Hunter vs. Harvard

Contrary to Chevy, I had a great weekend. I stayed with some friends at Harvard, and I'm currently on a bus back to NYC.

Since I brought up Harvard, I think its important to note some things for prospective/incoming freshman. I talked about this a bit last week with some accepted Macaulay Hunter students, and after visiting my friends in Cambridge, I'm sure what I said was true: I believe that the academic education I'm getting at Macaulay Hunter is just as good as the one I would've gotten at an ivy league school (like Harvard). There are really only two differences between Harvard and Macaulay Hunter: the names, and the atmosphere.
The name "Macaulay Hunter" doesn't quite carry the same prestige that "Harvard" does (although I think it should!). Picking a school because of the prestige factor of it's name is, in my opinion, not a good idea. Some people like to argue that going to Harvard opens up more opportunities because of this factor, networking with Harvard alumni and other ivy leagues, etc. but I think Macaulay does this as well (we have alumni working to give Macaulay kids expanded opportunities, and just look at the list of Macaulay events to see some of the big names that Macaulay kids have the chance to meet).
The other difference is the atmosphere. Harvard and other ivy league schools have self-contained campuses, and even if they are in/near a big city, this is much different from Macaulay/Hunter, which are spread all over NYC, along with the rest of CUNY. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, but personally, after spending three days ONLY on the Harvard campus, I'm thrilled to be heading back to the city. I was starting to feel a little cooped up!

Sorry for the long serious discussion, but I think it's really important. Last year, when I was rejected from the ivy league schools I applied to, I was crushed. But over the weekend, listening to some of my friends and their classmates talk about their struggle to keep a budget and worry about their mounting debt, I realized even though I go to Hunter and they go to Harvard, in many ways, I'm better off.

Time to face that mountain of spring break work in my bag...

-Kaitlyn (kt.ohagan@gmail.com)

Cold Days, Cold Nights

Thus far, spring break has sprung nothing but horrid weather to its dearest lovers. I was excited to enjoy the time off and splurge this break, but it has come to my attention that the first few days have not been enjoyable at all. And to testify to this matter, I stayed in all day today, too annoyed by the frigid weather to go out. Not to mention, being so bored that I fell asleep late afternoon - this is the reason I am up blogging/ranting away at the moment.
Now, according to the weather man, the terrible conditions are scheduled (sheduled?) to improve come Wednesday, but that is just an awful while away! I am certainly not enjoying the time off as of now, but who knows? Perhaps, I will win the lottery tomorrow, in spite of losing the battle for good weather... too bad I never bought a ticket.
On that note, I will rest my rant and engage in CSI: Miami... because when the weather fails, David Caruso does not.

Spring Break! ...kinda

So somehow the first three days of my Spring Break entail my getting up at 7:00 AM. Which is actually not bad, except for the actual getting-up part. Yesterday I had to get up early to go spend the day with family, and with friends I haven't seen in ages, so that was good; today it was to spend most of the day dogsitting for a friend, which entails spending all day in a very nice apartment in the Village, with a very nice, sweet old terrier. And tomorrow is my usual Monday at Legal Aid. My attorneys are doing arraignments today, so they've promised to have lots for me to do tomorrow (as opposed to this past Wednesday, where I spent 8 hours in the intern room catching up on Pol Sci homework... of course, I'd stayed till 7:00 last Monday, and run an extra errand for one attorney the week before, so it all balances out).

Last month, incidentally, I started serving as one of the Senior Senators in the Undergraduate Student Government. I'll only serve a quarter of a term--half a semester--so I don't expect to formulate and push through any grand paradigm-shifting policies, but it's interesting work. USG's main functions are planning events, governing the official clubs, and liaising between the students and the people who run the school. It's a good way to develop a mastery of the more esoteric areas of CUNY's byzantine bureaucracy. I also get to feel that I'm giving a little bit back to the school. Not a whole lot, but I will make a few things run a little bit more smoothly than they might have otherwise.

On an utterly unrelated note, last night I saw a really cool theater thingy by the New York Neo-Futurists. It's in a nice little artsy theater in the East Village. Interesting work structured around controlled randomness. The tickets cost $10 plus the amount you roll on a 6-sided die; the show lasts 60 minutes, and they try to get through 30 short plays, in whatever order the audience calls them out; and every week they roll 2 6-sided dice to decide how many plays to replace for next week's rotation. The plays I saw last night ranged from topical commentary ("Health Care Symphony") to sheer hilarity ("When Abstract Impressionists Attack") to frankly disturbing ("Meryl Streep Will Drink Your Blood Now"). Good stuff.

Ready for Spring

Midterms are over, my Study Abroad and Max Kade (German Study Abroad scholarship) applications are submitted, and spring break starts Friday (for me - technically it starts Monday.) I'm off to rainy London tomorrow night for a week! Maybe I can scope out the Queen Mary campus of the University of London, where I hope to spend next spring.

I hope everyone enjoys their breaks! And it was so great meeting so many of you yesterday!

-Katharine

Dear Prospective Incoming Freshmen

It was so great getting to meet a bunch of prospective incoming freshmen today! I had to duck out a bit early for class, but some of you guys had a TON of questions - which is great! If you need anymore answered, feel free to email me: Kt.ohagan@gmail.com. I love talking about Macaulay @ Hunter because when I decided to attend, I still wasn't sure it was the right school for me. Less than a year here has convinced me otherwise, but I want to help you prospective freshmen be confident in your decision. Hope you all had a great day!

I just got home from a common event - that is, an event that is Macaulay-wide, including students from all 7 campuses - at the MHC building which was actually surprisingly good. I suppose that's not entirely fair; many Macaulay events really are pretty good, it's just that they can drag on and on sometimes. Plus anything you're told you must go to inherently has a strike against it for some psychological reason, and although I consider it quite justified that an institution giving us a free college education can tell us periodically that we must attend some things, it does get old after a while.

But I digress; tonight was a Community Voices event, a common event designed to go along with our current (the 4th and last) honors seminar, "Shaping the Future of New York." the seminar explores issues such as urban planning, development, and sustainability, and the Community Voices events give students a chance to meet representatives from various important non-profit organizations working in the city. Tonight we heard from the chief of staff at the New York Economic Development Corporation and from a representative from the Municipal Arts Society. Both speakers gave very interesting presentations, and I found the work of the Economic Development Corporation particularly interesting. In our seminar classes, the EDC (which is a semi-nonprofit arm of the NYC government) has often been cast in a rather negative light, as the "opponent," so to speak, of community members. The chief of staff, however, gave a compelling representation of the other side of the dialogue. From her perspective, while the EDC does have the City's revenue at heart, its work is really geared toward improving the city in a variety of ways by listening to the concerns and opinions of the many different actors involved, synthesizing those opinions, and trying to generate from that a cohesive plan.

The other organization represented, the Municipal Art Society, as one of the oldest beautification and urban planning non-profits in the city, is one of those many actors whose opinion the EDC tries to (somewhat) accommodate. This was all pretty interesting for me because I'm really intrigued by power and how it actually works and is manifest in reality - as opposed to fiction or conspiracy theories - and who has power and how real change is effected. I spent a few years working at a non-profit when I was a teenager, and I was often struck by the relative powerlessness. Of course non-profits do form an important part of our society and governing system, but it was very interesting to see two different forces juxtaposed tonight. Now off for a nice night of homework...

Degree audited!

Just dropped off my Degree Audit Form at OASIS, after having the Thomas Hunter Honors Program sign off on it, after getting my major and minor departments to sign off on it, which took forever (I had to see a specific advisor in the French dept, because the minor requirements are still being finalized after the whole thing was overhauled last spring; this advisor's office hours were during one of my classes, so I had to wait till a class was canceled). It was surprisingly anticlimactic. I didn't even have to show ID. I just dropped it off and that was that. Didn't even have to show ID or key in my SSN or any of the usual hoops one jumps through.


But speaking of ID, I went and got myself a nifty new holder for my Legal Aid ID card (see pic to right). It has a belt clip and everything. This is so that I don't accidentally leave it in my pants when I do laundry. Again. Mind you, it survived the first time--even the dryer--without scratching or even fading, though it did come out a bit warped; still, it doesn't seem like the sort of thing I want to do routinely.


Oh, and I also just had my first midterm yesterday. Law & Lit. Fun stuff. It was open-book. This is my preparation for it, in all its Post-Itted glory. Because Post-Its just make one feel secure, you know what I mean?

Congratulations!

Congratulations to the Class of 2014! Decisions for Macaulay were available online last night and plenty of people were excited by the results.

We have a few intake sessions for new students coming up in March and April which include meeting current advisers and students. I hope most of you can make it because I'll be there to tell about all the exciting perks of being a Macaulay Scholar, especially the amazing food and cookies available at every Macaulay event. =D

The Professor

I don't think a study abroad experience should primarily be about the pictures that you take or even what you learn in class- at least mine isn’t. Its cheesy, but it really is about the people. I haven’t taken a single photo in the past two weeks (terrible, I know) but I have some great stories, and I’ve met some interesting individuals. I’ll tell you about one- the Professor.

I sitting at an outdoor table with friends from my program late one night, and desperately in need of entertainment- we were at a bar, which had no water, no food, just booze. This worked very well for my friend, but not nearly as well for me since I don’t drink. I believe I occupied my mind by thinking about exactly why people seem to have a much better time if they inebriated- jokes that made little sense to me seemed uproariously funny to a lot of other people. But just as I had been observing everyone else, someone else had been observing us. He came over and at first I though he was a beggar- just because of his hair (think Einstein, but longer, curlier, and only slight better kept). But the first thing he said to me was that I might want to keep a better eye on the duffle bag at my feet, since there area was known for crime. (He was right about the neighborhood being a bit gritty- this particular neighborhood has the same feel as that strip of St. Marks Place with all the tattoo parlors; its just seedier, and has five bars on every block, each of which had fifteen tables on the sidewalk, and chairs that balanced on the edge of the sidewalk and threatened to fall into the street) He assured me that he knew what he was talking about- “Really. You should be careful. I’m friends with the local pickpockets.” ….reassuring, trust inspiring statement, no?

But then he went on to talk with me.

He used to be a professor of Botany at the University of Chile, and had studied in Chicago and D.C.. A few years ago, he stopped teaching- I didn’t ask way ‘cause I didn’t want to be rude. But most of his time now is spent in observation, mostly of plants, but also of people. (The latter isn’t quite as creepy as it sounds.) We talked for a while, during which he gave me two important suggestions for my stay here. I hope I never forget his point, which I think is important enough to be the close of this entry:

I asked the Professor what I should remember the most while studying in Chile. In response, he pointed to the pavement next to the doorway that led inside the bar, and said “remember that the perspective from (the beggar) down there, is different from the one from here,” pointing to a seat at our the table, “which is different from the perspective of the waiter bringing you drinks, or the vendor, or the person just walking by these tables. All are experiencing the same exact moment very differently.” He said that while here, he strongly suggested that I try to see what Chile looks like from a perspective outside of the American students drinking at a bar.

Semester Abroad in Chile: Post Quake

When I first started this blog entry, I opened by saying “I am happy to report that this past week has been far less exciting than the last.” And then Santigo was hit by a 7.2 aftershock.

To put it in perspective, Chileans are quite used to tremors, they happen several times every day, and most of them are small enough that you hardly notice. This one was a bit different.

I was at the University of Santiago- I have classes there every morning from 10am to 12. We had just taken a ten-minute break and were heading down the hallway towards the lecture area when the building started vibrating. Strangely enough, some people thought that it was just the train that passes periodically under the university. Wrong. But after a few seconds (spent in door-frames, of course), we headed down the stairs and back to class. Ten minutes later, the major aftershock hit us. I have to say that as calm as I was able to be during the first one, I didn’t fair quite as well during the second. I blame my reaction on the building- during the earthquake a few weeks ago, I was at my home-stay, the first floor of a brick 3-story apartment building, a pretty sturdy place. The University building wasn’t as reassuring, mainly because it was built with a lot of open space- I could see the support beams shaking and swaying, and since I was higher up, I could feel the floor shuddering just as much as the first quake, even though this quake was weaker (the higher up you are, the more you feel the building shift under you- intellectually, this is reassuring because if the buildings aren’t build to move with the quake, they crack and fall apart….but you can’t take much comfort in this fact until after both the earth and your nerves have calm down). Anyway, we rushed down the stairs and out of the building. By the time we got outside, the aftershock was over and, unfortunately, most of the phones had been knocked out. My friend’s dad managed to get through to him on his Chilean cell phone and a few minutes later, I was able to call my mother. I was lucky really- my major point of panic was that she’d get another phone call before I could talk to her and tell her I was ok- but when I finally got to her, she was completely calm.

I feel very lucky to be alright, particularly when I look around other parts of Santiago. The older portions of the city (presumably the structures that predate the aseismic building codes) were badly hit by the first quake. However the overall damage here was miniscule in comparison to Concepcion, Chile’s second major city, parts of which are still without water, electricity, or communications- it is also the city that my program was supposed to visit next month.

That trip’s been canceled, but I would still like to go there with my best friend’s family. I realize that it’s a bit of a strange desire, but you should understand that, although I am in Chile at a point where they are experiencing a lot of confusion and, in some cases grief, I feel very disconnected from it. I mean, yes, I see the effect that the quake had on some of the city (not even the part that has been worst hit), but the part that I have seen is nothing that a country with Chile’s resources can’t handle. I understand that there have been 800 lives lost, but it could have been so much worse (In the back of my mind, I’m always thinking about Haiti- and there is absolutely no comparison between the two). And, I suppose I am…confused…by the contrast between everyone here saying what a massive tragedy this was, and then the sense of normalcy just two days later (the trains and buses ran, my friend’s host family asked her where she planned to go dancing over the weekend).

This disconnect between witnessing and emotionally understanding the loss, this bubble, is hard for me to break through for different reasons. First, I am only learning how to speak the language (and my Spanish classes tend to tailor lessons to the subjects of our other classes, so I could probably understand a conversation telling about an economic depression better than a conversation about an emotional one). Second, I am American.

The latter creates more of a barrier because there are other students here, who live in neighborhoods just as safe as mine, who have no family ties here, and who cannot say that they really knew anyone whose home had been destroyed, or who had lost a family member. We have no roots here- and the resulting detachment is a hard thing to bridge when you cannot really see the impact of the terrible event that everyone is talking about. There has been only been a few times when I really felt the sense of confusion and worry that others experienced during the quakes- and that was through talking to my best friend’s family. I could understand his mother’s worry about relatives that she, at the time, she had no way of contacting to see if they were alright (she lives in NY and for most of the day couldn’t communicate with her family here in Chile), or his aunt who told me about how long and complicated it had been to get from the south (where she had been during the earthquake) back to Santiago- a trip that should have taken a few hours took a few days. The personal connection is a bit once-removed, but it was the closest that I have come to understanding what a lot of Chileans are feeling.

And it is time to sleep...

MHC classes! The classes that are mandated always turn out the be the most trouble. :-/ This past weekend brought with it fifteen pages of writing and a hundred something to read, and to make matters worst, I had to head home for the weekend to celebrate my birthday (what a great way to become one year older). Sunday to Monday, Monday to Tuesday at 5:30AM, then back up at 7:30AM to get to class at 8:30AM... life hasn't been the best. The body aches and yearns for sleep, and that is what this weekend shall be about - sleep.
If there is one piece of advice I can give you, the reader, it is to alternate early and late classes. Do not, under any circumstance, put two early days next to each other!

-Chev

Life Lessons that College Taught Me (Part 1)

There are seven days in a week, and in any week, there are seven million things that can go wrong. The internet is reliably unreliable, the printers will jam, and every sickness that can befall man (and woman) will converge right outside your dorm room door. However, if there is a bright spot in all of this, it is your professor's understanding, within reason, of things beyond your control.

That isn't encouragement to delay work because you have a gullible professor, but it is telling you to do your best at the things which you can influence.

In fact, that's the way we should always work.

Excitement! Intrigue! Homework! Subpoenas!

One of the benefits I didn't expect to have as a Legal Aid intern is copious amounts of time to do my homework. It's not that I don't have work to do for the internship itself--they keep me fairly busy--but it often involves long train rides to Queens, Washington Heights, and so on, which are great for getting readings done. I'm also getting pretty good at serving subpoenas. Fascinated by how some people just seem terrified of them. Are they a hassle? Yeah. But usually they're just asking people to produce records. They don't even have to appear in court themselves, just send the papers or DVDs or whatever to the courthouse. And they still think they're somehow personally implicated, or going to get in trouble, or... something. And you know what? If you're the person in charge of those records, part of your job is giving copies of those records to people who have legitimate reason to ask for them. Legitimate reason like, say, a document issued by a court commanding you to produce those records.

I'd write more, but there's not much more to write. The highlights of my week have included dog-sitting, and attending the Fordham Law School's annual alumni luncheon as a guest of my Hunter mentor. The luncheon was at the Waldorf-Astoria and was very nice. It also directly caused me to accidentally superglue my sock to the inside of my shoe.

Hey readers. I'm blogging to you from the courtyard outside of the Hunter dorms, enjoying the last few rays of sunshine. I'm sure I'm not the only one enjoying the nice spring-like turn the weather has taken. In the early fall, I used to love doing my reading out here, and it looks like I'm going to be able to start doing that again. Yay!

Over the weekend, I volunteered at Thirteen's Celebration of Teaching and Learning, which was so much fun. I got to see Diane Ravitch speak about her recently published book The Death and Life of the Great American School System. My mom's a teacher, and I'm seriously considering pursing a career in education (if not as an educator, perhaps in the field of public policy, which is why I was really excited about Hunter's new undergraduate program in Public Policy) so I found her speech (as well as some of the panels I got to attend in my down time) really fascinating.

It's also great food for thought considering the upcoming Macaulay event I'm going to: "Macaulay Perspectives: Fixing Our Schools". I'm sure much of the analysis presented by the speaker, Whitney Tilson, will be in opposition to the ideas I heard espoused by Ravitch (she is skeptical about the impact of charter schools, whereas Tilson is vice chairman of KIPP Academy Charter Schools in New York City) so it will be interesting to get a look at both sides of the debate about education reform so I can formulate my own ideas.

termmid

LET IT END!

Midterms Madness

Today was my first midterm in Biology 202 (Cell Bio) and needless to say, it was as hard as expected. (Midterms are cumulative tests, and most science classes and large lectures are graded entirely on them unless there's a lab.) It's the same in every class when it comes to the first assignment or test: it's the barometer by which to measure the rest of the semester. Cell Bio isn't getting any easier from this point onwards, but at least now I know the types of questions the professor is most likely to ask. Probably the most annoying aspect of the entire test, despite the vagueness of the questions, was the post-baccalaureate directly to my left banging his head against the wall and causing vibrations in our entire row.

However, with this hurdle in my week passed, I can look forward to discussions about religion, Chemistry clickers (my Saturday Chem class always has a thirty minute electronic test), and Ellis Island for my Honors Seminar. Things are looking up. :/

-Kunwal

"We Are New York"

Yesterday was the information session/training session at the Macaulay building for the volunteer project "We Are New York" - an initiative with the Mayor's office to teach English to immigrants in New York City. I'll be working with another girl, who I don't know much about yet, in Corona, Queens starting on March 12th for 9 weeks. I'm really excited for the opportunity! I feel like this is a volunteer project that really makes a tangible difference in the participants lives, as English is, obviously, a much needed skill for city life. I'm looking forward to getting some teaching experience under my belt, too.

We Are New York is still taking volunteers if anyone is interested! (Macaulay kids, it takes care of your entire community service requirement, if you need another incentive.) If anyone has questions they can comment below, but I encourage everyone to check out the website. It really is a great program.

-Katharine

MHC blogging live from Chile

MHC blogger Xevion hall is studying in Chile this semester and gives us a first hand account of the recent earthquak; unfortunately the website is giving her trouble so I'm posting this for her:

I wish my first blog could be of a lighter note, but as it is supposed to tell what I feel is most important at this particular moment, I feel compelled to write about the quake that struck Chile earlier this morning.

At about 3:30am this morning, 1:30am in New York, I was woken up by the intense shaking. The closest I can come to describing it is a reeeally horrible ride on the A-train- and mind you, my home-stay is 197 miles away from the epicenter. Anyway, in accordance with all those school safety lessons that we received when we were five (apparently they come in handy), my host and I stayed a doorway, which is supposed to be the most reinforced section of the walls in a house. The quake lasted about 3 minutes (judging from what I read afterwards, I wouldn’t be able to tell you just from memory), after which we got dressed. Then my host and I stepped outside to see what was going on.

The sirens were blaring while some people screamed and while others lit candles in the courtyard- those of you who were in NYC for the blackout will have some frame of reference for what I’m talking about. But all of the panic is something that I witnessed from a distance- from the doorway to the apartment where I am staying. In the interest of full disclosure, I will tell you why: Here in Chile, I do not exactly blend in (21 year-old Black New Yorker in a South American city whose general population has skin with less than half the melanin content of my own), and in certain situations it is best not to draw attention- particularly when people are frightened, and there is the possibility of vandalism. So I chose to stay to the side. The domestic phone lines were overwhelmed and the web wasn’t working. I was lucky because I had not had a chance to call ATT to disconnect my phone from the US, so I could still use it- unfortunately this also means that ATT made a fortune off of me today. Anyway, after 10 minutes of trying, I was extremely lucky to get my one and only call to my mother. I told her that there were some problems with the service and that I expected not to be able to speak to her until later on Saturday night, but that she shouldn’t worry because I would call her when the wireless started working again- and of course, that she shouldn’t worry because I was perfectly fine….But I didn’t tell her about the earthquake. (My intent was for her to at least finish getting a good night’s sleep before the coronary that she was sure to have the next morning once she turned on the tv and saw the words “Chile” and “Earthquake.” As it turned out, mom’s peace of mind lasted about as long as our conversation, because one minute after I hung up, my very freaked out aunt in England gave mom a call- she had already started her day (they’re 5hrs ahead) and was currently watching BBC, which was telling her all about the earthquake that had devastated Concepcion and affected Santiago, both of which I had mentioned to her when I told her about my trip (I’m staying in the latter, and am supposed to visit Concepcion in a few weeks). And naturally, my aunt’s call was followed in close succession by my former and much beloved H.S. guidance counselor, my mother’s friends, and our family in NY, England, and Jamaica. Needless to say, mom didn’t sleep at all last night.)

After mom, I couldn’t call anyone else, but I could still send texts. I sent some to two of my best friends in NY who, thankfully, never turn their phones off (Everyone should have at least one best friend who is tied to their phone- in times of crisis, they’re like lifelines. Prepare in advance- you just got arrested, and you are allowed one phone call (in my case, it was an earthquake and SMS texts). Some people might say call the person with the money to bail you out- I say call the person who you’re absolutely sure will pick up, take you seriously and, if you need them too, personally hammer down the door of the person who has the money to bail you out if they don’t have it themselves). I didn’t ask Kev and Ravi to hammer down any doors. I requested that they (1) put a Google alert on Chile- especially Santiago since the radio in the apartment wasn’t working and I had no clue what was going on in the rest of the city/country- I needed them to tell me, just incase it became necessary for me to leave Santiago, or Chile itself (2) I asked that they call mom in the morning and let her know what happened- but to tell her immediately if anything else happened in the country (such as a major aftershock or whatever else), especially if they didn’t get a text from me right afterwards. Then I got a bag together with some emergency money, etc, and sat down to wait for a bit with my host. After speaking with some of the neighbors, we went back to bed. I tried to fall asleep, but nerves kept me up, and what sleep I got was interrupted by the aftershocks that racked the city for the next few hours, and by texts from Kev and Ravi about what was going on.

Fast forwarding to right now, people are pretty shaken. Some of the older buildings are a mess, and I am not even in the part of Santiago that is the most damaged. I am just glad to be safe, particularly when there are families here in Chile who have lost people they love in the earthquake.

But, speaking of safety, I feel that it would be a good idea to review what I did right and wrong this morning- and hopefully this blog will prove more beneficial that just letting you know where to go dancing should you come to Santiago (that may be in the next two blogs).

What I did wrong-

Error 1-Thinking it was a possibility to delay, or even that I should delay, news of the earthquake from my mother. Aside from the danger of her not knowing what had happened, which, I admit I tried to mitigate by telling others what had happened, it was also completely futile. (I should note that earlier this morning, I sent a text to Kevin asking that he call mom and calmly explain to her what happened. His text began with “lol” and said that, not only was mom l aware of what happened, but that she and my guidance counselor had almost caught a flight to Chile to “dig me out of the rubble.” Kevin apparently spent quite some time last night helping them look for flights-a fact he neglected to text to me (if you’re wondering why, your guess is as good as mine). And, if you think that rationality was what stopped them from taking a cab to JFK, you’re wrong (they’re both moms, so neither was really rational in this situation)- they only stopped packing once they heard that the airport in Santiago had closed.

Error 2- Not having the information for the U.S. Consulate readily accessible (but you can be sure that I have it now), as well as its emergency contact numbers. Sure, it might not have been terribly difficult to ask someone where it was located, but had I needed to get there quickly, that might have taken me more time than I’d have liked (Parallel- how many New Yorkers could tell a distraught Chilean how to get to their consulate- in Spanish)

Error 3- Placing my laptop under a hanging mirror. Luckily, no damage was done, but my heart stopped when the earthquake hit and I heard the mirror drop from the wall inches from my mac.

What I like to think I got right:

Good Idea 1-The extra (non-Chilean) cell phone. Its expensive, but it saved my mother a plane ticket (although she panicked when my aunt called, she was less panicky because I had called a moment ago, which she realized was after the earthquake had hit. She also knew me well enough to realize why I hadn’t told her, which stopped her from telling me off). More importantly, the phone allowed me to communicate when my Chilean phone and internet connection both stopped working. Still not entirely sure why SMS still worked on the American cell….any thoughts?

Good Idea 2- Having emergency money- personally, I’m rather paranoid about this. I try to keep more than enough for a long cab ride (dirt cheap here in Chile) and in Chilean, but also U.S., currency. My reasoning for the latter is that, if world around me has collapsed, chances are the U.S. gov’t hasn’t, and the greenback will still be valuable enough to get me where I need to go. Extreme thoughts, but still…

Good Idea 3- Having what I would need to get home within easy reach (knowing exactly where to find my passport, cash, credit cards, ID, and of course mta metrocard).

Good Idea 4- Finally: Knowing that I could get out if I needed to. True, I’m having a blast in Chile, and the next three months are going to be amazing- both in and out of the classroom. But to be frank, if safety ever really became an issue, I would have no qualms about hopping on the next plane to any U.S. state (or Jamaica, since its closer). However, I think it’s just important to know where that threshold is, and in the case of the quake, that the situation hadn’t reached that point yet. What made the different for me was that I was reassured by the fact that when I couldn’t get in touch with my program coordinator here in Santiago, the home-stay coordinator (who actually lives only a few minutes away) knocked on the door only an hour after the quake had hit-just to make sure everything was alright. I figured that if they could get to me quickly (and that I could still communicate reliably with home to communicate (second-handedly) with mom, and still stay informed through Kev and Ravi about what was happening on Santiago’s streets), then the situation was still safe enough for me to stay.

Anyway, that concludes my first blog. My heart goes to the victims and their families.

To the Macaulay students reading, I hope that my next will be a tad more cheerful and that this one is (shrug) I don’t know, somewhat helpful?

Until next week, Suerte y chao.