Arrived in Santiago :)

June 11, 2011

11:11 AM

Santiago, Chile

I’m here! Super tired though, so I’m off to a nap. Below is my first entry, written in the Dallas airport. Everything has been good so far! I really like my host mom and the house and everything, and free wifi is definitely nice as well :)

More details later!

June 10, 2011

7:14 PM CST

Dallas International Airport

Hello!! Welcome back to my blog, 2011 edition!

My computer says 6:14 PM, my watch says 8:14 PM, and my phone says 7:14 PM. I have a personal paradigm of only changing times when the mental calculations become too difficult, or when the amount of time I will be in the time zone makes constant mental calculation a little ridiculous (I think I draw the line somewhere in the two week range, but that could just be personal preference). Hence my phone is often the only accurate piece of electronic equipment I own.

I’m currently sitting in Dallas International Airport. I was re-reading my blog from last summer last night and based on the descriptions and memories I have of JFK, I am thankful I am going through Dallas this time! Easy access to outlets (although I feel bad, I’m kind of hogging two outlets right now), cool, no overpowering smells, and relatively uncrowded; much better than New York! Also, it’s my first time in Texas, so that’s exciting... So many of my friends live in Texas, I guess I should probably come back sometime and actually venture outside the airport.

Last night, I obtained a bunch of movies from my brother (illegally, of course). My flight from Denver to Dallas I watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. In the process, I completely forgot who and where I was, and the landing of the plane was, needless to say, a very jarring experience.  This has happened before, most recently with Dr. Parnassus’ Imaginarium last week (or whatever it’s called, the last Heath Ledger movie). In that case, the small window to the outside in the basement where I was watching it was the only thing that kept me tethered to reality. Since I have such a problem with forgetting about reality while watching movies – especially strange ones –I decided it would probably be better to write my first blog entry while waiting for the international flight that would be really bad to miss rather than watching another movie :P

But Eternal Sunshine was great. I have discovered that I really love movies realistically portrayed and full of dysfunctional characters and families. Little Miss Sunshine, which I watched a couple weeks ago, fits the bill as well. They also both feature comedic actors in serious roles… hmm.

But anyway, I’m supposed to be writing about my travel experiences, not about my cinematic tastes.

I set up this blog at the Denver airport earlier today. It was an extremely unproductive use of my time, as the free wifi really should have been used to finish the HMC [Harvard Model Congress, an organization that runs a conference for high school students each January in Boston] brief I wanted to finish before I left (for those of you who read my blog last summer, that situation might sound slightly familiar, although this year I also have an Hacia brief to complete as well (going for the double parentheses to explain Hacia – it’s a government simulation as well, but during Spring Break and in Latin America)), or ignored entirely as the connection speed was terrible. But a free wifi signal, no matter how weak, is always tempting to me. I’m almost glad there isn’t a free wifi signal here, although I did spend a good 10 minutes searching for one. In the hour and a half at Denver, I managed to get probably 15 minutes worth of blog set-up complete. After some contemplation, I decided to create a second blog for this summer, rather than just continuing my previous blog from Spain. I wanted to change the format and name, but didn’t want to get rid of my stuff from before. Only unfortunate thing is that creating a new blog means I currently have no followers for my adventures this summer. Two things alleviate my sadness over my lack of fans (actually three): 1) I only had 8 followers last summer, so I’m not missing out on much. 2) This blog is clearly so scintillating and exciting that I am sure to gain new followers like wildfire! And 3) I forget. I think it had something to do with the fact that I haven’t told anyone about the new blog yet, so my lack of followers does not equal lack of love.

Anyway, back to setting up the blog. I have tentatively entitled it “Summer in Santiago.” This is probably not ideal. For one, it sets up quite a precedent in blog titles – apparently titles need to have some sort of literary construct in order to be viable. So far I have pseudo-rhyming and whatever the thing is where the first letter is repeated. I’ll have to have some sort of metaphor or something next, and this could quickly escalate into difficult territory.

Also, it is not summer in Santiago; it is winter. The title, therefore, is a bit deceptive. It is summer for me though, so I dismiss this as a real problem. I do need to think of a title that is unrelated to my location though, so in the future I can continue with the same blog even as I physically change my locale, but that is perhaps too big of a project for me right now (although if I were my cousin Sasha, coming up with a name would be easy: Travel Blog --> Unravel Blog or Gravel Blog. Maybe even Gavel Blog or Javel(in) Blog).

Well. I still have 45 minutes until boarding, but I’m just about sick of writing anything more. I should maybe say something about what I’m doing this summer before I go though, right? So, in a nutshell: I am doing a Summer Internship Program (SIP) through the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard (DRCLAS, pronounced Dr. Clas). They have programs in Argentina, Peru, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Chile. I chose Chile because the dates allowed me to be home for my brother’s graduation (but not his June 18^th birthday) and because my grandparents lived in Santiago, Chile for a year in 1967, when my mom was two years old. I look forward to comparing notes with my grandma as I live in Santiago 44 years later – although I imagine it will be quite different with a couple kind of a little important changes of government in the time in between the two of us, not to mention the normal changes associated with large passages of time. The other reason for my decision to go to Chile rather than Bolivia or Uruguay is that the program is larger in Chile. We have programmatic support, and many more students participate in the Chilean program than either Uruguay or Bolivia. While it will be good for me to be more independent on my trips abroad eventually, I look forward to already having some friends and co-students down there. Plus, we will all be living and working separately, so this program is at least a baby-step up in independence from SIHS last summer, where we were all in class with each other all day.

I won’t, however, be traveling on my own after the official program ends as I did last year. While I appreciated and enjoyed my solo travels throughout Spain and France last summer, it was tough on my wallet and also hard to go straight back to school after being gone from home for most of the summer. So I will be returning on August 8^th at the end of the SIP program, to be home in Montana for a couple weeks before returning to Boston. I am definitely looking forward to my time at home, and am planning on doing as much hiking and backpacking as I can before returning to the east coast. I had less than a week home before Chile, and that was not enough “Montana time” for me!!

That was a big nutshell.

(Perhaps it was a walnut?)

Until later… which could quite possibly be during my flight, if I get too bored.

Besos,

Brianna