blog observations

Reading the Valpo Vida blog was like having a nice dream.  I want to go to Chile, or South America more generally, and now that desire is 10 times stronger. Going abroad during the school year is not a feasible plan for me, so a summer voyage awaits.

Reading Anne's blog written about her time in Chile and other South American countries was again mildly heart rending.  My emotions aside, reading of Anne's grokking adventures was interesting.  I noticed that her blog was more academically worded than the previous one (the artful use of epigraph was a dead give-away that the entries were written by a scholar).  Links were prevalent, and when I read the comments I noted that they showed examples of connections across the world. Anne's meditation on living in a place of comfort vs. putting oneself in new and unfamiliar situations and how to balance the two resonated with me particularly, as I've been thinking about this same issue lately. I recognized the references to Chilean history because we're learning about Pinochet and the rest in Spanish class! And when Anne mentioned her fear of just 'skimming the surface' of places she visited during her four month trip, I sat back to think.  That's really all someone can ever do in a short trip to anywhere.