Santiago and Vina del Mar

You ever have the experience of a place really growing on you?  Santiago is like that for me.  The more I explored it, the more I appreciated its distinct neighborhoods.  By no means did I see even most of it, but the areas that I did explore were surprisingly different and changed characters instantly.  Bella Vista, Bellas Artes, and Santa Lucia were my favorites.  The area around San Cristobal is worthy of even greater exploration, and I hope to be back in Santiago to visit Pablo Neruda's house before too long.  The Improving University Teaching Conference, which was the reason for my early arrival in Chile before the Fulbright starts, was at the Pontificia Universidad Catholica Casa Central right next to Santa Lucia where I was staying.

Casa Central is a massive building that takes a whole block of the Av. Alameda.  At the very center is this statue of Christ with arms wide open.    Over the main lintels are the Spanish for "Religion and Science" and "Letters and Arts."  It's a fortress and inside it is composed of a series of beautiful courtyards.  

The conference was entirely in the Casa Central, with plenaries in a massive room with three stories of bookshelves.  There were plenty of modern additions, but--as usual--is was the purely architectural elements that drew my eye. 

Before I left Santiago, I visited the incredible Museum of Memory--a new museum that documents the 1973 coup d'etat that ushered in the dictatorship of Pinochet, the oppression of Pinochet's regime, the referendum that brought back a return to democracy, but that also is dedicated to human rights worldwide.  My hope had been to visit both it and the Pablo Neruda house before meeting with my hosts at the Fulbright Chile offices, but the Museum of Memory stopped me in my tracks.  It is an amazing space in itself but is also rich in documenting what happened in Chile between 1973 and 1990.  

After a warm welcome by the good Fulbright folks, I was off to Vina del Mar, my hometown for the next five months.  I took the subway to the bus terminal where I bought a ticket on a very comfortable double-decker bus to Vina.  Ninety minutes later, the bus pulled into the Vina bus terminal and I was met by Fernanda Rejas and her husband David Letelier.  They drove me to my apartment building on San Martin across the street from the Pacific Ocean.

Since moving in on Tuesday night, I've been familiarizing myself with what Vina has to offer.  Everything is walkable, and I've enjoyed discovering grocery stores and markets in my attempt to forage for food.  The highlight, though, is the sea.

I think I'm going to like it here.  But I'll like it better when Erica and Zachary join me a week from Sunday.