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