Half a month in Chile!

That's the amount of time I've been here. The first week in Santiago, the second in Concepción. This time has been AWESOME!

What am I doing in Chile to begin with?
I'm completing my second co-op work term. At UBC, and Canada in general, doing co-op is pretty popular. When you do co-op, you complete five four-month work placements during your degree doing something related to your field of study. The pros? You get all the tools to learn how to look for and apply for jobs successfully; you typically make a lot of money; you graduate with a better idea of what you want to work in, and with tons of experience; you get the constant support of your co-op advisor; you get access to all the co-op job postings; you get incredible opportunities, like this Chile one or my friend Lise in South Africa. The cons? You have to pay the equivalent of one credit for every work term you do, and you have to prepare some sort of PPT or written report of what you did. Last summer I worked four months in Port McNeil, Nothern Vancouver Island, doing mostly silviculture surveys for a forest products company. This year, thanks to my forestry co-op supervisor, this Chile opportunity came around and things just happened, and here I am! This is the first time someone from UBC comes to Chile, and I think the plan is to start establishing a connection between UBC Forestry and the company here.

What's my job?
The company is trying to get FSC certified (really cool, I'm learning SO MUCH about this!) and if it does get the certification, Chile would become the country with a highest percentage of it's forests certified! For the certification, one of the main things is for everything to be participative, to have the public's input about things such as the already-identified Areas de Alto Valor Ambiental. I will be working on collecting all the information spread around the company related to biodiversity in the over 300 000 ha of native conservation forests in Chile, which will be displayed in a brand new biodiversity webpage. This is why I'm in Concepción right now, because here work most of the people that do stuff related to the environment. I have been shown many of the conservation research that goes on, such as the PIMEX program (Programa de Investigación Marina de Excelencia) that has a sea lion monitoring project in Cobquecura. I will be here one more week, and then back to Santiago. I will blog more details about the cool things I do later!

Cobquecura panoramic shot. That's the sea lion island right there.

The Apple Incident: A True Story
My lovely Nichole prepared me a Travel Pack for the trip to Chile, which included some candy, stuff to read, an apple.. I put this in my carry on bag, meaning to eat the apple and read the newspaper while waiting for the plane. At check-in, the lady said I could check in two bags, not only one. So I did, and got rid of the carry on bag. An hour before landing in Chile, I filled in the declaration form, ticking the NO check box for everything, as per usual. No, I'm not carrying with me diseases from a pig farm. No, I'm not carrying animal products. No, I'm not carrying vegetable products... I totally forgot about the apple. In Chile they are pretty strict about this not declaring thing - they even show a five-minute video before landing on the importance of declaring. You can get fined big time and you're screwed if you don't declare something. An apple is 1400 bucks. Yeah. That much. Luckily for me, I never handed in that lying declaration form when I went to get my luggage in Santiago because there was no luggage! It got stuck in LA, and arrived in Santiago later that day. Phew...

The GlobeTrekking Summer Notebook Project
Speaking of stories that involve Nicks, there's this really cool project we started inspired by BOOK, check it out. It will be a notebook we send back and forth throughout the summer, and in it we will draw and write stuff to keep in touch in an artsy way. Stage one has been completed, and our book is crossing the continent at this very moment flying from Chile to Canada. So excited to receive it once Knickers sends it back!

My chilean experience so far
So far, I've loved Santiago and Concepción, the largest (~6 million) and second-largest (~1million) cities in Chile. They are both really nice and they remind me in many ways of Mexico City. In Concepción I'm staying in the very centre. The area where I'm staying in Santiago is called Providencia and my favourite thing about it are the streets.  The sidewalks, I mean. They are really big, allowing for people to hang out, sit down at the many pubs, restaurants and ice-cream places, and chat. This creates a nice atmosphere, reminds me of Cremona in Italy. You will find a lot of (in order of abundance):
1. Banks and ATMs - seriously, I've never seen so many. They are EVERYWHERE. Every two shops there is a random bank you've never heard of with five ATMs in it.
2. Pharmacies - again, the number of pharmacies is crazy. One in every ten stores is a pharmacy. And pharmacies with ATMs INSIDE them? Yep, that too.
3. Ice cream places (sign I will get fat #1) - this is mostly in Concepción, but in Santiago too. There are tons of ice cream places, it's like being in Italy. Same style of ice cream shop too, with the square batches and glass window and stuff.

Some things are really expensive compared to Vancouver or Mexico, but some are cheaper. 1 000 chilean pesos are like 2 CAD. To appreciate how much I'm paying for something, in my mind I always convert chilean pesos to dollars (*2 / 1000) and then to mexican pesos (*12). It's hard dealing with thousands, especially when things cost something like 3 120 and the coins are a mess (they are changing them so there are two types of coins going around) and then it's embarrassing staying more than 60 seconds figuring it out at the counter. More expensive: food. A simple fast food meal consisting of a sandwich or a burger or an individual pizza is like 3 500 pesos, or 7 dollars. Cheaper: art supplies (not the best brand quality but regardless). A really nice set of 18 large tubes of watercolours + set of 5 awesome brushes of the kind I've always wanted + watercolour palette = 4 dollars. A set of 6 wood-carving tools = 2 dollars. No way! That's what I thought.

Building in El Golf

In Santiago, the office where I work is really nice, in an area called El Golf. Like Santa Fe in Mexico City kind of. The elevators are the best. You press the floor number BEFORE getting on the elevators and the screen tells you which elevator to take. This way the elevator takes the best possible 'route' to the different floors and everything is more efficient.

Entrance to the building

We get this card that we can use for a drinks vending machine and a coffee vending machine (which makes cappuccino, hot chocolate, latte...and you adjust the levels of coffee, milk and sugar with the touchpad), and the same card gives us access to the building and the cafeteria, which is called 'casino'. This is really funny here in Chile. Usually large companies provide food for the workers, so they usually have casinos at every level of the operation, from the corporate offices to the pulp mills to the logging operations. So at lunch, you just scan your card and you can eat all you want at the cafeteria-style buffet, which is DELICIOUS (sign I will get fat #2). They have salad bars, soups, at least three different fancy desserts every time (and I looooove desserts!!) And eating like that is just like school, well it reminds me of eating at Vanier in the sense that you eat with friends and everyone eats together. This concept is really cool I think. In Canada, people always take their own lunch to work. I remember how my lunch last summer was the cheese or PB&J sandwich I made myself in 10 minutes before leaving for work, and compare that to the three course meals workers get here...

In Santiago I moved around with the metro. It's 560 pesos to ride the metro (and you can also take two buses) if you're not a student. If you're a student it's only 180. I will go first thing back to the office to see if I can get the student discount. Well, it's fast but it's PACKED all the time. Everything is very busy in Santiago, let's not even start with supermarkets.

Park in front of the office

One thing EVERYONE warned me about in Santiago was theft. I had never had so many people telling me to be careful and to leave the jewelry in the hotel and my purse in my hands whenever I went somewhere. My objective is to avoid theft for the three months I'm here! The centre of the city looks a bit like the centre of the city in Mexico City, but line-ups are really really long to do administrative stuff. Also, despite what chileans say, I find Santiago to be more polluted. At times visibility is terrible, and I've never seen Mexico City like that.

Street in El Golf

In Santiago I'm staying at something called apart hotel, which is like an apartment/hotel. It's super cute and comfy, you can look at pictures here. The best thing is the location. In Concepción I'm staying at a hotel which is one block away from the office, a three minute walk. Extremely convenient. I love it here, my room's the best. The best thing, however, is breakfast (sign I will get fat #3). There are TWO different cakes they make here everyday, cakes I've never had before. So I have to have one slice of each of course. Plus all different beverages, breads, cheeses, fruits, cereal... I look forward to breakfast every day!

Ok, I will write details about what I have done at work on a separate post!