Chau

I'm pretty bad with goodbyes. I always feel slightly awkward and end up giving off the impression that I have a terribly cold, unemotional rock for a heart, when I actually don't. (Really, I don't.) Maybe that's why I like Chilean Spanish's use of "chau," which has a friendlier and more temporary feel than "adios." Then again, I don't really like the English "see you later," so maybe my preferences are just completely arbitrary.

In any case, today was our last full day in Santiago, so after filing into a classroom and receiving our grades, we exchanged awkward goodbyes with Professor Maza and departed from the observatory for the last time. I haven't even left Santiago yet, and I'm already starting to miss the city. It has all the liveliness of New York and the relaxedness of Los Angeles, with a culture that is unparalleled by any US city. I'm going to miss the people I've met during the past six weeks, whether at the observatory, at church, or just randomly on the streets (and mountains). In my mind, Chile will forevermore be associated with awesome people, awesome skies, and awesome national pride.

This concludes my official blogging for the summer. From next week onwards, I'll be back at Yale, working with Professor Meg Urry and one of her post-docs on the spectrometry of binary quasars. If you're a potential astro major at Yale, feel free to contact me at james [dot] kim [at] yale [dot] edu with any questions about the program. If you're just one of the random people who follow this blog (i.e. the coolest people ever), you can probably stop checking for updates, except for maybe a final photo post. Bye everyone! Bye Chile!

Somewhere in the Middle

Another chapter in my life is coming to a close. I'll take the final tomorrow morning, say my goodbyes in the afternoon, pack up on friday, get on a plane on Saturday morning, and fly away to the states.

It's been a solid six weeks. I have no regrets.

Grad students are really fun to hang out with. Especially grad students who enjoy talking about about astronomy while slightly tipsy.

We live in such a ridiculously cool universe. This world might be flawed, people might be imperfect, but I would never choose another universe to live in. It's so complex and yet comprehensible. I'm beginning to understand why Einstein loved to isolate himself and just think. There is a lot to think about.

I don't have the energy or motivation to string these thoughts together in a comprehensible manner. Just use your imagination. I know I'm using mine.

One more thing... 엄마 생신 축하합니다, 아라뷰~~

Chromatic

Okay, I totally lied. I'll probably write at least a couple more entries before I leave Chile. This particular entry is dedicated to a flippin' sweet lab that we started today (and nearly finished, surprisingly). If the technical details bore you, feel free to scroll down and stare at the pretty picture.

We were given black-and-white images of NGC 4603 taken with three different color filters: red, green, and blue. (I'm sure that sounds counter-intuitive, but what can I say? Astro is weird.) After debiasing and flattening the images using conventional methods in IRAF, we imported them into a program called kvis, combined them, and played around with histograms until the colors rendered clearly. Then, as is my wont, I imported the combined image into Aperture and played around even more. The final result, as you can see, was quite nice.

If only all research were as simple and straightforward as this lab.

The yellow central bulge contains older, population II stars. The blue spiral arms contain star-forming regions and newer, population I stars. Just in case you were wondering.

-----

In other news, due to the extremely addictive nature of Project Euler, introduced to me by a certain friend who I know reads this blog (grrrr), I've been getting rather proficient at Perl lately. Maybe this will make up for the fact that I've come this far in my academic career without really mastering any programming languages. (APCS during junior year doesn't count. I programmed Java fishes to eat each other.) Stand by for further updates.

Countdown

Whenever I walk alone along the streets of Santiago, I suffer from periodic episodes of disorientation. Is it the noise? The pollution? The fact that I hardly speak the language of this country? All plausible reasons, of course. Then again, living in a foreign country, I would fully expect to encounter the unfamiliar on a daily basis. No, the reason for my disorientation is the fact that Santiago already feels intimately familiar to me. The urban sprawl; the view of snowcapped mountains on the horizon; the crowded city center and well-to-do suburbs; the one-way streets lined with merchandise stands and street peddlers; even the ethnic enclaves scattered throughout downtown--every part of Santiago feels like home all over again. If I had the time and the means, I would even attempt to drive from the powdery snow of the Andes to the white beaches of Viña del Mar just to pretend that I was back in Southern California. It's possible that I'm only taking to Chile now that I have less than a week left before I head back to the hot and humid Northeast. But assuming that my sentiments are not misguided, I'm pretty sure that given the chance, I would enjoy staying here longer, living by myself and doing the things I love.

-----

Speaking of the things I love, I just realized that I haven't really written anything about the astronomy that I do here--despite the name, title, and subtitle of this blog, and the fact that I never would have had the opportunity to come here in the first place if not for astronomy. Oops.

I guess most significantly, I've come to appreciate how different classroom knowledge is from the analysis of real data using professional reduction and photometric software. It's one thing to know that variable stars exist, and another thing entirely to take hundreds of images, each containing hundreds of stars, and determine which (if any) stars vary intrinsically rather than due to atmospheric disturbances. It can be a tedious process, but producing a smooth and beautifully periodic light curve at the end makes everything worth it.

It's also not a coincidence that I chose variable stars to illustrate my newfound appreciation for real-world astronomy. The two labs we've completed so far have both involved finding variable stars in a sky field taken across different epochs. The process is conceptually pretty basic. First, I debias and flatten the images (i.e. correct for random background noise and differential pixel responsiveness in the detector's CCD). Then, I align the images either relatively, using the first image, or absolutely, using a catalogue of stellar coordinates. Then, using photometric software, I obtain flux or magnitude values (measures of luminosity) for the stars that exist in every frame, and import the data into Excel. Finally, I plot these magnitude values against time to determine which stars are variable (or at least seem to be).

What makes the process more difficult than it sounds is the fact that every step in the sequence, from connecting to the data server to writing scripts that analyze hundreds of images at a time, is completely new to me. More frustratingly, every lab uses its own program language and proprietary software, which means that I probably won't be able to use the skills I learn here for my thesis project, much less my eventual career. On the other hand, I'm having fun learning how to use Linux, Perl, a ridiculous program called SEXTRACTOR (Source Extractor), and all sorts of other useful tools, so I shouldn't be complaining.

The types of images I work with. Ignore the labels; they're meaningless without the accompanying lab report.

Light curve of EH Librae. The black lines are observational error bars. (Let it be known that I hate observational error. It makes life so much harder.)

-----

And finally, it's about time for another photo upload. Some of these are Joey's, but I don't remember which (except the ones of me, of course), so I'm crediting him here. Yeah artistic honesty.

More from the North: staring into an empty reservoir at the Pisco Mistral factory.

Feeding the doggies against my better judgment in San Pedro de Atacama.

Telescopes are just bigger in Chile.

I strongly recommend this rental company to anyone visiting Latin America.

Alas. The fates were not kind to this bicycle.

If you look closely, you can see our bikes locked up at the rightmost curve.

Taking photos of each other on top of the truck. While driving. On a mountain.

Mmmm nothing like third lunch at a ski resort in the middle of nowhere.

Ski lift.

Lots of mountain, lots of snow.

The weather wanted us to go away.

엄마, if you see this... It was perfectly safe, don't worry.

Santiago by night. Now just imagine the lights stretching about five times as far to both the right and the left.

-----

Happy Independence Day. See you all at the end of this program, probably.

Aventura

We didn't have class last Friday, so Joey and I decided to spend our free day constructively by going mountain biking. We woke up at 9:00 am and headed down to Alcantara, where we met with Peter, the owner of the rental company. After taking our money and Joey's passport as collateral, he handed over the bikes and told us to have fun. (Incidentally, he looked and sounded exactly like Will Ferrell, but that's another story for another day.)

From Alcantara, we began our long and fated trek eastward. A little bit of geography: Santiago is located in Chile's central valley, at an elevation of 520 m. The Andes Mountains rise up directly to the east, reaching altitudes of 4000 m or higher. Our goal was to reach a park about halfway up the mountain to look around and enjoy the sights. As it turns out, we grossly underestimated both the horizontal and the vertical distances we would have to travel to get there, but as you'll soon find out, it didn't matter.

The first leg of the trip was a relatively easy ride through the eastern half of Santiago, along Avenida Apoquindo and Avenida Las Condes. The sun was low, the air was crisp, and life felt good. Naturally, things changed once we got to the edge of the city. In retrospect, I suppose it was somewhat silly of me to expect mountain biking to be no harder than urban biking, but what did I know at the time? I'm a city dweller at heart.

Reality soon hit me as I struggled to figure out gear ratios and tackle 35+ degree hills while avoiding speeding cars that came out of nowhere. We pushed on, of course. Some hills were doable; others, unfortunately and embarassingly, required walking. By far the best parts of the afternoon were the lunches. Yes, lunchES. We had thrown together three monster ham/turkey/salami wraps the night before, and they were the only things that kept us going forward. We actually ended up getting pretty far on our bikes--almost thirty kilometers, in fact.

Then my bike broke. I have no idea how it happened. I was pedaling up a particularly nefarious hill when suddenly I heard a crack, and subsequently, the grating noise of metal against metal. Apparently, a centimeter-thick piece of solid steel had just snapped in half, leaving the rear gear train dangling on the chain like a demented pendulum. Our repair kit was, of course, useless, but since it was still early, we decided to lock up the bikes and hike up the mountain on foot while searching for a phone to call Peter.

It was our lucky day... Sort of. The first car that pulled over for us was a pick-up truck with five happy-go-lucky (read: high on pot) college students on a day snowboarding trip. They offered to put our bikes in the cargo bed and drive us up to the ski resort, then back down to the city when they were done. Not wanting to pass up such a surreal experience, we accepted the offer, though they told us that we'd have to sit in the bed along with the bikes during the entire drive. A word of advice to anybody who decides to hitchhike on a truck full of faded college students: Hold on to something. Tightly.

Fortunately, we survived the cold, curvy drive up the mountain and arrived at the ski resort, where the guys wasted no time asking around for used lift tickets so that they wouldn't have to buy their own. They managed to get their hands on two, and after making sure that Joey and I were safe and sound in the lodge, went to carve the mountain up. In the lodge, we ate our last lunch, drank hot chocolate, and ordered some heavenly crepes (raspberry for me, Nutella for Joey). At 5:30 pm, as the sun started setting and the lifts stopped operating, we met back up with them at the truck, where they informed us that they had been caught using used tickets. It didn't seem to affect their spirits at all though. We hopped back in the truck and started down the mountain.

Was our adventure finished? Of course not. A quarter of the way down the mountain, the guys decided that they had to stop the truck in the middle of the road, take photos of the sunset, and blaze up some more. They also offered us hits and asked us if we wanted to party with them that night. Tempted though I was, I had to turn down both invitations. (Please note the sarcasm.) After some lounging around, we started driving again, this time even more cautiously than I had hoped for. Either the driver felt obligated to make us feel safe, or pot really did heighten his judgment like he claimed. In any case, we soon arrived at the edge of the city, where they dropped us off and gave us their email addresses for photos. I almost felt sad saying goodbye.

Since the rest of the trip was downhill, it didn't matter that my bike was broken. We coasted down the main avenue all the way to Alcantara, where we dropped the bikes off, picked up Joey's passport, and took public transport all the way back home. Then I promptly knocked out.

Google Map view of Santiago, our bike route, and the Andes. Note that we got well past the halfway mark between the city and the snow.

-----

Now that I think about it, experiences like the aforementioned are what make studying abroad worth the money and effort. When else will I ever have the opportunity to bike up a kilometer of snow-capped mountains, only to find myself at the mercy of a bunch of local college students who find my nationality and ethnicity reasons enough to ask questions and crack jokes nonstop? Five years from now, I doubt I'll remember what I learn in class here, but I will never forget the hilarity of almost falling off the back of a speeding truck or the absurdity of starting the day on bike in the middle of Santiago and ending it in a lodge on top of the Andes. I can only hope for comparable adventures during the two weeks I have left.

Fotos del Norte

Huge picture post, as promised. Stay tuned for a detailed account of yesterday's ridiculous biking/hitchhiking/snow adventure.

-----

Gateway to the North.

Dramatic back-to-back camera pose at the VLT.

The VLT as seen from below.

You haven't seen a telescope enclosure until you've visited Paranal.

Lifting a "Hollywood rock" from Quantum of Solace. Or Bijan is much stronger than he looks.

Haunted train station. I wish.

The Milky Way from San Pedro. See tree in lower right for scale. Photo courtesy of Joey Brink.

A praying dinosaur, according to Professor Maza. Somehow I doubt the native people knew about dinosaurs.

Sand dune and light circles for dramatic effect.

Llama.

Dan searching for brine shrimp (a.k.a. Artemia salina) (a.k.a. sea monkeys).

Picturesque. But much much much colder than it looks.

Alpaca wool loom at an artisan shop in San Pedro.

Warning: children here lose their balls easily.

I guess obscene graffiti is pretty ubiquitous after all.

Silhouette of the 4 m telescope at Cerro Tololo. And a smiley moon.

Spelling out "Yale" in front of the Yale telescope. Aren't we clever?

Long exposure photography of the sky from inside a dome. Photo courtesy of Joey Brink (again).

Alma Libre

First update in a week. I haven't actually been slacking--though I admittedly haven't done any real work in a while either. My housemates (program-mates?) and I have been on a midterm excursion of sorts to northern Chile since Saturday, and the internet access has been spotty at best until now. Here's a summary of the trip to date:

Touring this part of the country has been quite an experience, from both the cultural and the astronomical point of view. We flew into Antofagasta and, after a quick stop at an enormous sea arch called La Portada, drove down to the aptly (and very creatively) named Very Large Telescope (VLT) on Cerro Paranal in the middle of the Atacama desert. Operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the VLT is composed of four 8.2 m optical telescopes at an altitude of 2,600 m and is one of the most powerful ground-based research telescopes in the world. It was an awesome privilege to be able to tour the facilities and see the telescopes up close, especially since I may end up working at the VLT at some point in my life.

Incidentally, the Atacama desert is the driest desert in the world and was used for the filming of the desert scenes in James Bond: Quantum of Solace. Not that we recognized any landmarks in the barren nothingness.

One anecdote worth mentioning from the VLT trip. A large group of high school girls from Colegio Antofagasta happened to be touring at the same time as us, and while we tried not to pay attention to them at first, this proved to be more and more difficult as they started to take photos of us and laugh as they passed by. By chance, we ended up in the same building later, and they started asking us about ourselves in broken English. Of course, we tried to respond in our broken Spanish, and after a bit of dialogue, they began asking for photos with Victor, Joey, and me (the three tallest guys in the group). That wasn't even the strangest part though. Later, while our group was watching an educational video about the VLT, the girls came back and began demanding photos with--you guessed it--yours truly. I indulged them of course, but I was truly perplexed. Perhaps I was the first Asian they had seen in person? In any case, it was an interesting and humorous experience, but one that I would rather not repeat.

After Paranal, we passed through Calama and went straight to San Pedro de Atacama, a small town of a few thousand inhabitants at most. All of the buildings were made out of adobe bricks and straw, including the hotel where we stayed, and it pretty obvious that most of the town's income came from tourists visiting for the local trekking, archaeology, sandboarding, lagoons, and volcanoes. We stayed in San Pedro for a full two days while visiting local cultural sites, including salt flats, el Valle de la Luna, and villages even smaller than San Pedro with nothing but llamas and artisan shops. The most memorable experience, though, was the stargazing session that we held on the first night. All of the aspects that made San Pedro inconvenient during the day--high altitude, thin atmosphere, and lack of modern facilities--made it an amateur astronomer's paradise at night. In particular, the Milky Way, which looks like a pale whitish blob from even the clearest sites in the northern hemisphere, stood out like pure spilled milk on a pitch black piano. (Excuse me as I wax poetic.) It was quite possibly the most beautiful sight I have ever witnessed.

Today, we visited two large radio telescopes: the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), both located in the middle of the hellishly dry desert that is northern Chile. It was cool to see the radio antennas just because they were so enormous, but it was even cooler to talk to the astronomers from all over the world who work there and spend their entire lives solving the mysteries of the cool (temperature-wise) universe. They almost made millimeter and centimeter astronomy sound exciting. Except for the whole altitude sickness at 5000 m part.

Anyway, if you've read this far, congratulations. The internet at this hotel is not permitting any image uploads, but I promise many pretty pictures with my next update. Bye bye!

Relief

I altered my blog design because the old white on black color scheme was hurting my eyes (and everyone else's, I'm sure). I'm not too happy with the lack of borders in the sidebar, but I'll tweak that later.

Stand by for a real post shortly.

-----

Okay, so this has nothing to do with astronomy or Santiago, but today I discovered that the song "Awakening" by Switchfoot is simply amazing. The music video is well-crafted and original, and the lyrics resonate with me at overtones that I rarely, if ever, experience. Please enjoy.



Switchfoot - "Awakening"

Face down with the L.A. curbside
Ending in the ones and zeros
Downtown was the perfect place to hide
The first star that I saw last night was a headlight
Of a man-made sky but
Man-made never made our dreams collide, collide

Here we are now with falling sky and the rain
We're awakening
Here we are now with the desperate youth and the pain
We're awakening
Maybe it's called ambition
You've been talking in your sleep about a dream
We're awakening

Last week saw me living for nothing but deadlines
With my deadbeat sky but
This town doesn't look the same tonight
These dreams started singing to me out of nowhere
And in all my life
I don't know that I've ever felt so alive, alive

Here we are now with falling sky and the rain
We're awakening
Here we are now with the desperate youth and pain
We're awakening
Maybe it's called ambition
But you've been talking in your sleep about a dream
We're awakening

I want to wake up kicking and screaming
I want to wake up kicking and screaming
I want to know that my heart's still beating
It's beating, I'm bleeding
I want to wake up kicking and screaming (I want to wake up)
I want to live like I know what I'm leaving (I want to wake up)
I want to know that my heart's still beating (I want to wake up)
It's beating, it's beating
It's beating, I'm bleeding

Here we are now with falling sky and the rain
We're awakening
Here we are now with the desperate youth and pain
We're awakening
Maybe it's called ambition
But you've been talk, talking in your sleep about a dream
We're awakening a dream
We're awakening, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Converse

A compelling scene: six US college students sitting in the living room of a house on the outskirts of Santiago on a quiet and cloudy Sunday afternoon--one playing the Sims, one watching anime, one playing the Sims and watching anime, one reading, one creating light curves, and one blogging while contemplating the subtleties of life.

-----

I've been wondering about the graffiti on the streets here--or specifically, about the people who draw the graffiti. They're not the gangbangers of Los Angeles. Graffiti here is an art form, a channel for expressing ideas and creating visual meaning however possible. The artists probably spend a solid hour or two on even the simplest images, not to mention the quasi-murals that span the walls of entire building complexes. Yet for the most part, local pedestrians pass by without so much as a second glance. A variety of questions come to my mind: Who are these artists? What drives them? Do they care that their work is largely unappreciated day in and day out? Perhaps more pertinently, are there aspects and people in my everyday life back in the States that I take for granted instead of esteeming as I properly should?

I suppose these thoughts reflect a recurring motif in my life, the transcience of sensory experience and personal interaction. I feel the same way in Santiago as I do in airports and train stations: since I probably won't see 99% of the people I meet ever again, I wish I could find out more about their characters, their motives, their aspirations, and their life stories. Unfortunately, I lack the time and confidence to do so, but I try to make it up by (occasionally awkwardly) capturing moments of their lives through photography.

Significance.

More significance.

Who are you, Mr. Plant Waterer?

A conversation that I will never catch.

I wonder if this man enjoys his solitude.

-----

Yesterday, we took a weekend trip down to Valparaíso, Chile's cultural capital and primary seaport. The city was simultaneously magnificent and quaint, distinctly Chilean but with an interesting European twist. We toured by bus, ate at an upscale seafood restaurant, and walked through one of Pablo Neruda's three houses before heading back to Santiago. It hit me while standing on Neruda's third-floor balcony that I had never looked out across the Pacific Ocean before from anywhere other than Southern California. It was a little like catching up with an old friend, but still a bittersweet reminder that I won't be back home for a long time.

Bird mobile or immobile birds?

No one is too old to play with doggies.

Wine tasting at a winery. Delicious, according to my housemates.

Port Valparaíso and haze.

Couple on the street. Staring at the camera. Oops again.

Probably oil vessels, but just maybe ships embarking on a fantastic voyage.

Random hobby #13891: searching for unintentional optical illusions.

O_o

-----

It's hard to describe the way I feel right now in words, but I think the lyrics below, from John Mayer's "Clarity," do a pretty good job.

I worry, I weigh three times my body
I worry, I throw my fear around
But this morning, there's a calm I can't explain
The rock candy's melted, only diamonds now remain

So long, until next time.

Not Quite Insomnia

It's already 3:00 am, but after an hour and a half of lying in bed attempting to turn off my disordered thoughts, I've decided that it might be more prudent to write them down instead.

Perhaps for obvious reasons, it seems that I become much more attuned to global issues when I go abroad. It happened when I was in Beijing for two months last summer, and it's happening again in Santiago, though in a more latent form since I don't have hours of mandatory conversation every day here. I've started to spend a lot of time on Google News and NY Times, reading stories about North Korea, the Air France crash, the Gunn High suicides, H1N1 flu, the Tian'anmen cover up, GM's bankruptcy, and other current events.

It's pretty depressing. In today's world, there is an overwhelming infatuation with money, success, appearances, and instant gratification, and while none of these are inherently bad, they leave little room for love, patience, and mutual understanding. Are we as a society really progressing when we're more concerned with the features of the new iPhone than we are with two American journalists being sentenced to twelve years of hard labor in a modern-day concentration camp? Is a celebrity's sexuality really that important? If a tragedy in another country, or even another state, doesn't affect us in any way, does that give us the right to completely disregard it?

(I think the answers are nope, nope, and nope.)

I have no point to make, no grand conclusion to draw from my observations. I'm an optimist, and while both religion and personal experience tell me that human beings as individuals are imperfect, I'll be the first to report when a news story restores a part of my faith in humanity.

-----

On a lighter and less spontaneous note, I'm gratifyingly but not unexpectedly starting to understand the nuances of living in Santiago. I find happiness in little things like figuring out that I have to pull on the front gate while turning the key, being able to get to a destination by subway without looking at a map, getting a feel for prices without converting to dollars, and successfully ordering lunch without having to ask the waiter to repeat himself. Cooking at home is also becoming easier, though I can't say that our meals are as healthy as they should be. All in all, life is pretty good.

Chico Moderno

I'm really sleepy right now. My age must be getting to me. Rawr.

-----

On Thursday, our first real day without class or lab, the seven of us went on an all-day city tour which we apparently paid for as part of our program fee. (I would have liked to know about that beforehand, but oh well.) I learned a lot about the history and landmarks of Santiago, but the best part, once again, was interacting with the locals and observing how they react to tourists. I hope I can actually have a meaningful conversation with them one of these days, but first I need to improve my Spanish speaking ability.

An important building. I don't remember which one though.

Love graffiti on the streets of Santiago.

I guess sometimes policemen have to text too.

These high school students thought it was hilarious that we were taking their photos.

Statue of the Virgin Mary on Cerro San Cristóbal. It's way bigger than it looks.

-----

Yesterday was cool because Madeline, Bijan, Joey, and I got to drive up to the observatory at night and use the big telescope there to look at, well, whatever Professor Maza told us we should look at. It was pretty exciting to see the Southern Cross, Alpha Centauri, and NGC 4755 (a globular cluster), since they're pretty important and none of them are visible from the Northern Hemisphere. We also looked at Saturn, though the atmosphere made the rings hard to resolve.

Back during high school, I used to spend hours every night standing outside with nothing but a pair of binoculars and Starry Night running on my laptop in nighttime mode. I'd search for stars and constellations and use the binoculars to look at smudges in the sky that I imagined to be beautiful nebulae and galaxies. It was during these stargazing sessions that I decided that I wanted to dedicate my life to understanding the workings of the universe. Obviously, I've remained on that path in college, but I need experiences like yesterday's--standing back and just enjoying the beauty of the heavens--to remind me of why I enjoy astronomy.

-----

I slept in today (Saturday) for the first time in a week, but the day ended up being super busy anyway. After cooking pancakes for ourselves, we took the bus and subway down to the Central Market, which is sort of like the Farmer's Market in LA but indoors and much much bigger. We bought a bunch of groceries for the upcoming week, including salmon filets and assorted fruits and vegetables (mangos!).

As soon as we got back home and put away the groceries, we had to head out again for a classical music concert at the Universidad de Chile, which I really enjoyed despite the fact that they ended the concert with a Romantic era piece. (No offense to any Romantic fans, but I just think Baroque and Classical are far more interesting to listen to. I'm sure we can all agree that Contemporary is terrible.) Afterwards, Cecilia left us to find dinner on our own, which we ended up eating at a nice seafood restaurant called Azul Profundo. It was yummy, but I'm not sure the taste to expense ratio merits returning. We'll see. I accompanied Daniel home after dinner, while the rest of my housemates went off searching for a bar or club. But they're back now and apparently they had quite an adventure. More on that later.

Poor delicious fishies.

We discovered a street stand that sells what we affectionately call "meat sticks." They're delicious.

Market workers cutting paper. I think.

This man ate his soup very defensively.

More market workers. The guy in yellow noticed that I was taking the photo a moment before I pressed the shutter. Oops.

Bijan drinking delicious milk tea.

-----

As expected, I've experienced several episodes of cultural shock during my first week in Chile. I suppose I'll end this entry with the two most interesting ones.

The first is the cheek kiss. You know, the whole thing where you touch your cheek to someone else's opposite cheek and make a kissing sound. (At least that's how it is with strangers. Apparently close friends and family members actually kiss the cheeks. *Shudder.*) I've seen it in movies that are set in Europe or South America, but I naively thought that nobody actually does it in real life. Well they do, and it freaked me out the first time it happened to me. Hopefully it'll become more second-nature as I adjust to life here.

The second is actually the opposite of cultural shock, in a way. The mall next to our house, Alto Las Condes, is such a perfect clone of American supermalls that I'm always a little disoriented when we visit. The brands, store names, and even some of the discount signs are in English, and the food court looks like it could have been lifted straight out of my mall back home (except that it has a movie screen and a couple Chilean restaurants as well). I understand other countries trying to replicate the success of American capitalism, but this is just taking it too far. I suppose that all I can do is to make sure that I experience true Chilean culture rather than languish in my comfort zone of familiarity through Alto Las Condes and the internet.

-----

Bedtime. Good night.