Settling into Santiago

So it's been 2 weeks since I've been back from Brazil, and life in Santiago is finally settling down. My first week back, I told you all that I moved out of my home stay into an apartment in a very busy part of the city, Providencia, with a young chilean couple, Vania (22) and Matias (25), and since then, 4 new roommates have moved in! 2 French students, Nicolas and Damien (both 22), and 2 Spanish students, Patricia (24) and Mónica (20). We are 7 people in total, and it couldn't be more fun! Since I've moved in (I was the first foreign student to claim a room), we've been sharing dinners and taking turns cooking for eachother, and it really feels like we're a family already. 

Our apartment couldn't be in a better location, either. We are right in between 2 metro stops and a fairly big bus terminal where busses from all over Santiago stop, so transportation is super easy. The public transportation system in Santiago, Transantiago, is actually fairly new. In 2006, Michele Bachelet, Chile's current president, governmentalized the previously privately-owned bus system to make a new one that united the Metro and bus systems and, according to Santiaguinos, has been nothing but problems. Some things about the new system have been good, like the implementation of the Bip! card (named so because of the noise it makes), which is a card that you put money on flash in front of a little box on the busses or the metro to get on. This was good because before, there were a lot of robberies on busses, because the bus drivers carried all the cash that people paid with. However, the bad part about Transantiago is that literally over night, Santiago went from having 9 thousand busses on the streets to 2 thousand, which sent people down to the previously unoccupied metros, and making everything, both busses and metros more croweded. Also, with the new system came different bus routes, eliminating a lot that would take people directly to their destinations, meaning that now people have to get up much earlier so they can get to work on time, making a lot of transfers. Above all, Transantiago is much more expensive than the old system, making the Santiaguinos even more mad. For me, I do notice that a lot of times busses will pass me by while I'm waiting because their too crowded, and other times, I have to wait for a few metros to pass for the same reason, so I can actually get on, but for the most part, it takes me where I need to go, and in a couple of weeks I'm going to get a "pase escolar" which is a student Bip! card, which will save me a lot of money on transportation, which I use almost every day.

Speaking of getting a student pass for Transantiago, I started school this week! But let me tell you, it was super stressful to try and figure out my schedule. We all had an academic advising schedule last week, so we could look at the schedule of classes (which was by no means finalized) so we could make a list of some classes that interested us, so we could check them out. At the Universiy of Chile, students have 2 weeks to "shop" for classes before they finalize their schedules, so I went to about 6 classes this week, even though I will only be choosing 2. In total this semester, I will have 3 classes (one is a mandatory class from my EAP program called Culture and Politics in Chile and an internship with English Opens Doors. Right now I'm still trying to decide which classes I will take but I've narrowed my choices down to 3 (an Art History class about Latinamerica's colonial period, a History of Latinamerican Theater class, and a Pablo Neruda/Gabriela Mistral Literature class), so after a call to my academic advisor in Santa Barbara next week, I will have a real schedule!

In other news, I went on an adventure yesterday when I didn't have class, to find the University's pool because I was thinking about also signing up for a swimming class. And good news! I found it and swam for the first time in about 3 months! The pool, luckily, is located right across the street from a metro stop, so it will be really easy for me to get there. Also, they have free swim periods, that students don't have to pay for, every day. In other good news, during these free swim periods, they have people standing on the deck that give work outs to people that want them, so basically, I will be able to get a free work out, with out the committment of having to attend a class! I won't get units for it of course, but I think it will be a great way to meet new people, and have fun!

Today, once all my roommates get up, we're going to take a trip together to La Vega, which is a big market that has fresh fruits and veggies, to shop for the week, and later this afternoon, we're going to have an asado (BBQ) on Cerro San Cristóbal with a bunch of other friends, so it should be a very nice day.

Attatched are some views of the city that I've been taking, and I hope you enjoy them!

Settling into Santiago