Daily Schedule in Santiago, Chile

My average week day starts at about 7 am. Unless I have not finished my work, which is the case today as I am currently writing this at 5 am before working on a project. Anyways, every day I wake up and have corn flakes or bread for breakfast as a try to wake up quickly enough to be capable of communicating with my host family in Spanish. On the mornings where I am just too exhausted to think I hide in my room with the dog until everyone has left before venturing out to the kitchen. I then have a full hour long commute to school! I have to walk about 15 minutes, take the metro, switch lines, and then get on a bus. Some of the students have an even longer commute every day because the school is right at the base of the Andes mountains, far away from the center of the city. At least my commute gives me adequate time to jam to a strange combination of Ed Sheeran, the Killers, and Raggaeton every morning! Once at school I head straight to my Medical Imaging Systems class which is a full two and a half hours long. We’re currently working on our final project which is quite fun because we’re in groups with both Northeastern and Uandes students. The projects are very complex and take up a lot of time but they are also really interesting. Mine is about the imaging differences between attenuation and phase dependent x-rays (shout out to my partner Rebecca for helping us daily so we can all understand it!). It is difficult to sit for that long straight but luckily we have an hour and a half lunch afterwards. My host mom always packs me a lunch but most days I still swing by a cute little coffee stand for the rare drip coffee and possibly a cookie. The weather fluctuates a lot here so we either bask in the sun on a grassy hill or sit shivering in the cafeteria for lunch. Our afternoons vary day to day. Mondays we have cultural trips, Tuesdays we have Spanish class, and both Wednesdays and Thursdays are cultural lecture days. Mondays are definitely my favorite! So far we have gone to San Cristobal hill, had a typical Chilean lunch, and gone on guided tours around the city. During the first couple of weeks we would continue exploring after these trips but the workload has been pretty intense lately so we all need to go home to work. Once at home I talk with my host family for a while and sit down for dinner. My host mom works at a hospital and often works the night shift, but when she is home we normally eat a full home cooked meal. Then I return back to my room to attempt get work done and eventually get to sleep. Our days are busy but I’m glad we don’t waste any of our time here!