Peculiaridades de estar enferma

In these last two weeks, I’ve discovered all the challenges that being sick here presents. First of all, it is nearly impossible to stay home and do nothing. There is always so much going on and some many new things to go see and do that I’ve been an epic failure at staying home to rest. I was doing fine until this weekend when I lost my voice and had no energy. So yesterday I stayed in bed all day and the funny thing is that I’m feeling so much better! The other challenging aspect is their logic for why people get sick. In the past week, I think five people have told me that I caught a cold because I don’t wear a scarf. I think people here are really confused because it has been about 65 degrees outside every day! My host mom has come into my room about every half our to ask if she can give me mentolatum (whatever that is!) to put on my nose, weird medications to take, and lemons to eat (because they have tons of vitamin c…but apparently disregarding the fact that they erode your teeth). She’s also been ridiculously angry for the fact that I don’t have socks on and I don’t blow-dry my hair after the shower. My host mom’s other theory is that everyone is getting sick now because everyone is taking their jackets off and putting them on so much because of the change in weather. When I told my actual mom that theory, she said they are more likely to hurt themselves than get sick!

Being sick yesterday turned out to be okay because I had to finish my 15 page essay due today for my human rights class, so I literally worked on that all day yesterday while in bed. The assignment was to pick a monument in Santiago that is a memorial for human rights violations during the dictatorship. We had to go visit the site and then write a research paper about its purpose and function. The monument I chose is called “Mujeres en la Memoria,”which is a glass wall in a plaza that is dedicated to the disappeared women. It turned out to be a very interesting project because online, the site looks beautiful and glamorous. When I went to take pictures of it, it was covered in graffiti. I then learned that this is a important theme: that most young people do not understand the importance of memorials and the seriousness of what happened here 30 years ago because teachers are not willing to teach it in their classes.

Here you can see the difference when the monument has been cleaned and the picture I took where it has been vandalized.

On Friday, my human rights class had a field trip. There are only four of us so it makes it pretty easy to go do things in Santiago. We went with our professor to visit a place called Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos. It is an organization that is composed of various women who have family members that were detained and/or disappeared during the military dictatorship. The organization is a support system, but they also work together to find information about their disappeared family and friends. Two members of the organization talked to us about their experiences, which was very powerful and much more interesting that reading about it in books.

In the evening, I went with some friends to the Banff Mountain Film Festival. It was great because everyone there was outdoorsy. It consisted of many different short films with extreme outdoor adventure sports. The most impressive was this guy that rock climbs with no ropes. His biggest climb was to the top of Half Dome in Yosemite!

On Saturday, CIEE had programmed a biking tour around Santiago for us. It was absolutely amazing how much we could see on bikes! We went to so many different parts of Santiago and we were able to see different communities, monuments, parks, cafes, buildings, etc. We mostly stayed on sidewalks, so it was pretty hard to get on and off of the curbs. It was also pretty challenging to do with a group of about 30 people.

Here are some more pictures from my trip to the south:

Snow at the base of the volcano
Cueca dancing in Castro, Chiloé

Penguins!