Valley de Elqui

Spent a long weekend (Wednesday- Sunday) in the Valle de Elqui, a small, mountaineous region about 8 hours North of Santiago. In Elqui, ATMs dont exist and cell phones don´t work. Along with 4 other friends I camped alongside a river at the base of a mountain. The ground was hard to sleep on, but the stars were indescribable. In the Southern Hemisphere, some constellations are the same as up North; for the most part, though, it´s a whole different sky down here. And up there in Elqui, where humanmade light is virtually nonexistent at night, the sky is so bright that you don´t even need to light a fire (though we did anyway, to eat).

Had my first day of orientation yesterday. Don´t have to be registered for my clases for another week and a half. The classes actualy begin tomorrow, but what we gringos are supossed to do is go and sit in on the classes we´re interested in taking to see if we like them. I´ve got to get all my courses approved by department chairs back in NYC which could be a tedious proccess. I think it will all go well. Some good news is that students studying abroad in the Spring get preferential registration for the following Fall semester back at Fordham. I get to register for whatever classes I want about two weeks before everyone else. Sweet!

Once I´ve got my schedule figured out I´ll post it up on this blog, as some have asked for full course description as soon as it´s available.

Last night a group of Chilean students from the University brought about 60 Americans to this rustic bar for a couple rounds of Chile´s native (drago) drink, Pisco Sour. Met some new Chilean friends, got there numbers for future hang out sesions, and, most importantly, spoke Spanish all night long. I find that when thrown into situations where I must speak Spanish-like when hanging out with a group of Chilean kids who don´t speak English--my speaking capability jumps tenfold. But my Spanish is broken when trying to speak with a group of Americans. We still do it anyway. It´s the only way to learn. A language is learned in a lifetime, not in two and a half weeks. Must remain patient. My little sister Aimara helps me with this. We´ve been getting along great, as we share the same level of vocabulary.