Archive for January, 2010

I apologize for the double pun in the title to this post, but as Bill Campbell says in True Blood,

“You have to remember that most vampires are very old. Puns used to be the highest form of humor.”

While this is no doubt true, I’m not entirely sure what vampires have to do with the subject at hand except that I’ve clearly been watching too much True Blood, so… segue segue segue segue.

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The second round of the Chilean presidential election has commenced today, shutting down the whole country and making today the perfect excuse to sleep in, lounge around, watch tv online and, perhaps, update the blog. The title of this post refers to the “Dry Law” imposed on Chile during election day, which prohibits alcohol sales. I was planning on writing about the election, but I’ve done way more than enough of that, so let’s talk about something else. Really, anything else.

The current plan, as it shapes up, looks like I’m going to be heading to Rio de Janeiro with a friend in early February and ending up in Salvador for Carnaval, which starts on Feb. 12. We’ll spend a few weeks traversing Brazil and then head down through Uruguay, Argentina, up through Chile and to Peru, all somehow within about a month and a half. If all goes to plan, I’ll be back in California in mid-March, just in time for the beginning of baseball season!

My new vice is something called iTunes U, which syndicates lectures from certain (often very prestigious) universities to listen on an iPod. I’ve been listening to an Intro to Psychology from an MIT professor, and I’ve been loving it.

That’s it, I think it’s going to be a short post today. I’m working on getting my Visa for Brazil and organize my trip there, and I’ll talk abou tthat when it’s more concrete.

Ciao ciao.

The last two days have been pretty brutal transport-only days, with something like 9+ hours Thursday and significantly more today. Why did I go to Argentina for 15 hours, you ask?

I originally came to Chile on a student visa, which was a long and circuitous process I’d love never to have to repeat (think FBI background checks, HIV test, reams of paperwork, and a nice cash deposit in the Chilean consulate’s bank account). That has unfortunately run out, and in an effort remain as legal as possible, I’m on a bus right now to Mendoza to pick up a new tourist visa.

Mendoza is the border town just on the other side of the Chilean/Argentine border, and quite a beautiful wine-filled area, though I’m only staying the night before heading back. The Chilean government is notoriously apathetic about their visas, and basically anyone willing to pay the entrance fee can get a stamp for a 90-day tourist visa. The “Mendoza run,” then, has become a ritual for foreigners and quite a nice and easy way to stay in the country.

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The last few months have been a bit crazy, which would be an excellent excuse to account for my lack of blogging, but the truth lies somewhere between inertia, laziness and malaise, though I’m only about 2/3 confident about the definitions of 2/3 of those words, so who really knows?

School is long over, though I haven’t the slightest idea how I fared, considering the generally disorganized nature of the University of Chile. I legitimately really enjoyed each of my classes in their own way, and learned a lot, but I find myself complaining about the dysfunctional nature of its administration and habits of its faculty more than lauding the classes, which is too bad, but it’s interesting that that’s really what stuck with me. I’ll do my best in the future to acknowledge the good with the bad the next time an anecdotal discussion of the comparative merits of Latin American public higher education comes up which, knowing the crowd I tend to run with, will probably be pretty soon.

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