We arrived in the afternoon of December 31st. For us, it was just another day on the road, but for Santiagoans it was time to get ready to PAAAARTEEY!!!
This time, our airbnb was an apartment on the 19th floor of a modern high rise near the downtown area - quite a change from old colonial buildings.
After we settled in, I did some internet research and found a food market just a block away, so we went out to stock up on provisions for our two day stay. When we walked in the store, it was a scene of total insanity. First, we had to figure out how to get a grocery cart -- there were none by the front door. Turned out, we had to wait by the checkout lanes and grab one from someone who was finished with theirs. Down every aisle there were long lines of people waiting to go through the checkouts so we had to maneuver around them to find what we needed. It was so noisy and crowded! I thought maybe it was because it was the only market in the downtown area and it was always like this. When we finally got into a checkout line ourselves, we were behind about 30 other people.
Looking around, I realized that a lot of people were stocking up on beer and other party supplies. That’s when it struck us -- we were in the midst of New Year’s Eve preparations, not just an ordinary shopping day. These people were getting ready to party!
And party they did! The fireworks started at midnight. Unfortunately, we couldn’t see them from our apartment, but we could certainly hear them. And the parties went on for the rest of the night. We could see them in the windows of other high rises all around us. We were so tired from traveling that we managed to sleep off and on despite the noise. At 6:00am when the sun was rising, there were still some parties going strong. Apparently, there was also partying in the streets. The next day, there were wine bottles, fireworks detritus, and colored confetti scattered throughout the streets and parks.
We were out in search of a place to buy tickets for a hop-on-and-off tour bus, thinking that would be a good way to see the sights and spend New Year’s Day when all the stores and museums would be closed. Well, it turned out that even the tour buses were closed for the day. We didn’t find this out until we had already walked quite a ways and were hot and tired. So we found a little shade in the Plaza de Armas and sat for a while watching the people and pigeons. Thankfully, there was a street vendor selling ice cream bars.
On the way back to the apartment, we stopped in a couple more shady spots to do more people watching. It was a very quiet, lazy day in the city.
On January 2nd, we had a meeting with some faculty from the teacher education program at the Universidad Diego Portales. This had been set up in advance. The new dean at Western Washington University where David and I worked is from Chile and has personal connections with this program. He had connected David with Julia, a faculty member from Chile visiting Bellingham last June. When they heard we were going to be in Santiago on our trip, they asked if we would meet with a group of their faculty to discuss their efforts to develop a professional portfolio assessment system and to share our experiences working with schools with high need populations.
During the discussion, we found we had a lot of shared values and commitments even though our contexts are very different. As David said, it felt like a real meeting of the minds. By the end, they were strategizing about how to get us back there after our round-the-world trip. After the meeting, they took us to lunch at a Peruvian restaurant and we enjoyed more informal conversation. All in all, it was a very special afternoon. It felt as though we’d made more new friends.
The next day, we were back in the air on our way to Easter Island.
Comments