El curso de español

In total we are 21 students, divided into 3 different groups.

Basic, intermediate and advanced.

I'm in the beginner group with 4 others! It's very intimate, and all we do is talking, interviewing each other and writing sentences! :)

Pisco and pubcrawl

After Chile lost the game, we decided to drink our sorrows away with some Pisco sours: 

Pisco sour in the making!

Pisco sour: pisco, lemon, syrup and (eggwhite)

Listen to great music: 

Loved their LP records

Viva Chile!

"Oso"- the cat

Dance all night:

Dancing to Chilean and Brazilian songs

And meet the rest of the people going to the pub crawl:

Pub crawl with my amigos Chilenos and people from Spanish classes! 

What a night! 

Viva Chile

I don't know much about football, nor do I usually watch football (apart from whenever Emil force me to..). However, I have been watching the world cup, and I must say that the match between Chile and Brazil has been the most emotional, nerve-wrecking and entertaining match I have ever seen. 

Watching it together with 15 Chilenos (and 1 Brazilian) probably made it more interesting. I experienced anger, happiness, dissapointment, hope, sadness.. Luckily nothing happened to my Brazilian friend after the match!

But it was actually really really sad when Chile lost. They played so well, and Mauricio Pinilla was so close to score on overtime, but instead hit the crossbar, only centimeters from kicking Brazil out of the world cup...

Viva Chile!

Más fotos desde el primero día

More photos from the first day, taken by Theo and Thomas!

Check out their blogs/tumblr:
www.chilichills.tumblr.com (By Theo)
and http://divinginto-southamerica.blogspot.com/ (By Thomas)

Foodies!! 

The Andes mountains in the background

My group! Thomas from the US, and Theresa from Germany

Germany-France-Germany-Norway

First day

Yesterday we had an intro day where we took a Spanish test and had an interview with profesora Margot, then got placed into different classes. I'm in the new beginners group together with 4 others. In total we are 21 students, from Brazil, US, Holland, France, Finland, Germany and Check Republic. I really like the diversity in the group, with a lot of interesting people from different countries and cultures! 

We had one assignment throughout the day, and that was to go to Cerro Santa Lucia and make a presentation about the place for the class today. But first, we had to see Chile-Holland (unfortunately Chile lost), and have lunch at one of the many restaurants/bars nearby the school :)

After lunch we all decided to walk to Cerro Santa Lucia, since it did not seem that far on the map... But it took us almost one hour!! Somehow the French girl's iPad said it would only take 15 minutes haha. And we were all following her lead. But the long walk was all worth it when we finally got there.

Cerro Santa Lucia is a small hill in the centre of Santiago that is the remaining part of a 15 million years old volcano. The hill comprises a park with stairways, fountains and momuments. At the highest point you will get a stunning panorama view over Santiago's skyline.

I will definitively come here again. 

Universidad Mayor

Cerro Santa Lucia

Some of the other students that are taking the Intensive Spanish course!

The view from top of  Cerro Santa Lucia

View with the Andes moutains in the background

I'm in Chile!!

I arrived this morning after a 14h 30min flight from Paris. Everything went smoothly, and I really enjoyed my flight to Santiago. Good food, great movie selection, and nice neighbours. The only minus was that the stewards forgot our row twice... ?!? Some got food, but none of us got anythng to drink, he went away and then he just completely forgot about the rest of us -.-

At the moment it's winter in Santiago, and the pollution is quite bad. I was very surprised when we landed, since I thought we were still pretty high up in the sky.. I couldn't see anything because of the fog! And I was shocked about how cold it actually is here. I knew it was going to be winter when I came, but I didn't realize it would be this cold.. 4 degrees in the morning, 10 degrees during day, and only one heater in the living room. But at least I have an electic heated matress to sleep on! My American roommate was sleeping with 2 blankets, t-shirt, hoodie and with pants on last night.. I guess he didn't know about the electric matress hehe. 

I live with a hostfamily in an area called Providencia, 5 blocks away from Universidad Mayor. My hostmum is so cute and super talkative. She doesn't speak English, and she doesn't allow us to speak English either in the house. Here it is only Espanol! Most of the time I'm just guessing what she is talking about.. but somehow we still understand each other :) I will be living with an American and a German guy, and then I am pretty sure that a Mexican girl will come live with us too in July. (It took me half an hour to understand that a German guy was coming next week, and one more hour that an American guy was already here..)

My room!

View from my window.

Today me and Nicholas went to the Costanera Center complex. IT WAS HUGE!!! The skyscraper is the tallest building in South America, and it is a business and commercial complex that includes a 6 floor shopping mall. We just needed a few things from the mall, but it took hours to find and we walked so much. Luckily all the staff were so kind and helpful, or it would definitely have taken a lot more time. 

For lunch Mama Vezy had made Charquican, a Chilean stew dish with minced meat, pumpkin, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, and topped with eggs. It was delicious!! Mama Vezy (Hostmum) is a chef, so I really look forward to try all her dishes.

Charquican

Tomorrow I start my Spanish courses, so that will be very interesting.. But tomorrow Chile will also play against the Netherlands in the World Cup, and the Chileans will most likely go super crazy! Can't wait haha. And I will definitely take a lot more pictures of Santiago :)

Saludos! 

Exchange student at Universidad Mayor

What exactly am I going to do in Santiago, Chile? 

I got an exchange position at Universidad Mayor through Aarhus University (Denmark), for one semester!

Since I'm taking all of my courses in Spanish (one is actually in English, but I heard that almost all students are Chilean, so they just talk in Spanish..), I have to do a 1-month intensive Spanish language course before semester starts. 6 hours every day, starting from 23rd of June. And I will be living with a Chilean hostfamily, five blocks away from campus. 

I CAN'T WAIT!!!!!!!

Right now I undertand un poquito español. However, I don't speak Spanish, I can't write or read Spanish, but I hope I will be *fluent* in Spanish by the end of the course... 

Setting myself some high goals here, but if I believe I can learn it, I KNOW I WILL (have to) LEARN IT.

Luckily, it's only pass or no pass for the whole semester. And in Universidad Mayor there will be no exams if you just do all the assignments and presentations throughout the semester, and get good grades!! (Or so I've heard). So.. it should be no problemo..

When my exchange semester is done, I'm planning to backpack through South America with Emil, where we will be going to Argentina, Bolivia, Peru and Colombia (and of course I will show him Chile). We are ending our trip in Las Vegas and Los Angeles to take the plane back to Copenhagen. 

This semester will be amazing. And I can't believe I'm already leaving next week!!

Lime Juice

Tip: Don't squeeze lime juice, then go directly out to the sun without washing your hands thorougly first.

 You might get this:

One day I made satay sauce and squeezed one lime into the mixture, didn't really wash my hands since it was just lime juice, and went outside to eat lunch. (It was very sunny) The next day I woke up with the long stripe on my hand, thinking that's so weird because I did not burn myself, or scratch myself yesterday. The days after, the dark spot on my thumb, and small freckles started appearing on both my hands.

I thought that maybe I would just get freckles like most people do here in Scandinavia, (even though I have never had it before) but then I started to worry. What if I had permanently sun damaged my skin?? I heard that many people in Asia gets dark spots on their face, and it never fades away.. (One of the reasons why many uses umbrellas?)

So I went to the doctor, who did not know anything about this. Leaving it to myself to solve the mystery (and with some help by Google), I found out that the combination of lime/lemon or mango juice with sun exposure can cause skin discoloration. (Brown spots) And it totally makes sense. The "stripe"  must be lime juice that dripped down my hand, and when I squeezed the lime, some splashes must have gotten to my hands (hence, getting the "freckles". And the big dark spot on my thumb, is probably just a lot of lime juice.

Now I had it for three weeks, and it started to fade. I guess it will be completely faded away after one or two months. (https://www.askmehelpdesk.com/beauty/brown-spots-hands-96372.html)

Bottom line: If you are making mojitos out in the sun, or anything else containing lime, always remember to wash your hands afterwards! (Or wear gloves)

Penguins

My favourite picture at the moment

https://flic.kr/p/bM5pCZ

If I ever go to Patagonia (Chile/Argentina), I will definitely go visit the King Penguin colony that they have there!

PS. loving the furball