If you are the slightest bit interested in going to Santiago Chile for a semester, be prepared to take the Micro (a Chilenismo for public bus). My program is made up of eight vastly different travel-savvy people, ranging from a girl from San Francisco obsessed with buses to a girl who lives only 2 minutes from campus because otherwise she may not be able to navigate her way there. Contrary to DC or GW, public transportation is a must in Santiago. Especially because through the GW Chile program, you have access to two different universities with campuses spread out throughout the city. Little to my surprise, the Micro and Metro have probably cost me the most out of all of my expenditures abroad. That's not to imply that they're expensive, rather that you use them with such frequency.
Now, here's the part where it gets difficult. Here's the part where TranSantiago doesn't make much sense from an American perspective... since for the most part, people are commuting in the morning towards the heart of downtown Santiago, most mayor roads face in that direction. But wait! When everyone is leaving their jobs and returning home, the roads actually switch direction and they all facilitate traffic away from downtown Santi. (Just a little slang- 'taco' means traffic or congestion in Chile. So when someone says they were stuck in a 'taco', it actually isn't as great as it sounds.)That also means that the routes change according to the time of the day, so if you're looking for any land markers to make sure you're going the right way, your bus driver might have to take a roundabout way to navigate through Santiago traffic. For anyone that struggles with transportation or is not directionally-inclined, this seems like a mayor feat and something you'll never learn and extremely counter-intuitive. I don't consider myself particularly great at operating public transportation, so I opted to let everyone else take the lead on any outings we had. I had prematurely resigned myself to never understanding and being extremely wary of the Micro when the bus-loving girl on the program gave us a piece of advice:
The bus is really great opposed to the metro, because on the bus you can see where you're going. You aren't underground or moving too quickly.
And all of a sudden, everything clicked. While this all may sound a bit intimidating, it actually hasn't been so hard. Very quickly you learn which buses will take you closest to your house and you always go in a group. It's incredibly incredibly helpful to download a GIS2 app on your phone so you can track your location (without wifi-woop woop) and see as your street is coming up. Surprisingly enough, I think I've caught on pretty quickly and part of the reason, I believe, is because you aren't always on your phone or listening to music in Santiago. It's not a great idea to have your phone out because theft is super common, plus, there's no wifi and data is hard to connect- so you really pay attention to your surroundings. You really learn every shop on the main street and to look out for that one Adidas Outlet shop so that you know that the Gustapan is around the corner and right after the Gustapan you need to press the Micro button. Not only has this experience really emphasized systems that I thought were universally homogeneous (like public transport) are not, but it made me appreciate and learn Santiago more thoroughly.