Boston in Santiago

So today was a rainy day. It reminded me a lot of Boston in the Spring. It's frigid and there is water everywhere. You cannot escape it, so all that's left to do is accept it. You are going to be wet, you are going to be cold, and the only thing you are going to want to do is go home, but, alas, you are going to have a busy schedule and water isn't about to get in the way of that.

I had an interview for an internship this morning. I woke up early and got dressed. I learned that my idea of proper interview attire doesn't really jive with the workplaces of the organizations I'm interviewing at. Yesterday I was way over dressed for my interview at Fondo Esperanza wearing a collared shirt, a sweater, khakis, and shoes. Today I dressed down with a collared shirt and jeans. The people at Kairos, today, didn't dress any differently than the average college student. Some were more professional than others, but there didn't appear to be a dress code of any sort. I'm not complaining, just observing. It would be nice to work in a place without a dress code especially when the Summer comes around in late October and there is no air conditioning.

In order to get to the interview this morning, I had to walk to Cristóbal Colón, a metro station on the blue line, take that one stop to Tobalaba on the red line, and stay on that for about 25 or 30 minutes until I reached San Alberto Hurtado. Lucky for me, I ran into Leanne at Colón and we traveled together until she had to switch to the green line at Baquedano. It was really nice running into a familiar face when I wasn't expecting it, especially since I knew I had a long trip ahead of me. Once I got to San Alberto Hurtado, I met up with Christy who was also going to the same interview. We hopped into a "collectivo" which is a cab that goes longer distances at fixed rates. It's not private, so two other people jumped in and were dropped off at their respective destinations. The streets in the town where the interview was, Renca, were completely flooded. This is another example of socioeconomic disparities in Santiago. The wealthy neighborhoods have streets with drainage systems whereas the poorer communities have nothing. It was an interesting sight. A normal rain looks like a flood in Renca. We ended up waiting about an hour and fifteen minutes before someone actually interviewed us. We were explicitly told to be on time, but because of the rain, we were 3 minutes late. When we arrived, we were told that the woman would be there shortly and we could have a seat. Half an our later, we were told that she would be another hour. It wasn't fun waiting, but we wandered around, got some bread a cheese to snack on. It was really good, or most probably, I was really tired and hungry...

After getting back to the city, I went to a meeting where I was trained how to be a TA for an English class. I think it will be a lot of fun working with Chileans my age and being the TA instead of a student in awe of the TA's speaking skills. Hopefully there will be more to come from that story.

Hasta mañana,
Dan