Universidad Vina del Mar

In honor of my brother’s first day of high school, this blog post will be centered around classes, classes, classes. (Good luck Karl!) 

 My first class starts at 8:20am sharp every Monday morning. Well, maybe not sharp, as punctuality is not of great importance here, but nonetheless it is an early beginning to a full week. And it’s Gramatica. Fortunately my teacher is a young Chilean woman with a glowing energy and a genuine interest in teaching us what we need to know to survive here grammatically wise, so it’s not hard to stay awake and focused. We’ve reviewed (and in some cases learned) the basics of Spanish grammar such as present conjugations, agreement, ser vs estar, and other similar topics thus far, but we’ve also learned some Chilean grammar “rules.” For instance, a Spanish student in the US would say, “Cuantos anos tienes?” but here, you hear, “Cuantos anos teni?” There’s even a Chilean author who, in his books, writes the tu form verbs like teni, quieri, vivi etc, because it’s so Chilean. This class meets three times each week, and there are 7 students in it, five from the US and two from Germany. 

 My next class is Cultura, which meets four times a week. Just like our grammar teacher, our Cultura teacher speaks to us only in Spanish unless we’re specifically asking for a word translation. The first week we learned different adjectives to describe people, and then we used them to describe the differences between Chileans and people from the US (you don’t say Americans here because Chileans are Americans too). One day we had a debate over whether the street art in Valparaiso should be considered art or if it’s actually graffiti and vandalism, and all of us students have given a ten minute presentation on a city somewhere in the country. I gave my presentation on Pucon, which is a tiny, tourism centered, adventure town about 10 hours south of here. It’s on my list of places to go, the main attractions being an active volcano you can trek up, more hotsprings than there are colleges in Boston (although I’m not sure if I believe that or not..), horseback riding, and white water rafting. 

 Ortofonia just started up this week (and today was my first day!). My teacher, Pedro,(yep, that’s his name-I can’t say it properly..yet..) is hilarious, and he studied in France for a semester, so he understands personally our struggle with pronunciation. Today we repeated words after him, individually and as a group, and there was already plenty of laughter among us. One girl is from Texas, so imagine her accent! Plus, over half the class is German, so there were a couple of times when I found myself repeating the words with their accent rather than the correct Chilean way. Oops! Phonetics is something we use everyday, but never think about (or at least I hadn’t until today), and I can already tell that this class is going to make a world of a difference for me. For a taste of our class, put your hand flat upon the top of your head. Then say “eeeeee” and then “eehhhhh.” You’ll probably notice that during the first noise, you can feel a sort of vibration. Interesting, huh?

 Once a week, I have another culture class that’s taught through CIEE. We meet at their office rather than the university (which isn’t too bad considering there’s always free coffee, tea and cookies available), and only the GAP students are part of it. Sometimes we speak english, sometimes we speak Spanish, but most often we use both, mixing the two even within sentences; that’s my favorite. This class is all over the place, but not in a bad way. We have three different teachers and tons of different topics that are all being taught at the same time, but it means we get quite the variety. We’ve talked about names, cultural differences, traditions, learning styles, and yesterday we went on a field trip to a dark room studio in Valparaiso. We got to develop a photo, and afterwards we went out for a delicious (and free) meal. Yum! 

 I have another class that’s only for us Gap kids that is taught on Thursdays by a psychologist. Throughout the semester, we’re going to be talking about the education system, what life is like for children and adults with disabilities here, and the orphanage system. It’s a really long class, but I think once we get more into the information, it’ll be interesting and worth the time. Here there is a law that allows families to choose where they send their children to school (instead of school districts). However, because there are certain schools that receive more applications that they can accept, the reality is that the schools get to pick their students too. Public education is free; private is not, and schools can see how much money families make. Thus what tends to happen is those who can pay go to the best schools in the area, and the rest usually go to the school that’s closest. There’s a lot of unrest about education in Chile right now, and I’m interested in learning more about what individual students and parents think. 

 So there you have the basics of my education here in Chile. It’s more work than I was expecting coming into the program, but usually there’s less homework than an average college class would give. I’ve also signed up for two things called tallers, which are similar to classes but less intense. One is about general politics and the other is a book binding class. These specific tallers last for one month, meet in a community park in Valparaiso, and instead of straight up paying for them, each student brings some sort of nonperishable food to exchange. I’m excited and nervous, as they will be my first and only classes with Chileans thus far. I hope I can understand enough to get by! 

Also: Today one of my host cats, the one that helped me eat breakfast in the morning, enjoyed the comforts of my clothing drawer, and never ceased to find the smallest things in life entertaining, was hit by a car outside our house. She died on the spot. Rest in peace little Mancha, mi manchita. However, with today’s sorrow came joy as well, as we welcomed a new baby into the world, the daughter of my host brother’s friend. Welcome to Chile, Ailenen. I hope you love it here as well.