Today was a just a real feel good day. The morning was admittedly stressful as I had to finish a somewhat challenging law exam outlining the links between democracy and human rights in international law. Challenging since a) they are pretty much related in every way b) explaining this in only 2500 words in spanish was an added twist and c) I had no internet at my house so I couldn’t rely on word reference to look up words I didn’t know, such as “treatise” or “jus-cogens”. There’s an adorable café near by house that I went to though, and I got in a groove and felt excited and accomplished to be completing real school work and actually learning non-language related material. Since I didn’t have to go to class, I got to eat lunch with my host family, which rarely happens on weekdays since I usually have class at times that coincide with Chilean lunchtime (anywhere from 1-3 in our house).
I really like my host family. Everyone is just “buena onda,” to use a Chilenismo, just good people, “good vibes.” My host dad always tries to trick me, jokingly, which he is often able to pull off due to his straight face and my incredible gullibleness. Today’s instance:
“Did you hear what happened to Chiloe?” Me: “No, what?!?” Arturo: “It sank.”
I made it by bus across the scorching hot city to salsa class (the crowded metro is insufferable in the summery weather), only to find that there were about 10 more women than men. It ended up not be a total waste though- my friend Molly came to class and was dancing with a guy who invited us for drinks with another Chilean friend and a German exchange student. It was one of those really random and unexpectedly fun afternoons- we ended up hanging out with them for 3 hours or so, making random comparisons between our respective countries, learning Chilean slang and poking fun at the way different Spanish speakers talk in different countries. I ran to get the bus in Los Heroes and made in just in time for the 12 hour ride south. Buses here are ridiculously cheap which is one thing that makes traveling reasonably priced, at least for extranjeros. In this case, we found a bus for around $22 US, not semi cama, but we figured we would rough it out for a night. I can barely even get to NYC from my house in Jersey for that much anymore!
Our group this round included the first man dominated travel ratio in Tufts in Chile 2010 history: since the other female who had planned to go on the trip couldn’t make it, it was just me and the boys, Jon, Eric and Thomas.
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