Time flies! I can’t believe I have already spent the last five and half weeks here in Chile, living with my Chilean family and learning Spanish at the local university. The program ended this week, but my trip hasn’t finished yet. After coming to Chile, I realized how unique this country is, and had decided to pay a visit to Easter Island (Rapa Nui) for 4 days since it won’t be easy to have another chance or time to travel there again in the future. Luckily, my host mom has a friend, Claudia, living on the island and is willing to share her house with me for these days.

The flight from Santiago to Easter Island takes nearly 6 hours and only serves once a day in the early morning. I arrived at Easter Island around 12:30pm. Claudia recognized me immediately and welcomed me with a purple garland. The island is warmer than mainland Chile. There is a commercial center contains most hostels, restaurants and souvenir shops near the airport; while other parts of the island largely maintain the natural landscape and the original lifestyle.

It is a magical place! Hundreds of “Moai” scatter along the coastline of this small island; the aboriginal people still keep their traditional way of living and give dancing performances for the visitors at night; the local tour guide tells different legends of his ancestors and mysterious stories he experienced as a kid; the huge died volcano filled with clear water makes this place peaceful as well as dangerous.

I was amazed by these tremendous “Moai”. They all have distinct features and facial expressions that represent different kings from the past. I viewed them in the dawn light and in the dusk of the evening; under the bright sunshine and under the vast starry sky. They seem to be them guardians of this island, protecting it from any potential harm. The ocean surrounds the island, always shimmered in the sunlight, and makes the island prettier.

Besides the natural views, the human side of the island is also quite interesting. I met two boys from Taiwan during my first day of the trip, and we soon became travel mates. We went to this traditional dinner together and watched a fantastic show afterwards.

I am so grateful to have the opportunity to come here and learn more about this world. It makes me wonder how big the world really is and want to explore it more with my own eyes.

Since it is almost the final week of my study in Valparíso, I decide to use Spanish to describe this colorful city I have enjoyed a lot and my wonderful experience in these past weeks:

Valparaíso es una ciudad muy importante en Chile que tiene una historia larga. Antes de la conquista, la bahía se llamaba Alimapu, y estaba poblada por grupos pequeños de índigenas pescadores que ocupaban los valles y la costa. En 1536, el capitán don Juan de Saavedra y Diego de Almagro descubrieron la bahía, y la renombraron “Valparaíso”, en recuerdo de su pueblo natal en Europa. La conquista era para buscar el poder y las riquezas en la ciudad nueva, por ejemplo las grandes cantidades de oro. Aunque no había mucho dinero en Valparaíso, fue designado como un puerto natural de Santiago y permaneció conquistado por muchos años. En 1818, los chilenos ganaron la Guerra de la Independencia, y rompieron el bloqueo español del puerto de Valparaíso. Desde 1818 hasta 1914, era la epoca de Gloria. Muchas construcciónes surgieron en la ciudad—el primer banco, la primera bolsa de valores, las escuelas, los ascensores, etcétera. Por eso, se convirtió en el centro de economía y ofreció muchos trabajos para las personas.

La historia pasada y el desarrollo en los últimos años traen una cultura distinta a Valparaíso. Debido a la integración cultural, hay una rica mezcla de varios estilos de vida en la misma ciudad. En clase, nosotros visitamos el Puerto de Valparaíso y la zona alrededor de la Plaza Sotomayor. Los lugares todavía conservan un sabor antiguo y la influencia de los europeos. La calle que tiene el primer banco y la primera bolsa de valores es como “Wall Street” en Estados Unidos. También es una demostración del comercio de Valparaíso más de 100 años. Mientras, el Puerto con una gran cantidad de las exportaciónes y las importaciónes todos los días domina la economía del país. Entonces, el aspecto económico es muy crucial para Valparaíso y Chile en general. Por otro lado, el barrio residencial y la feria por los locales que visitamos muestran la atmósfera diferente. Los lugares son más tranquilos y relajados. Hay parques pequeños y mercados convenientes dentro de los barrios para la vida diaria. La integración armónica hace de Valparaíso una ciudad próspera y diversa.

Además de las excursiones con la profesora, yo fui a algunos lugares divertidos en la ciudad con mis amigos y mi familia chilena después de las clases o en el fin de semana. A veces, nosotros ibamos a las playas diferentes, por ejemplo Laguna Verde y las playas de Viña, para caminar por la costa o ver el atardecer en el tiempo bueno. Me gustan las playas mucho porque nunca vivo en un lugar cerca del mar. Para mí, es tan relajada simplemente ver el mar en calma por algunos minutos. Además, entre todos los lugares que conocí en Valparaíso, me encanta el Cerro Alegre muchísimo. Como su nombre indica, el lugar tiene el ambiente de alegría y la cultura de hippies. Normalmente, yo tomaba un ascensor en Bellavista y luego caminaba en las calles. Las calles son muy lindas a causa del graffiti precioso. Las pintadas en las paredes son muy vívidas y coloridas. También existen cafés muy bonitos y las heladerías amables allí. Por lo tanto, estos elementos componen el lugar distinto a otros partes de Valparaíso.

En general, yo creo que Valparaíso es una ciudad rica y variada. Hay varios aspectos de la misma. Por el lado humanístico, yo siento la cultura artística y literaria a través de vivir en la ciudad y estudiar en la universidad por cinco semanas. Existen muchas personas que están interesadas en la escritura, la pintura y la música. Incluso el escritor famoso, Pablo Neruda, tiene una casa en Valparaíso (La Sebastiana) para escribir los poemas y disfrutar de la vida. Por el lado de recreo, Valparaíso tiene muchas comidas deliciosas y muchos lugares del turismo, por ejemplo los cerros, los paseos, los museos y las plazas. Para mí, Valparaíso es una ciudad fascinante con incontables rincones que descubrir, incluso algunos paseos miradores construidos entre los cerros pero no son reconocidos por los turistas. Finalmente, por el lado de política, el congreso del gobierno se construye en Valparaíso. Debido a la distancia corta entre esta ciudad y Santiago, los departamentos del gobierno pueden trabajar juntos fácilmente. Al mismo tiempo, el poder central se separa.

My host family is incredible! After 4 weeks of living together with them at the house, I have already felt to be a member of the family for a long time. In Chile, it is really popular for the family to have “once” instead of a typical dinner at night. It is like the afternoon tea in England that the local people simply eat bread with cheese or butter and have a cup of tea or coffee for dinner. However, my host mom is super nice that she always prepares me with a separate dinner in case I am hungry. She is a great cook! She cooks different local food for me every day. She makes me start to expect every new meal since they all become an opportunity to taste the real and delicious Chilean food. I am used to have dinner plus “once” at the table with my Chilean family while having some TV shows played at the background.

For a typical weekday, I normally come back home at around 5:30pm and finish my homework before eat. The dinner is my favorite time with the family since we can talk on various topics for couple hours and watch the Chilean drama or comedy together. My host mom was once a social worker, and I was working at a Catholic Worker House in Rochester last summer. So our conversations often revolve around community service, different culture of the countries and music as well. On weekends, my host mom often introduces me to her friends or other family members, or takes me to different local places, such as “la playa verde”, “la feria”, and the biggest shopping mall in the city. Among all of them, I enjoy the “feria” most. It is a huge open market for vegetables and fruits that only comes out on Tuesdays and Saturdays. The fruits and vegetables are super fresh and cheap that all the local families will grab a small cart and buy everything they need for a whole week.

After 4 weeks of staying in Valparaíso and Viña del Mar, I have been to a lot of interesting places. The three most famous “cerros” in Valpo witness the history and represent every aspect of the city. There are so many street paintings in these “cerros”, so colorful and artistic; many small shops selling manufacture products like earrings an post cards; a lot of stray dogs walking around as they are the real master of this place; several cute cafes for a quick rest and a glance of the beautiful view; and of course a couple of fancy restaurants with huge windows and phenomenal foods. Compared to Valpo, Viña is less commercial, but more about a residential area for the Chileans. The city is new and modern with a street of restaurants and pubs along the coastline and a huge shopping center for the residents. The community is quiet but well rounded. The two cities connect to each other by the convenient public transportation that people can easily travel around.

During my time here, the government is trying to make an education reform that doesn’t really satisfy the students. Therefore, a lot of college students go out on strike and don’t show up in class. Most colleges have no choice but to cancel class and end the semester earlier. Students go on streets and start the movement in order to show their dissatisfaction with the authority and fight for their rights. I am not quite familiar with the Chilean politics and can’t say much about this issue or speak up for anybody. But it gives me a distinct perspective to better understand the country and its society, and makes me think more like a Chilean.

My time in Chile went by really fast. It has already been my third week here at the university. The two courses I take have proved to be truly impactful, challenging and fascinating. I have class all morning from Monday to Friday, and usually spend the afternoon discovering the city with my friends from school.

The “grammar” class I take strongly improves my Spanish skill, especially in reading and writing. We did a lot of practices in class as well as short writing assignments as homework every day after class. I also started to be more cautious when talking with my host family—trying to always keep in mind the sentence structures and use the correct forms of personal and tense as much as possible. During the other “culture and conversation” class, the professor offered as many opportunities as possible for students to talk freely in Spanish about their experiences here and their understandings on Chilean culture. The topics vary from the history of Valpo and its geographical importance to the best places to eat and highlights of the city. One of the most interesting things we learnt in class is “Chilenismos”, which is the idiom in Chilean Spanish. Here are some popular vocabularies they use in daily life:

Polólo/polóla: means boyfriend or girlfriend

Bacán: means cool

Al tiro: means right now

Ya: always used by the Chilean to express “sí” in a more common way

Lata: means poor or bad, normally used to describe a situation, like “Qué lata!”

The best thing about learning a language in its speaking country is I can actually practice the new knowledge right away in real life. I began to catch these slangs casually on the streets and use them from time to time when talking with the locals. I felt to be a member of this community more than any other time.

Also in this week, I had a unique experience through class by visiting the ancient indigene “Ruca Mapuche” and tasting the typical food of this tribe. We learnt about their religion and special worship of gods, watched the performance of traditional musical instruments, and played the field hockey with the kids. This past experience added another character to the uniqueness of Chilean culture, and provided me with a broader and deeper perspective to view the country.

After the first week of adaptation, I became much more confident talking in Spanish and more comfortable living as a Chilean. Through either daily class or my host family, I observed, experienced and have learnt a lot about the local’s culture and their lifestyle. Like most of the local people, I always take the public transportation for school, such as “metro”, “micro” and “colectivo”. Among them, I really enjoy taking the “metro” since it gives me the chance to look at the city closely by myself and get involved with different groups of Chilean people. Through the window of the train, I watched the sunrise from the end of the extremely blue ocean every morning, saw the young couples kissing sweetly on the bridge, and viewed several people with bright uniforms running along the coastline. On the train, I listened to the folk songs played by the busker, played with the little kids travelling with their mother, and sometimes bought a snack from those low-income people. I began to notice the distinct social classes within society and how various people make a life.

Furthermore, this weekend we spent both Saturday and Sunday on two different excursions near Viña del Mar and Valparaíso. On Saturday, we did a full-day trip visiting the “playas del norte” in order to appreciate the beaches that make up the country’s coastline. Firstly, we stopped at a couple of spots in Concón to see the beautiful sand dunes and diverse rock formations along the coastline. Then, we moved forward to Horcón, which is predominantly a coastal village of fishermen and artisans. Here we saw a bunch of small restaurants and souvenir shops that represent a more traditional type of Chilean family—getting along by fishing in the ocean and making or selling some small handicrafts. The prevalence of the sea and the fishing industry are strongly performed in this area. The locals all keep the simplest lifestyle. We even saw a bridge to the sea for the locals to make wishes and worship the power of the sea. Lastly, we went to the exclusive seaside resort Zapallar, which shows an opposite side of Horcón. Zapallar lives the people from the top economic and social class in Chile. All of the houses and streets are carefully decorated with pretty stones and plants, and there is no stray dog anywhere in this area. The beautiful beach here is only for people to relax and have fun in the ocean.

On Sunday, we visited Isla Negra and the most popular house of Pablo Neruda on it. This time, we saw another aspect of the country—the literary part. The special geographical feature of the long coastline on one side and continuous hills on the other side not only boasts the fishing industry, but also offers a lot of inspiration for creative work, like the poetry, the painting and even the graffiti on the streets. All of these different aspects make Chile a distinctive country in the world and give me more reasons to learn more about this country!

I arrived in Santiago, Chile on May 9^th, and spent the first couple days in the capital with other students from the International Studies Abroad (ISA) program. While in Santiago, we visited a lot of interesting places in order to learn more about this country, for example, La Moneda, Cerro Santa Lucía, Cerro Critóbal, Plaza de Armas, and Mercado Central de Santiago. Moreover, we also paid a visit to a pottery town and spent a day at the oldest vineyard near Santiago.

We arrived in Viña del Mar the following Saturday evening. From now on, I will spend the next 5 weeks with my host family in this city. All my classes will be at the Universidad Católica in Valparaíso, which is another beautiful city right next to Viña. This past week was pretty busy with various orientations with ISA and the university (PUCV), several excursion trips in both Viña and Valparaíso, and my first three days of class.

Unlike Santiago, Viña and Valpo are two smaller cities close to each other along the coastline with better climate. Therefore, the weather is pretty warm here despite the fact that it is winter in Chile. There are also a number of historic and cultural landmarks in these cities like Santiago. In the afternoon after class, we visited some famous sightseeing spots like Reloj de Flores, Museo Fonck, Plaza Sotomayor, Paseo 21 de Mayo, etc.

My Chilean family is wonderful and very welcoming. My Chilean mom introduced me to all the family members on the first day of my arrival on a welcoming party. Normally, the mom, the grandma and one of the sons would live in the house with me. Sometimes, the elder son with his daughter would come for the weekends. I have spent hours talking with my Chilean family everyday, trying to practice my Spanish as much as possible and learn more about this new culture and custom, even though I could barely express myself on the first couple days. My host family is super nice that they always help me when I have difficulty on expressing myself, and is super patient listening to me, correcting my grammar, and talking with me about all the different topics. I could not be happier to live with them for more weeks.

Regarding my first week of school, I chose two intermediate level courses at the PUCV—“Intensive grammar” and “Chilean culture and conversation” since I believe I can get the most from these two classes by building up my grammar and vocabulary and practicing my conversational skill. In addition, I signed up for a writing tutor session once a week and a Spanish language table with local university students every Friday. I really look forward to all the following classes and activities at the university!