Student Blogs/Sierra in Chile
The last semester just flew by! It feels like I just got here, but also like I’ve here forever in the sense that Chile feels like home now.
Last semester wasn't the easiest, but it wasn't too bad. I actually passed all my classes, which was harder than I thought. Although it is great to take classes taught in Spanish with Chileans, I wasn't at a level that I could understand everything, so I struggled.
This semester I am taking easier classes, (mostly taught in English) and two advanced Spanish language classes (Spanish for business and Chilean culture). I really would suggest doing it the other way around, but I didn't think to take the advanced Spanish classes last semester. I am actually taking too many courses right now and I am supposed to drop one, but I like them all (for different reasons) and can't choose which one to drop!
I think (surprisingly) my favourite class is called Pre-Columbian Cultures. It's a history class, but the professor makes it so much more fun than I could have ever imagined. Having travelled throughout Peru and Bolivia, I learned first-hand about the civilizations that existed there through the ruins and the present-day influences on South American culture. Because of those experiences, I actually have a lot to contribute to the class and I can really picture exactly what we are taking about.
It was difficult having everyone I met from last semester leave, except for about 12 people, but it’s been easy making friends with the new students. It’s also much easier to talk to Chileans now that my Spanish is so much better. I have a good base of Chilean friends, and I am meeting more people all the time. We threw a party at the beginning of the semester and I was surprised the mix was actually equal between my Chilean friends and my exchange friends!
I want to share a little bit about my winter (July) holidays because I had a great experience. Jamie (another Carleton student) and I decided to take a one-month trip to Northern Chile, Peru and Bolivia during our time off.
I started the journey going alone to San Pedro de Atacama in the driest desert in the world in the north of Chile. I spent a fabulous 3 days there and learned that it's really not so bad to travel alone because I met so many cool people.
After that, I met up with Jamie and we spent many hours riding a bus through the desert—a very odd, strange place—before we finally got to Arequipa, where we spent one night. We continued on to the Sacred Valley and Cusco, one of my favourite places in the world and a can't-miss destination for travellers to South America. It’s on the road to Machu Picchu and is easily accessible.
From there, we went to Lake Titicaca and down to La Paz, Bolivia where we did an incredible city tour and learned about the San Pedro Prison, along with many other quirky attractions La Paz has to offer.
Our next stop was a 3-day tour of the Bolivian jungle. Our plane was tiny, there was no flight attendant, and there was no door to the cockpit so we saw everything that was going on—pretty cool! The jungle was an incredible experience full of things that can kill you or save your life—or both.
Then it was back to La Paz, where we biked the "world's most dangerous road" (and survived). This was a definite highlight of the trip and another thing you can't miss. From there, we went to Potosi—the highest city in the world (or so they say) for a mine tour, and finally off to Uyuni to see the salt flats. This is another thing you can't come to South America without seeing; a bizarre sight of white expanses of salt, stretching on for miles.
Word to the wise: go with a reputable tour company (like Red Planet) that has cars with 4-wheel-drive. We had an unfortunate experience of getting stuck in deep mud and it took 6 hours to get us out, very unpleasant. Overall, it was still a positive experience despite finding out we were lied to about just about everything on our tour.
Then we were back in San Pedro and spent another couple of days there before returning to school. It was amazing getting back to my Chilean home and my travel bug is satisfied for a while.
Another really cool thing we did was go surfing on a Thursday followed by skiing on Friday. I think there is only one other place I could name that you could do that on consecutive days (and it happens to be where I grew up: Vancouver Island). Skiing was really fun, but very different than what us British Columbians are used to. There was very little real snow that was supplemented with a lot of fake snow, along with bare patches throughout the mountain with no snow at all, so be careful! The Andes are so high that when you are at the peak it's pretty hard to breathe, and due to its height there are also no trees.
I feel fully adapted to Chilean culture now and it's great! Listening to all the new students encounter new situations makes me happy that I already went through that before.
It's a little weird that everyone else from our year has already returned to Canada and will be starting a new semester at Carleton and there are a new batch of students going on exchange now, but it's going to be great coming back for just one term and then graduating!
Good luck to everyone starting a new semester and I hope my blog posts so far have convinced you that Chile is an incredible place to study abroad!