el nuevo departamento

I've been here for a month now, so it's about time you all see photos. I feel really lucky to have found this apartment. It is in an excellent location and is very spacious for a Chilean apartment. My bedroom is easily three times larger than my old one at Nora's, and I now have a built-in closet instead of an armoire. The hot water comes from a boiler and not a calefont, which means scalding hot water without having to traipse barefoot into the kitchen to light the pilot. I'm a big fan of hardwood floors, and we have them throughout. There is also a small balcony, and twice a week we have maid service. All this and I pay about a fourth of what I would pay for a similar situation in Washington DC.

And the view! We live on the eighth floor of a thirty-story building, and from my bedroom I can see a park with a fountain, downtown Santiago, and some of the Andes. The bottom picture is the view from my bedroom.

All of my flatmates are very laid-back twenty-somethings. I think we are all very similar people. My Chilean flatmate is doing a master's in international business at the University of Chile and working for CEPAL, the UN-affiliated economic committee for Latin America. My Canadian flatmate is working for Human Rights Watch and going to Harvard next month to start a doctorate. My German flatmate is, like me, a foreign-exchange student here. She is studying organic farming.

While it was a good learning experience to actually live in a Chilean household, I am enjoying being independent again and I think this semester will give me the chance to experience another side to living in a foreign country.