Meetings

The weekend went extremely well, I wound up playing a 6 v 6 soccer game with my host dad? (he`s 24, so not really my host dad). Scored a goal and tallied two assists in my debut, haha. Later that night we, the DukeEngage group plus some interns from Accion Emprendedora, went out to Bellavista where we decided to try our hand in salsa dancing. Friday, I explored the area surrounding my apartment, which includes all of the national ministries, la Moneda, and dozens of statues commemorating historic figures such as Salvador Allende. I was looking for a statue of Ricardo Lagos, a Duke grad, but its been too soon since he left office...maybe in a few years.

On Saturday, my host family threw me a welcome to Chile asada. The Chilean asada is like most other asadas found throughout the Latin American region: more about the beer and company than about the food. However, the food is nothing to be forgotten either. We had choripan, which is my new favorite Chilean specialty (bread + grilled chorizo sausage + pebre + mayo), pork, steak, corn, salad, and french fries, which were sorely out of place in my opinion, but who am I to judge? Later that night, I accompanied my host family to one of their friend`s birthday party.

Finally, on Sunday some of us DukeEngagers headed off to visit one of Pablo Neruda`s homes here in Santiago. To say that I was impressed is to do a dishonor to the memory of this great man, known to some as "the greatest poet of the 20th century". His house was symbolic in every sense of the word. It had its own insignia, the initials of his lover and him, intertwined. Similarly, the house had a strange likeness to a boat, which spoke volumes about Neruda's fascination with the sea. Most impressively, in my humble of opinion, was that in his library was the Nobel Prize for Literature that he had won in 1971, thanks to his deeply profound and political poetry on indigenous cultures. No joke, I stood in front of that medal, contemplating the magnitude of that symbol, for what seemed to be an eternity.

Today, we returned to work. I was told that I would be working in one of two schools, both located in Lampa. Lampa is a very rural suburb of Santiago, it happens to be extremely far from where I am located, but the fact that it is isolated, and in the mountains, makes me even more excited to start my observation process out there. The more research I do on Chilean educational policy, the more restless I am about actually seeing the situation in Chilean schools.