Walking to Work

I left my bike at home today so I could take pictures of the trip. Camera was running low on batteries (hadn't recharged it since the riot) so I couldn't do multiple takes. 

We live on the first floor of this building. It makes it a lot easier to move the bike in and out. While the gate is a little foreboding, we're actually in one of the safest parts of Santiago Centro. Barrio Brasil has a flourishing nightclub scene and is very close to the local police station. The front desk guy speaks very little English and we practice off each other.

Remember how my first pic was of a sprawling church? Turns out there are a lot of them in the city. I used to think they were a little unreal for some reason, and I've finally pinned down why. Santiago has pretty bad smog issues. I've never noticed, but both locals and interns have complained about it. One thing it does do it slightly lower the "resolution" of everything, making all of the buildings look a little vide-gamey. The churches seem more affected by this.

Ave Brasil is probably the most vibrant street running perpendicular to O'Higgins. There's a lot of restaurants and stuff that everybody eats at regularly (me less so I guess). The defining feature is the line of palm trees that separates the lanes. Seeing real-live palm trees strewn all nilly willy is really novel.

Plaza de Brasil. Like Chicago Santiago has lots of tiny little parks scattered everywhere. Haven't spent much time here, though. The other interns' place is just out of sight. I've been trying to get them to take pictures of their place with no luck. Maybe I offer cookies.

Ave O'Higgins is Santiago's main road. I think it stretches all the way into Providencia and Los Condes. The red line follows it pretty closely, and all the facing the street are horribly overpriced.

Both riots followed O'Higgins. These pictures were taken pretty close to where I got tear gassed. I'd say it's weird standing in that spot now but it's really not. You can still see some broken glass and shattered signs on O'Higgins' sidewalks.

Another residential building, this one specifically for students. We looked at one place, but they were (1) horribly expensive (500 dollars per month!) (2) didn't offer doubles or quadruples and (3) didn't offer noncommunal kitchens. So basically US dorms. Note the ever-present palm trees.

Another plaza. Not sure why I took a picture aside from the fact it looks nice. Actually, that's a pretty good reason. 

Here we are! Universidad de Chile, campus Beauchef. All of the engineers and applied scientists work here, as do four of us interns. I've grown pretty fond of it.

The 'quad'. It's pretty small and serves a lot of people, so there's always music or demonstrations or whatever going on here.

I think I could learn to enjoy watching soccer. We curbstomped Mexico two weeks ago and I was surprised at how exciting it was.

I was going to upload pictures of my office, but then my camera decided to crap out on me. Will get those up tomorrow.