So it's been a while. I spent this past week working. a lot. Almost as if I was a real student. I finished my incredibly long paper--20 pages single spaced, with a 3 page bibliography and an annex (what?) with transcripts of all of my interviews, and came to a grand total of 39 pages. After this and three more exams this week, Thursday at 4pm could not have come fast enough. But it's here! Only one more exam and one paper left, and I’m on vacation!
Last weekend we went to Santiago’s gay parade, or as they called it 'open mind fest'. We walked around for a while and I was impressed. In general, I've found that the people here are not very open to gays, and that might be a bit of an understatement. But this 'open mind fest’ shows the society is changing, that the people are moving towards having an open mind, which is so important. The youth of today are the children of those who spent most of their youth during the dictatorship (1973-1989). The life of the youth today is completely different than life around 25-35 years ago. It's pretty cool to see the changes happening, and it makes we wonder what's in store for Chile in the future. This was my excursion for the weekend, and I spent the rest of my time in my room working. Not so much fun.
Yesterday we went to the general cemetery of Santiago. The place is absolutely huge. Apparently over 5 million people are buried there. What was so interesting about the place was that the class divisions are so clear. Each section is separated by a small road. We started in the wealthiest area, which had small buildings, really intricate and beautiful. Sometimes the coffins were housed in the buildings as opposed to in the ground, which is more common in the states. The above monument is a memorial for Salvador Allende, the president from 1970-1973 before the coup d'etat with Pinochet. Our guide (the same one from villa grimaldi) explained the irony of Allende being buried in the wealthy area of the cemetery because one of his goals was to work on the social inequality.
As we continued to walk through the cemetery, the buildings got smaller as the burials were for upper middle class. Then instead of buildings, they were single burials. The pictures above are from middle class, (I think, I can't really remember). Victor Jara, from the bottom picture, was one of the most famous Chilean folk singers, who was killed during the dictatorship. His tomb had a lot of flowers, and there was a guitar close by that a lot of people had written on. His wife had him buried in this part of the cemetery because it was where she thought he would want to be buried, which is pretty humble. As we were in the cemetery we watch a funeral procession, and the people were in street clothes, which I thought was interesting. Our last stop in the cemetery was the wall of remembrance for those who disappeared or were killed during the dictatorship. There were a lot of names on the wall, which was pretty powerful.
Not sure what's in store for today or tomorrow, I should probably do some work but once again have lost the motivation. This past week or so was an exception to the rule. By this Wednesday or Thursday I will be done. Then it's travel time! After our goodbye dinner Thursday night (our own version of Thanksgiving), a friend and I are off to Peru! We hope to spend a few days at Lake Titicaca and do a one or two night homestay with people who live on the islands in the lake. I can't wait!!!
We're almost done here, I just can't believe it. Where has the time gone?
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