Conferencing, Sautéing & Zip Lining

July 8, 2008 (Tuesday)

Last week was pretty busy, but nice. I actually decided not to go to class on Wednesday because Constanza invited me to attend a conference that her university, Universidad Adolfo Ibañez, was hosting at the Valparaíso Congress. The conference was about education policies within the educational system of Chile, specifically the policies of sexual education and what the government’s role is in educating students about this issue. The panelists included one of the country’s education secretaries, Christian Rojo, several prominent religious leaders (Protestant Christian and Catholic) as well as some other professors, including a moral and ethics professor from my university (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso).
I would be thrilled to attend just about any conference related to educational policies in the US, and thought this would be pretty interesting as well… if I was able to understand. I did!!! (for the most part)
Chile is a republic democracy and while it has no official religion, over 80% of the population is Catholic. It also has one of the fastest growing Protestant populations in Latin America. This makes the issue of sexual education difficult to address as a matter of the state. The government cannot endorse any particular position from which to teach this subject other than that of a scientific or biological standpoint. However, many citizens are demanding that the school system teach from more of a religious or moral perspective alongside the scientific. Others do not agree with the presence of the subject within schools at all.
Since the conference was just a discussion forum, no absolute solutions were reached. It was incredibly interesting though to see how an issue that is also present in my own political system is also unfolding in another.


After the conference, I got to go to a glass art studio to learn how to make Vitrales. This is a type of glass art made from cutting pieces of glass into shapes and piecing them together by soldering to make a design. I made something similar to a hummingbird!


In my Chilean Culture class on Thursday I gave a presentation on the graffiti that is present throughout the city. I had to give a slideshow and explain what type of message each picture was conveying, or my interpretation of it, whether political, religious, solomente art, etc. It went well but my instructor had to say “Meredith (pronounced Mer-a-dit) por-favor, explicas tambien” to a couple of my interpretations. Haha
Thursday night my friend Victoria and I cooked for our families since our host mother’s are sisters. We sautéd (sp?) chicken strips in garlic, onions, and olive oil and served them over a very lightly creamy fettuccini that we tossed with fresh tomatoes, slightly cooked long beans, freshly grated parmesean cheese, and still crisp red peppers. Victoria and I thought it was delicious… however the beans were still left on a lot of plates.


Saturday and Sunday I spent with my entire ISEP group. Saturday we went to Santiago and saw the Cathedral of Santiago, the President’s house (where I was very firmly told by one of the guards not to touch the oranges on the orange tree), and also to a huge fish market. We ate a beautiful lunch above the market at a really nice restaurant. The menu consisted of a crab cake, salmon and a wonderful white fish I don’t know the name of, and other delicious traditional Chilean dishes.


Sunday we I went on a hike in the mountains. I also got to go on a zip line over a pretty massive stream. We were in what is part of the Andes range but not the huge mountains one usually associates with the Andes. Beautiful though! We hiked to some really nice waterfalls.