El Fin...por ahora

I'm in the Stanford Center having just picked up my group photo and returned all my borrowed items, so I figured I would take advantage of the free internet one last time to write a final Santiago/travels in Latin America blog entry. So here's a few brief anecdotes that made me think about the world, my time in it, the prospects of returning home, etc...

- After handing in my final paper to Profe Micco about televison's role in contemporary Chilean politics (12 pages in Castellano, thank you very much) he took a few of us crazy American students out for some expensive Dutch Beer. And I thought to myself: how nice it is to make connections, to have ideas in a new part of the world, to not have internet in your host family's house so you can spend all day writing a paper sans distractions and actually feel good about it in the end and you wrote all in spanish, to challenge yourself by sitting down and thinking in a different language.

- While trying to find a card to give to my host family, I stumbled into a book store on Avenida Providencia and discovered there was a free concert inside. The placed was filled with young, hip , and cute chileans bobbing their heads to the sounds of two guys (one on drums with a full bushy chilean-jewfro hair the other on guitar in glasses, both wearing black ties and chuck taylors por supuesto) making the kind of electric, indie, alternative, folk rock that makes you feel instantly nostalgic and wistful and appreciative all at once. So of course I was hit with a wave a melancholy at the thought of leaving Santiago, a city bursting with undiscovered bookstores and possibilities.

- At the metro this morning, I looked into the mirrored wall of the station and accidently made eye contact with the reflection of a middle aged woman in the subway car next to mine. She smiled, tapped her friend on the shoulder, and they both waved. I waved back a we all giggled thinking about how silly it is that we can only connect with the people in opposite metro cars and even then only through their mirrored reflection, so busy moving around the planet at high speeds we forget to look around and see who' s right near us.

So those are some thoughts. I would share more, but before I leave Santiago I have museums to see, restaurants to eat at, hills to climb up.... Turista Suprema for life, baby. For those of you who have been following along (which by now, is probably just Eddie and Rachel) I hoped you thoroughly enjoyed the ride. I sure did. I'll keep posting to this blog with more stories and writing and less "this is what I'm doing now" so keep checking it out if that's something that interests you. But here ends this portion of blogging, but I hope el viaje nunca está terminado. ¿Cachai?

Que se vaya bien, besitos, vaya con dios, suerte, todo mi amor, y más,
Daniel Hiiiiiiirsch (por la ultima vez)