I am a senior Industrial Engineering student from the United States. That is really all you need to know about me if you don´t know me already.
When and for how long I am in Chile:
I am studying in Santiago, Chile for one semester. I arrived here on February 13th, 2001, and I will be returning to the United States August 10th, 2001.
Why I am in Chile:
First of all, I have always wanted to study abroad in general, because I feel that it is a valuable growing experience to see life from a different perspective. Also almost everyone that I talked to, that had studied abroad, told me that it was the best experience of their lives (granted they were all young, but I know I am in the prime time of my life for this type of adventure and it is only down hill from here, or so I am told.) Furthermore, another goal of mine that I made a long time ago was to be able to speak in another language before I graduated from college. This is an important goal for me, because I personally would still not feel like a well eduacated person if I can only speak one language. After my trip to Italy I felt this even more strongly, because I met so many people that spoke multiple languages there. And more simplily, if you ever tried it you know that speaking in another language is just plain a lot of fun. Unfortunately, I never really learned that much from all the Spanish courses that I took in high school and college . Therefore, I decided that the most logical thing to do was to combine my two goals and study abroad in a Spanish speaking country. It was a somewhat scary decision knowing that my knowledge of the Spanish language is elementary, but what fun is life without a little risk taking!
I decided that I wanted to studyabroad through the College of Engineering at my University, because it has partnerships with universities throughout the world. Through this program all I had to do was choose one of the universities on their list, pay my tuition to Madison for the semester as usual, pay a $200 program fee, and purchase a roundtrip plane ticket. Going through my college´s program will also make transfering my credits easier when I get back. The price I paid for not doing more research for different programs is that I had a shorter list of Spanish speaking countries to choose from. My choices were 3 different cities in Spain; Montery, Mexico; and Santiago, Chile. Plane tickets to South America are very expensive (more than $1000 for a ticket to Santiago, student price.) Therefore, I decided now would be the time to go, since by staying for six months I am getting my money´s worth out of the flight here. I can spend a week in Spain or Mexico some other time, probably for a bargin flight fare. However, there are several advantages of studying in Chile of its own merit. First, for a country its size it has a lot to offer as far as natural tourist sights. There is one of the driest and most beautiful deserts in the north, vineyards in the middle, a tropical like island off the coast, lush forests and a beautiful lake district in the near south, glaciers in the far South, the ocean for its western border, and mountains for its eastern border. I might not get to see all of these places, but only two hours or less from Santiago I can visit a mulitud of vineyards, ocean beachs, and mountain ridges. From what I read about Chile before my arrival, the people have a reputation for being harder to understand than other Spanish speaking countries, but with the reputation of being nice to foreigners to balance it. Finally, Chile is considered to be one of the safest countries in South America right now, with Santiago itself being one of the most developed and modern cities in South America