Yesterday we went to Santiago for a field trip at 8 am. When we got there we went to Villa Grimaldi which was a center for mental torture during Pinochet's reign over Chile from 1973 to 1990. There weren't many original building because when Pinochet learned that he was about to be revealed, he destroyed the area. There was one replica of a building where they housed people and it was 1 meter by 1 meter. These tiny buildings were originally lined up in rows and several people were crammed into each one. Children played in a pool with military officers while their parents were tortured in a center. There was one building there that was a memorial to some of those people and it had shadow boxes of their things with information about them. There was also an original tower still there where people were harrassed. In addition, there were two large stone walls with the names of those lost as well as a flower garden with plaques of names. It was really sad but since it's a memorial garden now, there were tons of trees and flowers native to Chile throughout the area. After leaving there we ate lunch then went to Pablo Neruda's house in Santiago. This house was similar to his house in Isla Negra in that it had tons of stuff in the house but the design was really different. This house was broken up into three different buildings. One part was a guest house, one part was Neruda's house where he slept, and one part was a bar and sitting area. It was really neat and enclosed in trees but I like the Isla Negra house better because it's on the beach.
Once we finished our tours at Neruda's house, some people left with Professora Marisol but some of us stayed in Santiago for a few more hours to explore the city and eat dinner. First, we went to Bella Vista, a really nice area to look in shops. I just bought some vintage coasters and other people bought jewelry and paintings. We met some nursing students from the US that were studying in Santiago and I think they were happier than us to hear english. We talked to them for a little while and they told us that in order to get to our bus on time, we needed an house to ride the metro. We ate dinner and left there at 7:00 for our 8:00 bus. Tara and Chris stayed at Bella Vista to see Tara's friend from Texas who worked in the area because their bus was at 9:00. We walked wuickly to the metro and finally found it. We realized that we may not make it in time so we started running through the metro station paniked. First we went to the Tur Bus office to make sure we were going to the right place to get on our bus. Then we had to buy a metro card to ride the metro. We just bought one and put enough money on it for all of us to ride. On the other side of check in we ran to the metro and this lady, who was trying to be really helpful and not sketchy, told us which metro to take. We got on and had to ride for a while....we were supposed to get off at one stop but we decided we could go up one more to save time. Terrible idea! We got off and realized that there was no way to get to our bus from there so we ran around to the other side and got on a metro to take us back to where we were supposed to be. By then we had missed the bus but we weren't worried about switching tickets to a later time. At this point, we were freaking out about Tara and Chris because they needed to leave already to get there. Elizabeth called Chris and the first thing she screamed was "Leave now!" haha it was funny later hearing about how scared they were. Sarah Grace and Laura Kate went ahead to see if it was possible to switch our tickets and Gardner, Elizabeth, Rakiya, and I waited behind just in case we had to get back on the metro because we didn;'t want to have to pay a ton to check back through the metro line. Throughout all of this we're on and off the phone with Chris and Tara giving them instructions on how to get to the bus. LK and SG come back and say that there are no more tickets back to Vina tonight so we freak out and all go to the desk. There really aren't any more so we get into another company's line and get the last 6 tickets back to Vina at 10:45. At this point Chris and Tara are about to miss their bus and we're on the phone with them telling them to hurry but they missed their bus too. The only tickets they could get were for 8:45 this morning. They called Wofford students in Santiago who tried to get them a place to stay but finally Tara's friend got them somewhere to stay. They left and the rest of us waited in front of the bussed for about 45 mins because we did not want to miss our bus. We asked this one man who worked there about our bus because it wasn't showing up on the screen and he told us not to worry, he'd get us on our bus and everything would be fine. He checked on us a few times, probably because my face was a mixture of anger/horror/worry. When our bus came, he called us over to the front of the line and put us on first. We were so relieved and thankful!
As a side note, there were these two nuns at the bus station when we arrived. We kept joking the who time saying okay no worries the nuns are still here. It was really funny because the nuns were on our bus....the whole time they waited they did not really talk. They were very quiet and patiently waited. For some reason I felt such a sense of peace knowing they were there. The image of them was a reminder that God was present and I really think they were angels :)
While our day in Santiago was really hectic, it was still fun...once we were on the bus home! It's a funny story though and we made it back okay. Needless to say, we all decided that we like Vina better than Santiago.
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