to help those who weren't. But during my time at Oberlin was the first time the topic was really verbalized/intellectualized for me. I've been thinking a lot during this trip -- which is an opportunity that I am extremely privileged to have been given -- about how I'm supposed to fulfill the responsibility that I'm now charged with. As in, how can I use my experiences here to "pay it forward"?

I know that a lot of people don't agree philosophically with what I'm saying right now -- like my friends who say that they worked hard and don't deserve to be shafted in college admissions on behalf of preference for minorities. I understand their beliefs, I just don't agree with them. For me, it's a very personal issue -- it's hard to avoid using the word "guilt" but it's different than that -- if I use the word "guilt" than paying it forward is just a way of alleviated my own guilt and therefore selfishly motivated (insert Ayn Rand discussion here). Maybe it is, but if people are being helped, who cares if it's selfishly motivated? Either way, instead I'll say that I feel extremely privileged to have the opportunities that I have been giving and I feel also obliged to give something back since so much has been given to me by luck and money. This is really just a very long way of saying that I'm leaning towards going into a career in Public Health/environmental health research...using my talents to try to figure out a way to reduce this friggin smog and help the kiddies breath withing taking in carcinogens and other nasties while they're at it.

newborns and wine...not at the same time, for obvious reasons

On Wednesday I was in the neonatal unit of the public hospital. Rather than having to look at the icky tiny sick babies, they let me play with the healthy ones that are fresh out of the womb. The only truly nasty part was watching them comb nasty birth juice out of the babies' hair. But it's an incredible feeling to be one of the first people to talk to a new little person. I bet they're really confused. There was a set of twins...they've been sharing a tiny little womb for nine months and now they're suddenly separate and in a big freaky world. I felt like it was my duty to give them some advice. We had a good chat. The nurse yelled at me for talking to them in English, because she said they wouldn't understand me. I got to carry one of the babies to her mommy. It was so fun being the person to be like, "Hey, here's that awesome new person you just brought into the world. Good luck not fucking her up too much!"

The hospital building is over 100 years old, and I don't know much about medical equipment but I'm pretty sure some of it is old as dirt. That being said, the nurses are great and the patients get good care...for the 15 minutes allotted to them daily. Besides the obvious issues with disease spreading, I like the rooms with 6 or more people in them. There's sort of a camp-y friendly family-type atmosphere to it. I'm only being sort of sarcastic right now.

On Friday we went to one of the new family primary care clinics funded by la Universidad Catolica. This place was spanking new and extremely modern. The patients, all of whom have public insurance, get great personal attention from nurses and doctors. This was the only clinic/hospital I've seen so far with computerized records. The family clinics are a new-ish idea for primary care, and there's two other as nice as this one. Unfortunately that's only a couple thousand people being served by these great clinics. Hopefully they'll expand, because it was really great to see people being treated like they deserve individual attention for their medical needs.

Looking at a very different side of Chile from the people we interact with at the public hospital, we dropped $10 on a wine tour of Cosiño Macul. I talked to a Brasilian couple, and was completely thrown off by their use of "vosotros" in conversation (that's a verb tense that's only used in Spain). The vines are currently empty and they weren't processing any wine while we were there so it was a little boring, but we got to do a few tastes and I got a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon "gris" which is red wine grapes processed like white wine, so it ends up being kinda pinkish and gentler tasting. My host dad was really pleased and Friday night my host sister's godfather came over to visit and he served it. Mostly the trip made me realize that there's a whole lot about wine that I'm never going to have the time or desire to learn.

My two good friends are off in Valdivia for the weekend, so I've been spending some more time exploring alone and spending more time with my family. Having American friends is great, and it's good to have other people to digest the experience with and talk about how much we miss ketchup and peanut butter and whatnot, but it's also a crutch that keeps me from fully immersing myself in Chile. I spent yesterday evening at home, conversing with my host sister Lena's godfather and talking about plans for Lena's wedding (which is in March, but already the arguments about what kind of music, what she should wear, what kind of wine to serve, etc. etc. etc. have begun). Then my older host sister, Edda, invited me to "carretear" (=going out dancing) with her. Around 11:30pm we left the house with one of her friends and went over to another friend's house where we drank "navegado". It's hot red wine, orange, cinnamon-y spices, and fruit pieces. Super delicious. Around 1:30am, they decided it was time to head to the Discoteca for a birthday party. Crazy chilenos. We had a really fun time dancing and stayed until the club until 5 am, when they finally closed and kicked us out. Out of the whole experience, the weirdest part was getting used to the cheek-kiss greetings. Like when we got to the party I had to go through the whole living room and kiss all the people in the room on the cheek...before learning their names! I actually really like the custom and I wish we had something like it in the US...really breaks the ice and whatnot, establishing a friendly atmosphere...but it's hard to get used to. I always feel like I go in awkwardly or something.

Today we went to a Universidad de Chile soccer game, but I'll write about that later...this is getting long and I'm exhausted.

Kisses to all! I can't believe I have less than two weeks left :-( Time to start making plans for Ecuador. I think I better take some more Spanish classes and get rid of this Chilean accent I've picked up. ¿Cachai?

Warning: graphic images of sick tonsils

Sometime in the near future I'll be posting a long, introspective and emotional reflection on my intense experiences at the public hospital. For now, though, I'm not in an introspective enough mood to do it justice. Today I was in the post-surgery unit. The patients were all super friendly, and mostly satisfied with the care they receive. One guy, an artist by profession who has FONASA A -- the most basic coverage that is completely free -- was super quick to say that he absolutely was satisfied with the care he received. Then he thought about it and added, "Well, when I was first admitted there was a shortage of beds so I had to spend a night in a chair. It was pretty cold. But the doctors are very nice."

In other news, my friend Reva has been getting some extra immersion in the public health of Chile. After visiting two doctors and being diagnosed and treated for both bronchitis and tonsilitis (or "amygdalitis" en espanol), she went through 3 weeks of antibiotics, discovered that the private doctors only take cash in this country (wtf?), and she's still left with tonsils that look like this:

Special shout-out to Dr. Gayla Zoghlin for helping us deal with this one via the internet and suggesting that this is, in fact, a serious needs-a-specialist kinda thing. Something about an abscess that might need to be drained (see the purple spot there?). Luckily for me, there are no privacy laws in this country, so while for Reva that means an annoying medical procedure, for me it means an awesome free show. Any bets on what color is going to come out??

And as Reva put it in her own words, "It always warms the heart to make someones blog because of your bacterially infested mouth." I'm so glad you all could share this with us.

Skiing in the Andes: Check one off of life's to-do list!

Skiing was awesome. I loved how less overrun with development and tourists it was compared to out west. The lifts weren't particularly fast and the trails weren't marked very well, but then again there was NO lift lines EVER, and the trails didn't need to be marked since the whole place is above tree-level, so it's pretty much a free-for-all. It's pretty small, definitely would get boring in a week, but there's three other resorts nearby. We were at Portillo -- where the US Ski Team practices in the summer! Nifty, ya?

After sleeping off my ski aches, I made my family brunch this morning. The typical American meal consisted of: french toast, waffles, bacon (yes, I made bacon! It was kinda icky though), and lots of pure Michigan maple syrup. My host dad put so much syrup on his waffle it legitimately looked like soup. He would get along really well with Sam. I tried to find bagels but that failed. When I was explaining what bagels are and we do with them, my host mom got confused and thought we put smoked fish on french toast. Hehe.

I've started planning a trip to the desert (North Chile) for after the program ends. I'm going to go sand boarding. No joke. It's like snowboarding...on sand. What other country can you go snow-skiing and sand boarding in the same month?

¡¡¡¡FELIZ 4 de JULIO!!!!

My life since my last update:

* I've become worryingly addicted to Chilean telenovelas.

* On Wednesday I watched a C-section. It was pretty intense. The baby was over 12 lbs. That's like...3 of Noa when she was born. That'd be like if Carole had triplets. Except it was ONE HUGE BABY. It was pretty cool seeing a little person come in to the world, even if he was covered in nastyness and looked kinda like the mandrake from Harry Potter:
* Yesterday I met two very nice boys who play for one of Chile's rugby teams. They both used to be on the NATIONAL Chilean Under-20 team, and one of them was the captain. It was a ton of fun talking about the game and comparing our rugby cultures. One of them used to be a wing, so we compared strategies. I'm really excited to watch one of their games! Apparently they have a women's national team here too so if I get a chance I want to watch them play.

* Speaking of sports, I'm going to go skiing tomorrow!

* I am currently sitting in a Starbucks ... with a smoking section. I kid you not.

* And last but not least, a very happy 4th of July to everyone.

HUGS!
- Lauren

These entries always end up longer than I planned

Some pictures to capture the way I see Santiago...


For those still convinced that I live in a shack, here's a picture of my neighborhood:


The signs below translate: "Alcoholics Anonymous. If your problem is alcohol, call us."
I've actually seen fewer homeless here than in Boston, but I just thought this was ironic product placement.


Inside Hospital Clinica de U. Catolica (Pabellon)


And of course, there's the graffiti. I have an undeniable affection for graffiti, as long as it's for a cause I support, or it amuses me. I suppose a picture of the student protests would be more relevant to current events, but I thought this might amuse/shock a few people. The animal activists are pretty busy here -- they protest outside the research building I'm shadowing at on a near-daily basis.



Anyway, I wimped out and didn't try to bring a camara into the operating room on monday. I did, however, get to observe a nifty colon surgery. They removed a huuge part of the colon and the appendix, all covered in nasty tumor-y stuff. It was pretty sweet. My favorite part was the late 90's "soft rock" music they were listening to, and the fact that one of the doctors was constantly bobbing his head in time while the nurse was fully dancing as she passed along the . Once we were in full scrub gear they pretty much let us wander wherever we wanted in the unit, since we looked identical to the medical students they have floating around everywhere, except a bit more foreign. When someone looks like they aren't in the process of saving someone's life, I really like talking to the doctors and nurses and students and patients (ok, maybe I just like talking), and they are almost always receptive to my questions. Unfortunately people tend to talk to me as if I'm at least a 3rd-year medical student so I probably wouldn't understand them even if they were speaking English.

Today we ran into some students from Texas who just got here two days ago. I can't believe I've already been here a month, it feels like I just got here yesterday...but seeing how bewildered they are by things that now seem completely common place to me made me realize how much I've adapted to the city. I wish I could spend more time here...

Anyway, it's getting super late (no, seriously, why we in the same time zone??). More tomorrow about the public hospital, etc.




Chilenismo of the day: ALTIRO. It means "right now" or "really soon". It's a relatively flexible term for most of the Chileans I've met, though. I fit in well here.

Almost July!?!?!

The rest of my clinical observations have been trying, but interesting. Today I observed internal medicine and on Wednesday I was in the neonatal unit. It was pretty hard seeing the tiny babies all hooked up to machines and struggling to survive. There was one who had suffered severe asphyxia during birth and was now essentially brain-dead. I couldn't imagine being in her parent's shoes.

I only have one day left in my observation at the private hospital. The grand finale is going to be scrubbing in on surgery on Monday. Due to the lack of privacy laws in this country, there have been rumors that we may be allowed to bring camaras into the OR, so get excited! Apparently at the public hospital next week we might get to see a baby get born. I'm not going to lie, it sounds less than appetizing to me. Maybe it'll be life-affirming and beautiful, but I'm pretty sure it'll just be bloody and gross.

Speaking of bloody and gross, I started shadowing in a research lab this week. There were animal rights protesters outside the building. It was very cute. The lab I'm in works on microglial cell cultures, which is really exciting because that's what I worked with all last summer so I'm already familiar with the protocols and chemicals, etc. It's cool to watch how they do things here because they have so fewer resources but there still manage to do really important science. The research institute I'm shadowing at is the largest in Chile, and they only have ~28 labs.


I got a new camara, so here's some pictures from today:

We went to Bellavista, where we got cotton candy at a little park/zoo thing, and then headed over to Pablo Neruda's Santiago dwelling where we took a really fascinating tour and learned all about his secret love affair and how he built the house to accommodate it. There's also a lot of evidence of destruction/re-building because the house was badly burnt during the 1973 coup. Now I've toured two out of his three houses (see the entry from Vina), so I feel like I have to go back to Valpo and catch the third too.



Tonight we decided to explore a new neighborhood, Ñuñoa, where we visited a microbrewery. (Disclaimer: I am legal drinking age in Chile)
That's my "which one should we choose?" face. The other lovely ladies are Katie and Kirsten. These are the beers we tasted -- rubio (blonde), ambar (amber), and negro (black). I preferred the amber. The "negro" was faaar too intense for me. Kinda tasted like tar. But I guess some people are into that. The rubio tasted like vaguely beer-flavored water.


We decided that even with the poet's house and the microbrewery, we hadn't been quite artsy enough today, so then we went to a Jazz Club.

And that was my day in pictures! Thank you and come again soon.







Chilenismo of the day: Manjar. I'm kinda cheating cus this is actually a food, not a modismo, but it deserves a mention. Manjar is in any chilean candy worth eating, and most desserts...and some savory dishes. It's pretty much the same thing as Dulce de Leche...which is like Caramel made from condensed milk rather than sugar. It's incredible. They make these candies called Afajor, which are like baby cakes with Manjar in the middle, coated in chocolate. I'm making it my duty to try every brand and figure out which is the best and then take a huge box home.

¿Cachai? Sipo.

Riding the metro in Santiago is a blast, and it’s super efficient and speedy and goes to all the places I need to go, but it’s also crowded as hell. At rush hour, it's literally wall-to-wall people, clown-car style. It makes a pretty good environment for pick-pocketing since you’re being bumped and touched all over anyway. So it’s important to keep your backpack OFF your back and within sight, and to keep all valuables somewhere that’s really hard to get to without you noticing. I did none of this things because I’m a dumbass. So anyway, my camara got stolen out of my backpack. I'll get a new one but until then, no more pictures :-(. Luckily I didn't loose any because I had already uploaded it. Here's the last picture my faithful camara took before being stolen from me by the mean metro pickpockets:

That's my host family. Don't I fit right in? Now that I actually understand what everyone's saying (sometimes), I'm starting to get to know them and really loving it. They're a very smart bunch of people, and it's really fun to talk politics with then...or just watch trashy telenovelas (much more common past time).



I just realized I haven’t yet talked about my trip to Maria Pinto on Friday, so I’m going to do so now. Maria Pinto is a rural area (“Comuna” – like a collection of little towns.) The area is very dispersed, lightly populated, but far enough away from the city that they require their own health care system. Our trip was pretty short, just a few hours, but we got to meet the mayor and observe the various forms of health-care providers that exist in the community. There’s one slightly larger one that serves about 6,000 citizens and is open 24hrs, but there isn’t always necessarily a doctor. Then there’s the “Posta Rurales” that serve about 1.000 people each, and are open during very specific hours, which makes sense consider the lack of resources but less so consider the fact that the purpose is to provide emergency care. We didn’t get to speak with any patients but we talked with a few nurses and “tecnicos”…they are like medical technicians/paramedics, who only get 1 or 2 years of training. Most of the time, in the Posta Rurales, that’s all there is…the doctors and nurses are there only 1 or 2 days a week. It’s a little depressing. But what else can they do?

Today was also an adventure, starting out bright and early at 8:30am at the Hospital Clinca de la Pontificia Universidad Catolica. My group was assigned to the “cirugía” unit, which turned out to be less exciting than expected since it was just post-operation care. But we did get to learn a lot by talking with the nurses and patients, and most important by snooping around the files because there’s no such thing as HIPAA in Chile. It’s a teaching hospital, so since we I was wearing a white lab coat and taking notes, no one questioned me when I started searching through files to figure out what surgery a certain patient had just had. Talking to the patients was my favorite part, though. I spent a lot of time talking with a younger-looking man who was undergoing kidney dialysis and has been awaiting a kidney transplant for a year (if I understood his Spanish, which I might not have…). Even though he was hooked up to the machine and stuck in a hospital bed he (along with most of the other patients I talked to) was in pretty good spirits, and very interested in what I had to say about the Chilean healthcare system, how it compared to the one we have in the US, and most importantly, who I had supported in the democratic primary. Such is life, I guess.

I also had a fascinating conversation with a professor who gave our lecture today in the “theory” portion of the observation. He’s a physician who also does epidemiological research (SIDE NOTE: did you know that in 1960, Chilean children under 5 had a malnutrition rate of 60%....guess what it is now? Due to a free milk and nutrition program provided to 100% of children who need it, ZERO percent of Chilean children under 5 are malnourished. Unfortunately, one of the downsides of a country and the children developing so rapidly? …Obesity has become a huge problem. Thank you, globalization. McDonalds for everyone! I find this stuff fascinating, sorry if you don’t care.) ANYWAY, this professor and I had a fascinating conversation after class, comparing our opinions about the health system in the US and it was so interesting to hear his “outside observers” opinion of the US. We eventually segued from healthcare to politics in general. I mentioned how I was surprised by how much the people here care about the outcome of American elections. He said something along the lines of, “When the US sneezes, Chile gets a cold.” It reminded me of the Great Depression section of the Museo Historico Nacional from yesterday. I’m going to blame my ethnocentric schooling for the fact that I had NO IDEA that the NYSE collapse had effected other countries so gravely. I’m kinda embarrassed to admit that now…it makes a lot of sense in retrospect.

Chilenismo of the day: "po" I think it originally started as "pues" which means "well" but now it just gets added to random words, usually "si" and "no" as in, "Sipo" and "nopo" or the anglification, and my personal favorite: "yapo."

Getting into the swing of things...

Sorry it's been so long since my last entry. There's not that much to update you all on...no more volcanos yet. I've been getting into a routine here in Santiago, just going to class and exploring the city. Tomorrow morning I start clinical observations, when I'll have more to talk about.

For those concerned about the state of my social life, do not fret! Friday night I went out to a Discotec with some friends. But I really can't keep up with these Chileans...as I was leaving at 3:30 am, probably the latest I've ever been out in my life, a bunch of people were JUST getting there.

Today I went to the museum of Chilean history. It was really incredible, and cleverly organized. It was chronological as you went through the different rooms, so you literally walked along the decades and centuries from pre-Colombian native history to colonialism to independence, etc. One of the most moving exhibits was also the simplest. The coverage of the Pinochet coup involved a display of half of Allende's glasses, burnt and cracked from when he shot himself as Pincochet bombed his presidential palace. This display is followed by various front-covers of papers from Chile to Spain to England, detailing what occurred on Sept. 11, 1973. It was so simple, but I must have spent at least 20 minutes staring at and trying to comprehend the gravity of it.

Anyway, that's all for today. How're ya'll doing back in Michigan?


Chilenismo of the day: ¿Cachai? = "You understand me?" Usually my answer is "no."

Long update...Santiago, Pucon, and Volcano Pictures!

Before talking about Pucon, I just want to update you all quickly about Santiago. After two weeks I'm starting to get the feel of the city...I'm using the micros (buses) and the metro like a pro...at least around the streets I frequent...and during the daylight hours I've started talking walks (don't worry parents, only in the safe areas) to loose myself in the crowds and listen to the noises of the city. It's hard getting used to the pace of life here, though. Even when I'm just walking around for leisure, I always want to walk significantly faster than the Chilenos, and I get annoyed when I'm stuck behind them. My NYU friends (hi Sarah!) would probably drop dead here from the slow pace of the sidewalk traffic. After so much time in Boston and visiting NYC, I'm used to rapid-fire walking pace of American businesspeople and students. Now I get stuck behind men in fancy suits taking it really slooow as they walk back to the office from lunch, laughing and enjoying their cigarettes (everyone smokes here, sad news for the smog). I think we could definitely learn some from them, though. Why are we always in such a rush? Why not walk a little slower, let our heart rates settle and our anxiety subside for a few short minutes as we move from place to place? . . . this is why I'm a science major and not a philosopher, but you get what I'm saying, ya?


Anyway, on to PUCON:
I think the quote that embodies this trip came from Lauren M: "Where did you think we were going??" She said it several times...first when I wasn't sure I brought my bathing suit for the hot springs, then when I was shocked by the notion that we would need warm hats to wear during our hike, and again when I didn't have long underwear, and again when I didn't have gloves, etc. It's a lot of objects that don't seem to go together, of course I was confused!

To be fair, the last time I climbed a volcano, in Guatemala, it as really hot and there was no snow involved at all. I think I wore a tank top and shorts. I just didn't realize until the day before when they were fitting us for snow pants and ice picks and shoe clamp things that we were climbing a volcano that was completely covered in ice/snow. As in, a glacier. There's skiing in the later winter months. That kind of covered in snow. I was thinking like, a sprinkling of snow at the top. I don't know why...I could see from the town that the thing was huge and completely white, but I must have blocked it out somehow because the night before we hiked it I had to rush around finding a hat, scarf, sunglasses (there's no trees and the sun on the snow is inteeense). But I was prepared by the time the hiking began. We made it pretty far -- all the way to the cinder cone (about 5 hrs of hiking) but we didn't summit because Reva, who has bronchitis and was pretty stupid but brave for deciding to climb the volcano anyway, starting getting really sick. Going down was the best part (see pictures below).



And now, the volcano in pictures. I don't have pictures from the hot springs yet, but they were reeeally nice.


Anyone want to ski an active volcano? No thanks, we'd rather hike...(and the lifts don't open till July, which sucked because usually you don't have to hike this part, you just take the lift and start from there). It's about two extra hours of hiking.



Here's me, Reva, the other Lauren, Katie, Elizabeth, and our new friends from France and Brazil further up the volcano. Here is the remains of what used to be another chairlift...skiers don't go this high now unless they climb. It was destroyed in 1984 during the last eruption. Pretty cool, ya?



Here's Katie, me, and Lauren at the highest part we got to...you can see the cinder cone and the smoking hole. It was really cool. And cold. And exhausting! But the chocolate snacks we brought tasted ooooh so good. And then we got to climb back DOWN...



Did I say climb? I meant slide. It was AWESOME.


So that was Pucon! Now I'm back in Santiago, chilling at my house in Las Condes with the host fam. I had a quiz in my seminar today and tomorrow we have a quiz in our medical spanish class. Plus an essay due on Thursday. I think I'm going to try to compare FONASA (chilean public health insurance system) and Medicaid. I'm LOVING learning about the Chilean health system. It just fascinates me. Our professors keep saying that oh, Chile is just a developing country so of course we shouldn't expect such-and-such to be as good as it is in the US....or, the students are protesting because in developing countries, the education system isn't as good as in the US...etc, etc. It's hard to have our health and education systems with all of their many MANY problems put on such a pedestal. Everyone wants to know how it works in the US, and it's kind of sad when I have to burst their bubble by telling them that our health system fucks over a very, VERY large portion of the population on a regular basis. For example, a friend of mine from this program has a "pre-existing" heart condition, and because of it she can only get one kind of insurance in one state in the whole country, and so she can't move out of that state, and she has to pay an absurd amount of money for the coverage she does get. We're all created equal, but not equally healthy...so the insurance companies get to piss on the people who need them most. Because giving health care to the sick people would just make too much sense.

Ok, that turned into more of a rant than I intended but I'm too lazy to edit it, so enjoy! I'm going to go learn me some spanish. Adios!

- Lauren

FYI

Just a quick heads up to let everyone know that I´m in Pucon right now, in the south of Chile (it´s beeeautiful and coooold here) with limited access to internet, etc. We took a surprisingly fancy overnight bus...they gave us cookies and coffee in the morning, it was super legit.

I got skype the other day so now I can call people using my computer for 2 cents a minute. Yay! Anyway, I have to go and I promise an update about all my Puconian adventures (I´m climbing a volcano tomorrow...in the snow!)

Escuela

Tuesday we had our first seminar, which is the theoretical portion of the clinical observation. It was long and the professors were hard to understand, but it was really really interesting. They started off the semester by giving us a crash-course in the Chilean healthcare system, which was super useful and fascinating. They have a mixed public-private system here, with public hospitals that are free and/or very cheap depending on your tax bracket (and pretty universally considered to be shitty), and then extremely expensive private hospitals. During the observation we'll have the opportunity to visit both and talk with doctors and patients there. I'm really excited to learn more about their system.

We also had our first medical spanish class. That class is much less interesting, but I know it'll be good for me to know once the clinical observations come around.

Last night I had my friend Reva over to dinner at my host family. It's her birthday today and my family was all excited to feed her huge amounts of food in celebration. It was a blast. I taught the whole family how to toast "L'Chaim!" Yay for intercultural sharing. My host dad cooked up a storm. Those who make fun of my vegetarian militantism at home will be pleased to know that I ate lamb ribs. It was actually pretty delicious when I didn't think about what I was eating. But no, this does not mean I'm going to be eating meat again when I get home! It's a cultural experience. A very tasty cultural experience.

We've had beautiful weather the past view days. It's been highs of 60, and the smog hasn't been too awful, so the mountains are usually in full view, which is incredible. I'm going to try to organize some sort of hiking or skiing adventure soon...I really want to get out there and see them up close!

- L

Chillin' in Chile

This is going to be an entry mostly in pictures, because words can’t capture what I’ve been experiencing. This past weekend I traveled to Valparaiso and Isla Negra, which are costal cities an hour and a half or so from Santiago. At Isla Negra we saw Pablo Neruda’s favorite house. It’s incredible, and the views of the ocean are breathtaking. A picture’s worth a thousand words, so here you go. This is one of the many amazing views from his home. He also has a bunch of crazy collections in the house, of bizarre things from bugs to doorknobs.


We stayed the night at El Hostel Yoyo in Valparaiso. It’s a really colorful and lively place with guests from all over the world. I spent some time talking politics with people from France, Belgium, and the UK. It was a lot of fun. Here’s a picture of Kirsten and me by our beds at the hostel. Kirsten is my awesome new friend. She's staying in Santiago for 6 months, doing a semester after the summer program...I'm so jealous! Anyway, Valparaiso is a great city, built right into a bunch of crazy hills. Some of the parts of the city you have to take acendores (kind of like weird elevators built into the mountains) to get to the streets. Some were built in the 19th century, so they are awesome but creepy.




Finally, today we were back in Santiago and we decided to go to Cerro Santa Lucia, a beautiful hill that was turned into a park, with stairs and buildings leading up to a beautiful view. Here’s a few pictures of the trip up and the view from the top (note the mountains in the background!):



Anyway, other than all of that I've just been spending time exploring the city. I love it here so much. There's always new sights to see and places to go, and I haven't even left the metro red line yet... Santiago is a lot like an American city, but with lots of quirks that are purely Latin American. I do have to admit, however, that I am currently in Starbucks. I try to stick to the more authentic spaces but nothing else was open this late. Besides, it came with recommendations from my host sister.

Adios amigos! Thanks for the comments and emails.

- Lauren

After 2 days of orientation....

I've learned so much in just 2 days, mostly from talking with my host family but also in the culture/language classes. Mostly about communication...they aren't supposed to speak any english at all with me, even if they can (I think the papa does, but he won't admit it). I understand most of the time when they direct a question towards me and talk slower, but when they talk amongst themselves I get pretty lost. It's so strange to feel this sense of removal from my surroundings. I think it's a good experience, though, because it forces me to be more aware of myself, and to pay more attention to body language and facial expressions.

Anyway, today it rained. That's not a sufficient word for it. It RAINED. The streets turned into a river, I was soaked up to my knees, everytime a bus went by it sprayed water in my face. So of course today was the day that we were doing most of our orientation outside. We did an activity where we split into groups of three, and they gave us a location and an address and we had to use the public transportation to find it, and then explore the place we were given to answer some questions. My group went to Pueblito Los Dominicos (http://www.pueblitolosdominicos.com/). It was amazing, and we didn't even get lost finding it. The metro here is awesome, it's cleaner than the T, and really safe and efficient. I have to take it every day to get to classes, which I really enjoy. Of course, like a lot of cities, Santiago is very segregated and I haven't left the wealthy areas yet. We're going to later, to do a comparison of the public and private hospitals. I've heard it's a real eye-opening experience. Speaking of which, there's a ton of protests going on right now about the educational system. According to AP, "The protesters insist that an education bill sent to Congress by President Michelle Bachelet fails to meet their demand for greater national control over education and for free public transportation. Students currently pay one-third of the full fare." Don't worry, parents, I'm staying far away from it...the police here use tear gas, and I think over 200 students have been arrested.

In lighter news, I'm loving learning all the silly Chilenismos that they have here. My favorite is "pololo/polola" (boyfriend/girlfriend). Also, they say "guagua" for baby, which is funny because in other countries, "guagua" means bus. Part of my homework is to go over a few Chilenismos and typical foods and drinks (the alcoholic kind) with my family. It was a ton of fun. Tonight my host mom had her mother, cousin and niece all over. Along with the usual crowd that lives here we had a mini party with delicious cheese and ceviche, and my host mama provided practical examples of some of the drinks...so everyone had a good time with my homework.

OK, I think that's all for right now. Hopefully tomorrow it'll stop raining. I've heard that after it rains, the smog lifts and you can finally see the mountains clearly. I caught a glimpse today and it was breathtaking.

Much love to everyone!

- Lauren

Mi Familia Chilena

Hi again!

I survived my first day in Chile. Santiago is a great city from what I’ve seen so far. It’s industrial and modern, but also has cool colonial buildings in the mix. The people are friendly…I got a kiss on the right cheek from every member of my host family as I was introduced. The only thing that I don’t like about the city is the smog…Santiago is surrounded by beautiful mountain ranges, but I can’t see them except on very rare occasion when the smog lifts. It’s also sort of depressing to never be able to see the sky. When we were flying in it was literally like we were entering some kind of hidden land below the mountains magically tucked away from all view by this dense layer of opaque cloudy grossness. (Actually, from the sky it kinda looked pretty…)

I haven’t had classes yet, just spent the day chilling out with my host mom mostly. Right now we’re watching the news. There is really no escaping the democratic primary, but at least here they spend significant time on other things also. We just got back from the supermarket (the largest supermarket I have ever seen in my life…think bigger than Costco) where my host mother got me the most delicious ice cream (helado) I have ever tasted. It was mango-y and creamy and just general deliciousness.

My whole host family is really great. The father is an engineer and the mother is a businesswoman who paints and makes jewelry. They live in a Las Condes, the financial district of Santiago. The house is small, but cozy. There’s no central heating, though, which is the only real adjustment I’ve had to make. But there’s wifi so I might as well be in host family heaven. My host mother (Mary) also introduced me to this really weird but delicious drink called Ecco. It’s sort of like really watery coffee, but it’s made out of barley or something like that. Very weird, but tasty if you cover it in sugar and milk.

OK, a little about the family now. Mary and Bernardo have three children: a son named Erick who is an engineer, a daughter named Edda who is a biology professor (we get along really well, clearly) and another daughter named Lena who I haven’t met yet because she’s getting married soon so she’s always over at her novio’s house. Mary’s mother is living here right now, too. She and Mary are both really funny and quirky women. We have a lot of fun together…and there’re only laughing at me most of the time.

Since I slept through most of the day, that’s all I have to comment on right now. More to come later!

I wrote this on the plane...

Hey all,

Welcome to my blog. Here I will post self-indulgent, probably boring and wordy ramblings throughout the summer. Get excited! For two months I’m doing a study abroad program in Santiago, Chile and staying with a host family, and then for two weeks I’ll be playing with animals at a refuge in Ecuador. Right now I’m on a very long plane ride. It’s 1 am…I left Detroit around 7pm, and I won’t be getting to Santiago until 7:30 am. It’s a really friggin long plane ride…so it makes me understandably disappointed that I’m not even leaving the Eastern Standard timezone. Another interesting consequence of traveling straight south: it’s WINTER below the Ecuador. I feel like that should be in big letters on the wikipedia page for Chile, because I had no idea when I signed up for this program. So don’t expect me to come home beautifully tanned…unless I get UV exposure from the hole in the Ozone layer. Yum…

Since I might not have internet access until tomorrow, by the time I post this I’ll probably have much more interesting and Chilean stories to tell, but for now you’re stuck reading about my airport misadventures. Because I am bored and there’s 6 hours still to go. Or you can skip this entry and move on the exotic stuff, but that’d be rude so don’t. I’ll know if you have. I have spies. In your computer. (Just kidding…you can open the porn back up now).

Anyway. My travels began excitingly when I set off the metal detector…so I took off my earrings, necklace, headband, etc etc…but I kept setting it off. Finally I had to have a private pat down in which the metal-detecting culprit was discovered to be my bra. After being felt up by airport security, I made it to my gate. But I couldn’t get on the flight because it appeared that someone else had already boarded with my seat number. It turned out the dude had gotten on the wrong plane, he was supposed to be in seat 22E on a different airline’s flight to Atlanta. It was a truly sad experience having to take a seat from that poor confused guy. The woman sitting next to me seemed to blame me for his misfortune and gave me really mean looks the whole plane ride. Also I think she stole my pretzels. Then the girl sitting behind me peed her pants during landing because she was scared to use the airplane bathroom. It was adorable.

Now I’m on the international leg of my flight, and have discovered very quickly that I’m entirely incapable of understanding Chilean Spanish. I tried to converse with plane neighbor guy, and he had to repeat everything three times muuuuy lento…and it still sounded like he was very quickly repeating the same two consonants and three vowels over and over. Oh dear. Plane neighbor guy also repeated at least seven times that I should be prepared for it to be “muy muy frio” in Chile. Apparently I’m not the only one who makes that mistake about the whole hemisphere-season issue.

One final note: To all my friends, please keep in mind that my parents and grandparents are reading this blog. Don’t post anything that you don’t want them to read.