Chilean consulate

Today I went to the Chilean consulate after having been told that talking with them face to face was the only way to get the process started. It was kind of exciting going there, because its in this huge old really elegant building on Market street, along with the Hondoran, Nicaraguan, and Peruvian consulates. There were tons of worn-down looking hispanic families with babies galore going into what I assume were the consulates for their home country, and I felt sorry for anyone who has to deal with this kind of bureacracy on a regular basis. Anyways I finally got an appointment from the rude ladies at the consulate. They were far more interested in helping a Chilean woman fluff her hair before taking her passport photo than anything else, which was amusing : )

Its a rainy day and I'm sitting around the house feeling happy but nostalgic, listening to the great mix cd that Sara made for us before leaving Grinnell.

I got a book today on Chilean culture, one of the culture shock series. It was reasonably interesting and here are some of my favorite random facts from it:
-18% of Chile is national parks, compared to 3% of the United States
-Chilean geography and climate are similar to those of the west coast, flipped upside down...aka the northern part is like sourthern California, the southern part like the Pacific Northwest
-Santiago is one of the smoggiest and most polluted cities in South America
-Chile is one of the most homogenous and also most prosperous Latin American countries
-politics a risky topic of conversation in a place with such a recent tumultuous past; 40% of Chileans supported Pinochet, despite his horrific and widely documented human rights abuses, when he left power.