Hey all!
It's been a while since my last post. Nothing too exciting is happening at the moment.. I haven't been anywhere since La Serena. No, it's not out of fear, it's just I can't get people to go... or try to get a concrete answer out of people if they wanna go or not.. And the homework load has been kind of heavy too.
I guess I can tell you about a normal school day. First I drag my booty out of bed 2 hours before class starts.. grab a breakfast, get ready, the whole morning routine thing... Then comes the 50 min commute to school. Now I've lived on campus for the past couple of years, and I thought getting up for an 8am class was horrible and a lot of complaining went down.. here, if i did take an 8am class i'd have to get up at least twice as early...
Ok, so the commute to schools isn't bad, the metro is super efficient here and I have never had a problem using it. Instead it's the crowds of people that get on the thing... say goodbye to personal space when you get closer to a combination or a busy part of the city. People honestly push (not violently or anything) and try to squeeze in the train when the buzzer is going off and the warning that the doors are closing is going off.. It can get a little bit ridiculous and hot and stuffy in the train, and I am glad that during the busy times and at the combo stations they have security to tell everyone to stay behind the yellow line, and to make sure everything goes smoothly
When I am on the metro, I'm usually the one shoved in the back by the time I get to the station I need because I live in the outer part of the red line (aka linea 1) where there aren't as many people trying to get on. In other words, I have to be very consciousness of where I am so I can start to make my way to the door, with a long line of permiso's..
I guess I can describe the micro (bus)... omg I will never complain about the Milwaukee bus system again, at least those buses come! haha, but the bus here is pretty different than the average bus ride in Milwaukee. Most of the buses don't except cash/change... Instead they have this card called Bip (pronounced Beep in spanish). and you bip on to the bus by holding it up to a sensor thing that beeps and tells you how much money is on it and how much your ticket was.
But actually getting on the bus is the tricky part. Well not really, but if you are at a bus stop and the bus you want is coming, then you have to hold out your hand.. like you hail a taxi...and it stops. But if you forget and assume the bus just stops then it will keep on driving by, unless people want to get off. In which you would have to probably knock on the window and the driver will open the door because here, or at least I've noticed, that the front door is only used for passengers coming on and the back doors are for the exiting passengers..
There is no schedule for buses here either.. nope no timetable, nada. They come fairly consistently during the day, byt late at night you might have to wait 45 min for your bus. Also you should check out the bus stop sign, because that will tell you the basic route of the bus and the times it runs. Some do run for 24 hours.
I guess I have a story now. A couple weeks ago my friend Jessica and I went to Alto los Condes, a mall thats huge and really cool, and we decided to take the micro home. Well, it was around 7ish, and there was a huge crowd of people waiting for the micro. We saw the bus we needed 3 times and it was either jam packed or too many people were trying to get on the bus. It was soo insane we decided to get on a different bus that was headed towards a metro station we knew and was also close to home.
There are 6 million people in this city it may not seem like it but when it comes to public transportation it you can definitely start to see that there are a lot of people in this city.
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