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By Elizabeth Kimmel, CASA Chile Spring 2019 (Brown University ’21)

When I first arrived in Chile in late February, I truly had no idea what to expect. It was weird coming down for Brown’s spring semester because I had this really long winter break, and I think that also served to sort of build up the anticipation and speculation for what it would be like in Santiago. I know I had vague expectations of how I wanted things to go, but no true sense of what specifically I was hoping for. Looking back now, I feel incredibly lucky with every single aspect of my experience here. To begin with, my host family is incredible. It’s always nice coming home at the end of a long day because I love getting to spend time with them. I ended up in a family with four kids, three of which live in the house. I am especially close with the daughter, who is 21 and studies physics in la Católica. She has also helped me numerous times with my fluid mechanics class. I remember one night in particular we lost power and spent multiple hours just sort of hanging out and off and on doing our homework by candlelight. In fact, we were pretty creative/artsy about it:

Lizzie

 Apart from my host family, I have also really enjoyed being a student athlete at la Universidad Católica. I play on the university’s women’s soccer team. I tried out for the team in early March and have been playing with them since then as the goalkeeper. It has not only given me a chance to play soccer, which was something I was unsure if I would get to do here, but it has also given me the chance to meet and build friendships with some pretty incredible women here (and practice my Chilean slang). The team has also served as a great support network, as they have all been incredibly welcoming and helpful to me as a person coming from the US who has absolutely no idea what is going on (ever), and whose first language is not Spanish. I have also met some friends from my fluid mechanics class and have become even closer with them recently during the time we spent working on the final project, which was designing a miniature submarine. Despite the harsh grading that is the reality of pretty much all STEM classes here, I have enjoyed this class. I also took a class about the history of gender in Chile, which is a topic I never really would have seen myself having interest in, but over the course of this semester it has become an intriguing subject for me.  

 The friendships I have made during my time here along with all that I have learned about the culture, language and history of Latin America I really believe would not be replicable in the United States. I have really enjoyed also having the opportunity to travel, whether it be as part of the CASA program, or trips that I have done on my own. I think that my favorite trip so far was probably Patagonia, but my trips to Buenos Aires and San Pedro de Atacama with CASA and my trip to Cusco, Perú were amazing also. I have really realized that it’s one thing to see pictures of these places, but nothing truly compares to being in the place. No matter how many pictures I had seen of Machu Picchu being there was beyond what I imagined. In fact, I realized recently that there are still a lot of things I want to see here, history to learn about, and room to improve my Spanish. Because of this, I am actually going to stay another semester in Santiago, and I am super excited about my extra time here.

The following pictures, from left to right, are Torres del Paine in Patagonia, Valle de la Luna in San Pedro de Atacama Desert, Machu Picchu.

Lizzie