Sunday, August 03, 2003
Thursday. tagged along with the med school students on a tour of Clinica Las Condes, probably the plushest hospital in Chile (in previously weeks they´d visited the complete opposite, tiny public practices in the middle of the countryside). Huge rooms for patients, and no one shares a room.
At night there was a Harvard Club reception (honeydew melon juice!) at which we gazed at the original works of art, enjoyed the central heating, and didn´t really mingle with the silk-tied HBS grads. A little scary, though really nice.
REALLY SCARY was PUC orientation Friday. It started alright (this is like camp!) and Anibal and Susana from DRCLAS accompanied us to the opening information session (they were the only adult adults there, and it was cute- like nervous parents sending their kids off. And they helped clarify the sort of convoluted registration protocol). Then we were on our one, except unlike camp no one made much effort to be perky and friendly. Which in itself didn´t bother me, until at one point during the tour of San Joaquin campus, Manuela commented that it´ll probably be lonely the first couple weeks, which is true. Even at Harvard its not like I´m constantly running into friends so much as I know they´re there. SJ campus was big and seventies architecture. Then, Campus Oriental, which was gorgeous and stone and courtyarded with palm trees. Its hard to get from one to the other I think. But its enough to make me want to take an art/theater/music class...until I get sick of the commute. Came home exhausted and yes, homesick...plus I missed Widener Library desperately (having spent close to 300 hours there the past two years). The central library at SJ is more like a cross between Hilles and Lamont. I know, I know.
Yesterday, went with my host parents to drop some paintings off at a cafe that displays them. We were inside, they were having a coffee and I was shivering interminably, when some friends of theirs who recognized the paintings outside came in to say hi. Next thing I knew I was in a car with their daughter (my age) headed towards an asado (bbq). It started off and continued sort of blandly (I didn´t know people, and these weren´t her closest friends either) but just when I thought I was getting nauseous on cigarette smoke she and her friend started asking me questions in English (they´d spent sometime in the US, both) which somehow segued into a Spanish/French argument about Pinochet. One of the guys there was a Pinochet supporter, and so he and this other one were both presenting their arguments to me, and then to each other. Anti-P was citing all the numbers about disappeared and killed, while Pro-P was telling me how Santiago was the only place in Latin America where you could walk safely on the streets, etc, and then to Anti-Ps (several of whom had been born in exile) that what happened during the regime was a "limpieza" (cleaning), nothing more. Then another guy stepped in on his side and started talking about how Allende had been a puppet of the Soviets (though, as far as we figured out in my Coatsworth class, the Soviets couldn´t really afford to care). I think my being there prompted it a bit, according to one of them, and certainly more than one toxic substance was mixed in there, but yikes.
Driving home, past Blockbuster and Bank of Boston, it didn´t feel any different from a US city.
At night there was a Harvard Club reception (honeydew melon juice!) at which we gazed at the original works of art, enjoyed the central heating, and didn´t really mingle with the silk-tied HBS grads. A little scary, though really nice.
REALLY SCARY was PUC orientation Friday. It started alright (this is like camp!) and Anibal and Susana from DRCLAS accompanied us to the opening information session (they were the only adult adults there, and it was cute- like nervous parents sending their kids off. And they helped clarify the sort of convoluted registration protocol). Then we were on our one, except unlike camp no one made much effort to be perky and friendly. Which in itself didn´t bother me, until at one point during the tour of San Joaquin campus, Manuela commented that it´ll probably be lonely the first couple weeks, which is true. Even at Harvard its not like I´m constantly running into friends so much as I know they´re there. SJ campus was big and seventies architecture. Then, Campus Oriental, which was gorgeous and stone and courtyarded with palm trees. Its hard to get from one to the other I think. But its enough to make me want to take an art/theater/music class...until I get sick of the commute. Came home exhausted and yes, homesick...plus I missed Widener Library desperately (having spent close to 300 hours there the past two years). The central library at SJ is more like a cross between Hilles and Lamont. I know, I know.
Yesterday, went with my host parents to drop some paintings off at a cafe that displays them. We were inside, they were having a coffee and I was shivering interminably, when some friends of theirs who recognized the paintings outside came in to say hi. Next thing I knew I was in a car with their daughter (my age) headed towards an asado (bbq). It started off and continued sort of blandly (I didn´t know people, and these weren´t her closest friends either) but just when I thought I was getting nauseous on cigarette smoke she and her friend started asking me questions in English (they´d spent sometime in the US, both) which somehow segued into a Spanish/French argument about Pinochet. One of the guys there was a Pinochet supporter, and so he and this other one were both presenting their arguments to me, and then to each other. Anti-P was citing all the numbers about disappeared and killed, while Pro-P was telling me how Santiago was the only place in Latin America where you could walk safely on the streets, etc, and then to Anti-Ps (several of whom had been born in exile) that what happened during the regime was a "limpieza" (cleaning), nothing more. Then another guy stepped in on his side and started talking about how Allende had been a puppet of the Soviets (though, as far as we figured out in my Coatsworth class, the Soviets couldn´t really afford to care). I think my being there prompted it a bit, according to one of them, and certainly more than one toxic substance was mixed in there, but yikes.
Driving home, past Blockbuster and Bank of Boston, it didn´t feel any different from a US city.
