A City Excursion

I take Spanish classes for an hour on Tuesdays and Thursdays. My teacher (or profe, which is the affectionate term here) is Marisol. She is nice and talkative and isn't shy about telling me all sorts of things. Everything from her divorce to why Chilean people stare to the surgery she has on her eyes.

Yesterday I went on an excursion for Spanish students. It was just me and another student, Jose Miguel, from Brazil. This was literally his first week studying Spanish but he could get by, I think, because of the similarities between Portuguese and Spanish.

We went to the Plaza de Armas. Mile Zero in Chile begins there. It's where all distances in Chile are calculated from.

To the left is the main post office. The yellow building is museum, and the white one is a government building.

This is inside the post office. I learned that chandeliers are called lamparas arañas, which means spider lamps.

This is inside the cathedral. It easily could've been a cathedral in Spain or Italy. Jose Miguel asked me if we have cathedrals like this in the U.S. I said that no, we don't really. Maybe the National Cathedral in D.C. is like this? I never made it there while I was living in D.C.

This is one of the first Chilean flags. We saw it at the National History Museum.

A scene from Chile's past. The people in the center with the white handkerchiefs are dancing a form of the national dance, the cueca.