Just back from the coast

Hello All,

Today our group took the hour and a half bus ride from Santiago to the Pacific coast. The ride itself is beautiful as you cross "La Cordiera," a series of rugged hills that separate Chile's central valley from the coast. We began the day at Isla Negra, the seaside former home of Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda. The house was amazing. Neruda collected strange and interesting things from around the world and jammed them into his small bungalow perched atop a steep hill overlooking the ocean. Inside the house we saw everything from model ships in bottles to giant beetles and moths (dead and mounted) to a carving of the Polynesian demon god of hunger and cold to asorted ornate pipes and wine glasses to a life size wooden carving of a horse just outside Pablo's bathroom.

Our next stop was the seaside villeage of Concon, where we ate lunch at a local restaurant. As has been the case several times during my stay thus far, I had no idea what the food I ordered was acutally going to be. This time I was faily certain it was seafood, and indeed it turned out to be a kind of soup with mussels, oysters, fish, shrimp and possibly scallops in it. And it was pretty good. After lunch we drove up the coast through Renaca and into Viña del Mar, the prinicple seaside resort in Chile. In Viña, we visited the Quinto Vegara, a palacial residence built by a rich Spanish colonist that has since been turned into a park. Viña seems like a fun place, especially during the summer, and fortunately I am going to have the opportunity to spend more time there next weekend when I will go with my host family to celebrate the "Fiestas Patrias," which are essentially the Chilean July 4th holidays.

From Viña we drove around the point and into Valparaiso, Chile's largest port city. Valparaiso is a fascinating city, built on a series of steep hills surrounding a natural bay, similar to San Francisco. We stopped briefly to ride one of the city's many gondolas up to a hill overlooking the harbor. From Valpo it was back to Santiago and the end of our whirlwind day trip. I am excited to spend more time in the coastal cities, from what I was today, there is plenty of exciting things to see and do.

My day to day life is going splendidly, as well. I am quickly becoming a master of Santiago's massive bus/subway transit system. It is extremely convient, as it goes everywhere and all one needs is a plastic "Bip" card that one presses against a sensor upon entering a metro station or boarding a bus. The Bip card is charged with money and deducts automatically when used. Chileans are forever complaining about how crowded the buses and subways are, but after living in Houston I find the system delightful.

Classes are also going well. Our usual schedule is a lecture in the morning at the University of Chile (in Spanish by a Chilean professor) and three hours of Spanish classes in the afternoon. I find that I can understand the lecturers fairly well, as they talk slowly and write key points on the board. Understanding my host mom and brothers is a different story, as they talk extremely fast and often use slang. I usually have to make them repeat things more slowly at least once. My family is simply amazing and goes out of their way to make me comfortable. I have a great time just talking to my host brothers, or losing to them in FIFA 07 on Xbox 360. I promise that I am trying to be a helpful and easy guest.

I also enjoy spending time with the other kids in the program. We are a very eclectic group from colleges big and small across the country. The North Carolina connected contingent is rather large, however, as we have a Duke student from Chicago, a UNC Robertson scholar from Conneticut, a Winston-Salem native that attends U of Richmond and a Davidson student from Georgia, plus myself. All of us enjoy exploring eveything Santiago has to offer, although we are pretty conspicuous when all 21 of us go out together.

Thats all for now, I love and miss all of you. I have posted a few pictures on the blog site, but more can be found at

http://rice.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2031931&l=5a8c7&id=3004624

Until next time,

Daniel

P.S. Mom and Dad, I would love to work out a time to call you guys through Skype, an internet telephone service. Its free computer to computer, but I think I can pay a few dollars and download Skype Pro, which would allow me to call the house phone from my computer, which solves the problem of our home computer not being microphone equiped. I'm going to look into this further, like, tomorrow, so I'll be in touch about the possiblity soon.