Not In Kansas Anymore

Let's get this thing started. This is the view from my apartment window:

Hells yes.

Santiago is an awesome city unlike anywhere I've ever been before. One great part is how it's been 85º and sunny every day so far (can't complain) but there's so much more to Santiago than that. The people are extremely friendly and don't mind helping some random foreigner who can't speak much Spanish get around. There are endless attractions and parks and green things. I think my favorite part, though, is the dichotomy of the city. I think this picture (which I didn't take) illustrates it nicely:

Plaza de Armas, Santiago

Plaza de Armas is the literal and cultural center of Santiago. Local legend has it (meaning, Chilean history establishes) that Don Pedro de Valdivia hiked up Cerro de Santa Lucia, one of the many tall hills in the city, pointed to the area where Plaza de Armas would eventually be, and said, "This is where Santiago will be." And yet, you can see the huge skyscraper standing right behind these four- and five-hundred-year-old buildings. The mix of the old isolationism of Chile's past and the modern globalization of Chile's present and future is an interesting dichotomy that I expect to manifest itself throughout my trip.

So what am I doing in Chile, exactly? I found this extremely cool internship through Experience Learning International, which is an awesome non-profit organization with all kinds of cool internships and volunteer opportunities all around the world. I applied to do a medical internship here in Santiago and they gave me the opportunity to do so with a non-profit called Fundación Coanil.

Coanil serves the physically and mentally disabled population of Chile in two ways. First, it teaches and gives job skills to the disabled who are able to work and provide for their families. Second, it takes care of and gives a home to the disabled who are too disabled to work. They are a fantastic foundation with centers in every corner of Chile and I am very lucky to be working with them.

Here is the specific place that I work:

This particular Coanil building is in the La Reina neighborhood just outside Santiago, about a half-hour commute from my apartment in Providencia. This particular center houses people who are too disabled to work. All but one of these people are wheelchair-bound. Many of them are unable to use their hands, speak, or even control their bodies in a basic way. All of them have physical deformities. Most of them have mental disabilities.

In short, I'm glad to be working with a population that genuinely needs help.

My day-to-day job is not yet completely established. So far I have helped in classrooms, helped feed people, worked on art projects, and assisted with physical therapy and kinesiology. I expect to do some work in the infirmary and the ICU at some point as well. The more variety I get in what I do day-to-day, the happier I will be at this job. I'm sure I will have more updates about this the next time that I work.

Everyone at the Coanil center is extremely nice. My fellow American volunteers rock, and the local staff is friendly and easy to work with. Chilean Spanish is fast-paced and has a thick accent, but everyone is happy to slow down and speak more clearly if I ask them to. My Spanish is coming along much faster than I expected it to, by the way, and I am already understanding a large amount of what is going on around me.

Also, the center is in the beautiful Santiagüino suburbs. Check this out.

The Andes. This is the view from outside the Coanil center. Outrageous, eh?

Though I am grateful to have an opportunity like this, I would be lying if I said it was easy to do. Far beyond the language barrier, the heat, and the hours, the most difficult part of this job is the utter lack of progress that the people I am working with make. 

It is hard to teach a curriculum to someone who cannot control her hands. It is hard to help a person draw parts of the human body if he cannot see.

I knew that coming to work at this job with developmentally disabled people would take a lot of patience. I did not understand that this job would require more than that. Working at Coanil means understanding that your patients probably will not make any progress at all. Every single person at this Coanil center will spend their life there, interrupted only by occasional field trips to exotic places like the park and the beach. Volunteers, interns, and employees will come and go, and the patience will enjoy their presence in that moment, but when those volunteers and interns and employees leave they will not know for better or worse.

All of the work I am proudest of in my life has had a lasting impact on others. The idea that my work here will almost certainly have little to no lasting impact no matter what I do is a hard pill to swallow.

This is not to say that my work here is without purpose or meaning. I think it is intrinsically good to make all of these people as happy as possible, whether that is through teaching, art, physical therapy, or medicine. All people, developmentally disabled or not, deserve a happy life, and I think that being part of that is worth doing, even if these people will not remember my name, my face, or even my existence as soon as I leave Chile. Or even as soon as I leave the room.

Sorry for getting all somber on everyone. Here's another picture from my apartment window:

Awwwwww yeahhhhhhhhh

That hill over there is Cerro San Cristobal. I'm going to hike it sometime soon with some of the other Coanil volunteers, all of whom are extremely awesome and fun.

Today we went to La Vega, which is this huge market in the center of Santiago. Like many things, it stands out as old-fashioned in a modern city. To get there, you have to cross what my Fodor's Guide to Chile referred to as "the majestic Mapocho River."

I'm calling bullshit on "majestic." Actually, I'm calling bullshit on "river."

La Vega is extremely cool. They sell all sorts of fruits and vegetables at extremely good prices.

I didn't take this picture either. So sue me.

I bought two pounds of grapes, two pounds of bananas, a half-gallon of raspberries, six apples, and ten bread biscuits. It cost me about five dollars. Awesome. I am having a feast for breakfast tomorrow.

Afterwards we went to Bella Vista for drinks. Happy "hour" lasts from 12 P.M. to 9 P.M. here (it goes as late as midnight at some places, apparently). Anyone who visits Santiago should try a pisco sour, which is made with their national liquor, a sort of grape brandy. Some people like it and some people don't. I thought it was pretty tasty myself.

It strikes me that I have just barely gotten my feet wet in this city. I am all moved into my apartment, I have started my work, I have met my friends through the Coanil program, but there is still so much to do, so much to explore.

I personally can't wait.

Spanish Word of the Day: Taco. In Mexico this means a delicious meal. In Chile it means a traffic jam. Son tacos where there is a lot of traffic on the road, like during rush hour (7 to 8 PM).

Next Time On "11Santiago": Terremotos, a weekend trip to Valparaiso, more updates on my life and the times

-Adam