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Tag: GW Chile

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By bienvenidosasantiago

Last week I wrote about my top three restaurant recommendations when in Santiago, but this week is a little bit different! Especially after just feasting with my host-family for mother's day. This week...is about the great food you'll be getting in your home-stay.

Let's start with the obvious and most simple: palta, AKA avocado. Chile is the pioneer, champion, and all-around winner for quality of avocado. Just like the States, throw that on some toast for breakfast (my current tip is adding merken, a special spice in Chile made from dried and ground peppers from the campo). Or, add it to a salad with tomato and lemon and olive oil! Put it on a sandwich! Whatever you can think of- you can do it with the best avocado in the world! Mostly, you'll be served avocado on toast, but the sky is the limit.

...continue reading "Where to eat in Santiago: At Home"

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By bienvenidosasantiago

Now, this is going to be completely completely subjective and based off of my own personal preference for foods, but I've consulted with most people in my program and here's a brief list of three great-must-try restaurants of Santiago when you study abroad.

Let's start easy and cheap but still delicious! Pan y Oliva! A friend of mine that lives in Providencia actually recommended this place to me as a late night eat after we went to the gym one day and were totally starved afterward. Let me tell you, this place has insane sandwiches! If Santiago does anything really well- it's probably avocado and sandwiches. That night I order a quinoa burger on pita pan with avocado and this thing was so big I had to ask for a knife and fork to eat it because 1.) my food was falling out all over the place 2.) I felt like I looked ridiculous because of said food falling out all over the place and all over my face.

...continue reading "Best Eats of Santiago"

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By bienvenidosasantiago

One of the best parts of study abroad is the options for traveling to other places. When you're already in another country it seems relatively easy to travel to whichever country is next door. Contrary to studying abroad in other countries, in Chile the best place to travel is...throughout Chile. Not only does it have Patagonia in the south with amazing hiking and some of the most gorgeous landscapes to grace the world, but you also have the driest desert in the North that boasts of the oldest mummies, salt planes and hiking. This past weekend, we all went on our GW-sponsored trip to San Pedro de Atacama and I've never been so in love in my life.

When people think of Chile, a lot of the time it's in reference to the insane landscapes that are out of this world, like Vale de la Luna. We've been in San Pedro for around four days now and every morning and afternoon was filled with the among the craziest things I've ever experienced. Just in the first day, we toured copper mines, an abandoned mining town, and visited a human rights memorial. The following morning was our chance to choose whatever excursion we wanted to pursue and everyone in the group decided to go sandboarding in the Valle de la Muerte (it sounds a little intense, but it was actually named 'Valle de la Martian' because it looks like Mars, but through miscommunications it became known otherwise). I don't think I've ever been happier than sitting on the top of a sand dune looking out across the Valle while music plays from the van below.

For a long time whenever we'd be driving through San Pedro everyone would comment 'I've never seen anything like this! I've never been anywhere like this,' and it took me a little bit to realize that no one comes to San Pedro having visited a place like San Pedro. Regardless of your experience with traveling, expert or novice, San Pedro is otherworldly. A gorgeous gift to the people that are lucky enough to visit. That afternoon we hiked Valle de la Luna, and watched the sunset with snacks before dinner. The next morning we woke up early (around 5 in the morning) to go to geysers, where we had breakfast and went swimming, in the afternoon we visited 3 different lakes. One salt lake that we couldn't swim in, one fresh water pit that we could jump into and lastly a salt lake we could float in. I've always seen photos of people at the Dead Sea and honestly just thought they were treading water- but it's so real! you could stand and sit and lay in the water without ever submerging your head.

It was so cool to experience so many different types of water and swimming, all of which were relatively closely located. That's one of the coolest parts of San Pedro is that all the things your doing are pretty much right next to each other. We were actually supposed to go star gazing that night, but it was too cloudy for us to go. But honestly, we had woken up so early and done so much that I was ready to crash. This morning we went on a biking tour and visited old Atacama ruins with our guide Manuel (coolest guide ever). I am so insanely happy to have had the opportunity to go to San Pedro and do all of these things. I've walked away from this experience feeling like I understand more of Chile and truly have been taking advantage of time abroad.

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By bienvenidosasantiago

The greatest fear we all share is the unknown and it can manifest itself in countless ways. It's the preoccupation with possibilities that keep us up at night; that supersede the inevitable realities we ignore in a fog of uncertainty. It was the same for college. It'll be the same when we all graduate from college. It's this metaphysical and omnipresent cliff beckoning us forward through the properties of 'call of the void'. The desire to move forward, but the resistance to change. To change the comfortable.

I think the scariest part of studying abroad and your worst moments are the shared moments of uncertainty. For someone like me who clings to routine, especially when you balance work and school, without me realizing it, the unknown made me anxious. It took me SO long to remember the hours at HellWell change on Sundays and it opens super late, how am I supposed to get in the same habits here? Are university gym's even a thing in Santiago? What's the food going to be like? What if I hate everything that my host-mom makes me? What if I adjust but hate it?

...continue reading "Fears Not-Actualized"

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By bienvenidosasantiago

A couple weeks before I left for Chile I went out to brunch with a friend from high school that was studying abroad in Prague for the semester. Her semester started much earlier than mine, so she was Europe-bound in a few days and I was going to be left to wait around a month before I was able to fly out. Almost immediately she was posting piles and piles of photos of the food in Prague, her trips to Paris and London and Poland and I was gripped with excited for similar life-changing events.

...continue reading "The Cliche"

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By bienvenidosasantiago

Senior year of high school marks the first wave of adult responsibility and immense pressure to make future decisions for most students. Of course the time leading up to picking a university and graduating is filled with its own vicissitudes of stress, but ultimately deciding which university is the best option and fit for you is the first decision you make that holds a great weight for your future self. Here in Chile, they approach this time with great caution; with great awareness of priorities and maturity at that age.

...continue reading "How to live at home until you’re 30 without guilt (Lessons from Chile)"

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By bienvenidosasantiago

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.

...continue reading "How to: Micro"

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By bienvenidosasantiago

My introduction as an American prompts a number of responses. The first being, that 'Um yes? So are we in South America.' In the States, I think we live in a vacuum without being aware that even how we identify ourselves could be problematic in another country. It's no question that American influence is pervasive across the globe through the media, the news and pop culture; our reputation usually preceding our arrival for study abroad students. Sometimes for the worst, mostly in cases where there's only one portrayal of an American or few Americans living in said country.

...continue reading "Americans Abroad"

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By bienvenidosasantiago

A week before I left for Chile I returned to DC to pick up my student visa and say goodbye to everyone mid-semester. The majority of my friends had studied abroad in Korea either the past semester or the semester before that and were in different stages of re-assimilation to school in the States. They had warned me that the night before I flew out would be the worst night of the entire process, I would question myself, why I was doing this, and do anything to find my comfort-zone again. pre-departure nerves. Three people told me that I could call them at any point in the night if I needed someone to talk to.

...continue reading "Be Prepared"

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By DandyLion

Hello GW!

The past month at LBV has passed calmly with few speed bumps; although some responsibilities and tasks were increased in volume, everything has passed very well. This month, I participated in the maintenance of amicable relationships with many of the nearby hostels in hopes and efforts that they will promote LBV to their clientele. To do this, a lot of time is required in that you must walk around the city for quite a few hours going from location to location. It is very entertaining however; you have the opportunity to meet and talk with countless people, making new acquaintances and friends alike. When we arrive at the site visits, we rearrange advertising materials as well as meet with the receptionists and other personnel who communicate with the travelers to discuss how we can take steps to encourage them to send their customers to us for tours of various types. This task has been also greatly helpful in learning more about the city of Santiago, Chile and has made orienting myself eons easier.

In other work, I have been added to a task force in which we are performing research on the top hotels, bed and breakfasts, aparthotels, and other assortments of lodging to uncover where the most popular sites are located, what types of people tend to frequent them, and so forth in efforts to discover how we can embark on marketing to new types of accommodation establishments. This research is rather easy but a bit tedious in that it involves spending large quantities of time on the computer and internet on sites such as travelocity.com and such to obtain an idea of places that would best serve our company. This work definitely seems to be benefiting the company as expanding to new venues is key in company growth. Hopefully, the joint efforts of hostel trips and office work can help LBV grow to another level of travel planning!

Until next time,

Danielle

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