Santiago and s'mores.

Two Thursdays ago I ran out of my rural sociology lecture to eat lunch, pack my backpack, and run out of my house in the direction of the bus station. I had one hour between class and my bus ticket to Santiago, and I had not planned/packed adequately beforehand. This left me with 20 minutes to get to the bus terminal, which isn’t far from my house…however, in my hurry to get there, I jumped in the first group taxi I saw that said “terminal”, and as the driver took an unexpected turn, I learned it was going to the OTHER bus terminal in Conce. An anxious wait and taxi ride later, I arrived at my bus, in the correct terminal, which, thank goodness, was running behind schedule.

All of this rushing around was for a good reason: I had plans to meet up with Celine and Lauren, two friends from Midd, at the Hillsong United concert in Santiago. My bus would be arriving one hour and twenty minutes before the concert, so I really couldn’t delay the trip. I arrived safely, successfully navigated the metro (subway), and found my friends! It was good to see them. As we walked into the concert, obviously foreigners, and obviously traveling (I was carrying my big backpack), a reporter started asking us questions. Lauren’s theory is that they were hoping we were crazy Hillsong fanatics, following the group on their tour. We disappointed them--students studying in Chile aren’t quite as exciting.

Exciting or not, the concert was interesting. Hillsong is a Christian worship band, based out of Hillsong Church in Australia. I was familiar with their music, but have never followed their songs or known their repertoire too well, thanks to my lack of experience in youth groups. Although the concert was introduced as a time of worship, it felt much more like a concert. I’m glad I went, if for nothing else than to experience a sea of cell-phone and digital camera LCD screens lighting the crowd in old-school cigarette-lighter fashion, and to take a few short videos for my host sister, Irina, who is 11 and loves Hillsong and really wanted to go see them live.

Celine's friends, Celine, me, and Lauren:

Anyway, enough about that. Lauren and I stayed in a hostel in Santiago, and spent the next day seeing the city with her Chilean man, Martín. We did the typical Plaza de Armas, museum, Cerro Santa Lucía (hill/garden in the city), and met up with Celine and her friend Luciano for awhile. The museum we went to was the “Museo de Bellas Artes”…Museum of Beautiful Art? Jaimie, a friend from Midd, had recommended it to me, and I really liked it. The art was really politically/ religiously charged, and I liked feeling like a cultured person, trying to interpret art. Ha.

The Bellas Artes metro stop. Love it.

And…what is that? Of course, a pyramid of human teeth.

Some kind of religious/ ruling type figures, along with bacteria, viruses, cultural tragedies and transvestites. Hmm.

And art made out of beads. Liked this one.

View of Santiago from Cerro Santa Lucía.

Saturday morning started our “excursion” with the Middlebury Program. The majority of the Midd students studying in Chile came to Santiago do some culture and nature. This meant that we hopped on a bus to go to the “Park of Peace”, a memorial site in Santiago which used to be called Villa Grimaldi. During the military dictatorship, which started in 1973, Villa Grimaldi was a secret government-run torture center, created for the treatment of political prisoners. The title “political prisoner” basically meant “anyone who supported/supports the previous president (Allende) and his socialistic ideals.” I’m oversimplifying this, but the general idea is that Villa Grimaldi represents a lot about the dictatorship. It was an intense visit—our guide had been detained there for thirteen months as a law student in the ‘70s—and we learned a lot about how the center had worked, specific methods of torture, etc. Although it was pretty sickening, I am glad we went. It’s important that people remember the horrifying things sometimes, and recognize the progress that’s been made in their wake.

We followed this by a visit to the General Cemetery of Santiago, which I really enjoyed. I know the words “enjoyment” and “cemetery” don’t usually arrive in the same context, but there we are. In general, I find cemeteries to be really peaceful places, and this one’s structure was an interesting social commentary of sorts…the importance of class, or inequality between classes, was very apparent. Where we entered, the tombs were large, elaborate, a lot of them basically family-sized mausoleums. There were trees and other plant life between these, but a lot of cement, with street signs naming the “roads” between tombs. As we progressed through the cemetery, the tombs became less and less impressive. We passed the “apartments", pictured below, and finally the graves that are in the ground, also pictured.

Big, “important” tomb

“Apartment”-style burial.

Burial in the ground...

Burial site of people who were buried without identification during the dictatorship, who since have been identified.

To change the pace after all of our culturing, we got back on the bus and took a little drive to el Cajón del Maipo, a valley/canyon in the Andes. Our destination was Cascada de las Ánimas, a resort and campground where we were to spend the night. We stayed in cute little cabins and shared delicious, good meals together. On Sunday morning we took a hike to some waterfalls (“cascadas” in Spanish) before eating lunch and heading out.

Drinking tea in our cabin.

Got to love some nature (see the snowcapped mountain tips in the distance?!).

Amy and me!

It was a really nice weekend. I was glad to get to know Santiago a bit better, as well as getting to meet Martín and Celine’s friends. It was also good to get to talk with the other Midd students. Some of them had flights home earlier this week, others will be staying through January, but in whatever case, we talked a lot about our experiences in Chile…it was a nice way to start wrapping the semester up.

Don’t expect to hear from me for awhile…I’m heading off on Wednesday on a flight to the north! Where there are deserts! Amy and I will be traveling together, heading to San Pedro de Atacama and various other cities in northern Chile. We’re planning on bringing lots of bottled water and sunscreen. Be back late on December 9! Time is flying. After this bout of traveling, I’ll have a field trip for one of my classes, a number of final assignments, and only twelve more days in Chile! Wow.

Hope you all are well!

Love and bus tickets,
Tiernan

P.S. Almost forgot…I’ve got to tell you s’more! Ha. Sorry. Tonight we made s’mores at my house. On Thanksgiving (which is not celebrated in Chile), I had hoped to whip up a pumpkin pie (“whip up” meaning “go buy butternut squash, cook it, puree it, make it into something resembling what Libby so nicely prepares, make a pie crust, and turn it all into something delicious”), but when Amy visited awhile ago, we realized the oven doesn’t work. So, pumpkin-pie-dreams crumbling, I elected to buy American marshmallows, chocolate, and graham-cracker-esque cookies, to make something “American” for my host fam on Thanksgiving. The actual s’more making was delayed until tonight, but it was good, gooey, and delicious. And prepared on the stovetop. Yum.

Happy Thanksgiving!