ANR: 753495
Name: Seleen Suidman
E-mail: neeles12@hotmail.com
Exchange semester: Fall 2013
Academic year: 2013/2014
Host University: Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
Country: Chile
Santiago de Chile
Santiago de Chile is a big city with
approximately 7 million people. The
city is divided in many different
neighborhoods, some are richer and
other poorer. The richest neighborhoods
can be found in the north and the east
and the poorer neighborhoods in the
south and west. It is not a beautiful city
compared to most European cities but
the students live is very nice and lively.
Main touristic things are Plaza de
Armas, Santa Lucia, Cerro San
Cristobal and walking through Bella
Vista and Barrio Brasil is also very nice.
There are also some nice museums, like
Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos
Humanos, which is about Allende and
Pinochet, or Museo de Bellas Artes.
The transportation exists of buses (micros), metro, taxies and collectivos.
Transportation is very good and you can come everywhere with it. During the night
you better take a taxi and do not walk alone, especially not as a girl, in certain
neighborhoods, but there are also neighborhoods where I did not feel unsafe, just be
aware of it.
There are several places where you can shop for cloths and shoes, there are a few
shopping malls in the east of Santiago (Costanera Centre, near metro Tobalaba)
where you can find the stores that also exist in The Netherlands and in the west of
Santiago you find more the places where not rich locals shop.
Going out for dinner or for a party can be done in Bella Vista, this is a neighborhood
in the middle of Santiago near the main square, Plaza Italia, it's a very cozy place to
go out, but it is very busy and especially during the night be aware of pickpockets,
because there are plenty of them.
Most exchange students live in the neighborhoods Providencia, Bella Vista and
Santiago Centro. Although Santiago Centro is a bit dangerous to live, if you live
close to the main street, Liberador Bernardo O’Higgens, it will be fine. The first two
weeks I lived in Santiago Centro in Barrio Londres Paris and I did not feel unsafe,
but when you go more south, the neighborhood gets more dangerous. Bella Vista is
also a nice place to live, but it is the neighborhood with all the cafes, pubs, bars and
discos, therefore it is a bit more expensive than Santiago Centro and a bit noisier.
Providencia is the best place to live, I think, the neighborhood is nice and not
dangerous.
Most Chilean students live with their parents in Santiago or alone when their parents
are not from Santiago. In the first case most students can be found in the
neighborhoods Las Condes, Vitacura, La Reina and Providencia. These are the places
where the rich people live, and since university is very expensive almost only these
people can afford to let their child study at a university.
Universidad Católica
Universidad Católica has four campuses. Casa Central is the main building and is
near the metro station Universidad Católica, but on this campus just some studies are
located, like medicine and law. The main campus is San Joaquín, located next to the
metro station with the same name. On this campus almost all studies are taught, there
is also a verity of eating and drinking possibilities, there are libraries, grass to sit on,
the sporting area of the university and many other possibilities. Traveling from the
main square of Santiago, Plaza Italia, to this campus takes more or less 30 minutes by
metro. Casa Central takes 5 minutes from this square. The other two campuses are
Oriente and Lo Contador, I do not know exactly what studies are taught there but it
mostly are the art and music studies.
So, if you would like to sport you can do that at the university at San Joaquín. They
have many different sports, you do not have to pay since they provide it as any other
course you take, you even get credits for it.
On San Joaquín are many faculties located and all include many different study
directions. Every faculty has its own building and library. There are more or less
21000 undergraduate students, 3000 graduate students and 1300 exchange students
(http://www.uc.cl/es/la-universidad/campus).
The libraries are easy accessible for all students, you just need your student card to get
in and out. There are also many study places on the campus were it is possible to work
in silence, also computers are available.
Academic Calendar
For my semester the arrival date was the 1st of August,
this was the day that they gave an introduction speech and
explained everything about the university. In the same
week they had tours over the campuses, arrival parties
and other welcoming things. The start of the lecture was a
bit strange, because some courses started the same week
as the welcome week, others the week after and some
even another week later. Therefore it really depends on
the courses you take and the faculty.
For me the last day of class was the 22nd of November,
the week before that date and the week after, were exam
weeks, officially the university finished the 13th of
December. This semester was a semester with many
national holidays, therefore we had a few long weekends,
meaning Thursday and Friday off. There is this break of a
week around the 18th of September, which is a kind of a
Queensday but than for a whole week, you can call it the
mid-break term.
Examination in Chile is a bit different then in Tilburg. They do not have one week for
examination, only at the end they have all final exams in two weeks. The rest of the
exams are spread out over the semester, I had an exam or assignment almost every
week. Therefore you really have to catch up with the reading, because otherwise you
will not have enough time before the exam to prepare yourself well enough.
International Student Association: CAUC
The university offers an international student association: CAUC (http://cauc.cl). This
organization is an organization with exchange students but also Chilean students,
therefore it is a really nice mix between locals and internationals. The organization
organized the campus tours on all campuses, and this is especially necessary on San
Joaquín because it is big. They organized trips to ski in the Andes or other places
close and far away from Santiago. But also dinners and parties where organized and
most exchange students do join these events. There was also the possibility of a buddy
or a tandem, this means someone who wants to learn your language (mostly English
or French) and he or she teaches you Spanish. It is a very nice organization and totally
run by Chilean students.
Via this organization but also because of the house I was living in, I had a lot of
contact with local students and therefore I learned more about the Chilean culture.
Next to that, all exchange students go to the same parties, live in the same areas and
do the same trips, therefore you meet many foreign students and you will do many
things together with them as well. Especially travelling is done in small groups of
foreign students, because the Chilean students either do not have the money for the
travels or have already been there. I tried to go somewhere almost every weekend, it
did not have to be very far, some place in Santiago for example, or if there was a long
weekend I went with some foreign students outside Santiago, and because I had a
tourist visa I had to go after three months in Chile to another country, so I went to
Argentina for a weekend, since it is kind of close to Chile.
International Office
On the campus of San Joaquín there is an international office, the people who work
there are very friendly and helpful. Patricia Uribe M. (puribem@uc.cl) sent me
emails before and after my arrival about the practical things I had to do for the
university. And from Julio Cesar Gulin (jgulin@uc.cl) I received emails more about
my stay there, about the international community CAUC and other activities.
International Fair
There was also an international Fair organized where you could represent your
university for the Chilean students, who might wanted to go abroad for a semester or
do their masters abroad. I represented at the Dutch stand Tilburg University, with
other people who studied in the Netherlands, the promotion material was sent by
Tilburg University.
Academic information
All courses are offered in Spanish, however there are some courses offered in English
every semester, but these courses differ every time. I followed all my courses in
Spanish because they simply did not offer any English course were I was interested
in.
I am studying Liberal Arts and Sciences in Tilburg and my Major is Social Science,
since they focus on sociology and psychology in Tilburg I wanted to know a bit of the
other subfields of Social Science as well. Therefore I choose, next to one sociology
course, two courses in anthropology and one in political science. I really would
recommend the sociology and the anthropology course, because the subject is very
interesting but also because the professors where very good. They spook very clear
Spanish and they explained the matter very well. I enjoyed these classes.
The academic level differs for every course. The classes are comparable with the
classes in Tilburg, but in general I had to read more for my Chilean courses than I do
for my courses in Tilburg, which makes it not more difficult but more time
consuming, especially when the texts are in Spanish. And since there is not one week
for all the exams, you are constantly studying and because of that the workload felt
more than in Tilburg. The structure of the courses is quite similar to the structure in
Tilburg, but while they integrate the text you have to read in the lectures in Tilburg,
they do not do that in Chile. The exam has some questions about the lectures and
some about the text, so if you do not read or understand the texts, it is almost
impossible to answer half of the questions, so you better read and understand the text.
Next to the normal lectures there are ayudantia’s, in these hours students from the last
years of the study come and explain the text that you had to read. These were not
obligatory most of the time and its just very helpful for yourself to go.
What I noticed is that the relation between the students and the professors is very
open, I had two professors who were still partly students (they were my best
professors though) and therefore they knew some people in the classes and there was
a very nice relationship without much hierarchy.
Exams
The examination differed per course. I had two courses were the exams existed of five
open questions, in where you had to make connections between the theories taught in
the lectures and some questions about the texts. The level of these exams was
comparable with the level in Tilburg. For the other courses you had to choose one or
two questions out of three to five, in that sense you could answer the questions you
knew and the others you just skipped, this made it easy to pass an exam. For most
courses there was one possibility to resit the exams, this means that you had one extra
exam if you failed one or more exams, it is not like in Tilburg were you can resit
every exam you take.
Courses
All my courses were bachelor courses. 10 Chilean credits = 6 ECTS
• Paradigmas Antropológicos: ANT100, 10 credits, 2 written open exams and one
essay: theoretical, lot of reading, not that easy but also
not too difficult.
• Paradigmas Sociologicos: SOL100, 10 credits, 3 written open exams: theoretical, lot
of reading, kind of difficult.
• Antropologia Americana: IHA0010, 10 credits, 4 written open exams: theoretical,
reading, kind of easy.
• Seminario: America Latina Siglo XX: ICP0109, 10 credits, 3 written open exams:
theoretical, lot of reading, difficult.
Visa
Before leaving for Chili I checked the visa requirements and the costs. It turned out
that a student visa, what you officially need, was quite expensive. Since a tourist visa
is free and you can stay in the country for 90 days, I decided to go without any visa. I
met many people who had decided to do the same and after three months we went
together for a weekend to Mendoza, Argentina to get a new tourist stamp in our
passport that was valid for another 90 days stay in Chile. The university never asked
for our visa and at the border they did not asked anything.
Pre-Arrival information
In the end of December 2012 I got an email from Tilburg that I was accepted at the
university in Chile. Chile sent me in between April and June of 2013 pre-arrival
information and instructions, for example that I had to send a copy of my health
insurance. Just check your email regularly and you will be fine with the instructions.
Arrival
My semester started the 1st of August and that day there was a welcome ceremony for
all exchange students in Casa Central, they introduce the university, the international
student associations and how things work in the university and Santiago. Moreover
they had organized a fair where you could ask students about the courses they
provided that semester, so you could get a bit more inside information about the
subjects the university offered.
We also got a kind of booklet with all the information about the university and about
the courses they offered at the university that semester. The only problem was that the
information about the courses was not really correct. Either the classrooms or the time
schedule did not go inside with reality but also some courses in the booklet where not
offered this semester but another semester. So that was quite confusing in the first
week. To find the courses they offer: go to this link http://dsrd.uc.cl/alumnos-
uc/cursos/primer-sem, enter your subject, for example Ciencia Politica, and whether
you are going to study in the first (our Spring) or second (our Fall) semester, then you
will receive this schedule http://dsrd.uc.cl/dara/libcursos/periodo21/ua45_0.html and
as far as I know the information on this one is correct.
Before Arriving
I flew to Buenos Aires, Argentina, because a flight ticket to Santiago was €1200,- and
to Buenos Aires €900,-. Besides that I like to travel and went four weeks before my
semester started in Santiago to Buenos Aires. From there I traveled by bus via the
north of Argentina to the north of Chile, I crossed the border near San Pedro de
Atacama, and went by bus to Santiago. I am really glad I did it that way. When I
arrived I went to a hostal, searched for a room and a week before the start of the
semester I settled in my room.
Housing
Housing in Santiago is not very difficult. Before leaving for Chile, I received general
information about the university and the city from Universidad de Chile, in this
package was also a paper about housing included, they provided some websites and
organizations that help students to find a room in Santiago. Many exchange students
use such organizations and will live with a host family for half year, I think this is
very good for your Spanish, but it is also more expensive.
I did not use the information provided by the university. I asked people from Santiago
who I met in the hostal what the best websites were. An example is Comparto Depto
http://www.compartodepto.com/, via this website I found my room in two days. It
depends a bit when you are looking for a room, because in August, when the semester
already started, most rooms are not available anymore, but at the end of July there
where still many opportunities for a room. Try to find a room in Providencia near
Parque Bustamente or Santa Isabel or near Pedro de Valdivia, its very well located
for both city centre and university, and the neighborhood is kind of safe and nice.
Some people arranged their room from their home country, but I would recommend to
come a bit earlier then your semester to Santiago and try to find one there, because for
me it was very important to see the room first, since you never know whether the
information on the internet is the same as in reality. Just start searching a few weeks
before the semester, and try to visit as much as possible until you are satisfied. For me
it took two days until I found something nice, I started living there but I discovered
that the house was not really what I was looking for, so I went to visit more houses
and apartments and after two weeks I found something that fitted me more and
changed from house, and I had very good experiences in my second house.
In Santiago there are many apartments were students can live but also old houses that
are just one level but very long. My house was like that and I lived there with 17 other
persons who only spook Spanish because they came from Spain, Colombia, Italia,
French and the main part from Chile, therefore my Spanish improved way faster then
when you live with only foreigners. So, if improving your Spanish is one of your
goals, try to live in a Spanish-speaking house because it helps a lot.
Living Costs
Overall Chile is not more expensive or cheaper then the Netherlands, some things are
cheaper, like cloths or shoes, but other things are slightly more expensive, like the
food in the supermarket. So to finance my exchange period I only needed extra money
for the plane ticket and the traveling around. Next to the grant I received from Tilburg
University and the study financial support from the government, I changed my OV
card into a monthly payment (more or less €100,-), I also received some support from
my parents and I saved money especially for this exchange. Overall I did not have
money problems, I spent more or less the same as I do in the Netherlands.
The rent was €200,-, but it can be more and sometimes less depending on your room
and location. Most of money went to traveling before and after the semester and food
during the semester.
Food is a bit more expensive than in the Netherlands, but again it depends what your
eating habits are. There is a huge food market, La Vega near metro Cal y Canto, in
this place you can find everything and they have a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables,
go there ones in a while and by for a longer time, its cheaper than the supermarkets. I
think I spend around €100,- a month in the Netherlands on my food and in Santiago it
was around the €180,- a month.
Another thing that took a big part from my budget was transportation. In Santiago the
metro costs around €1,- (619 – 700 pesos) a ride, depending on the exchange rate. A
taxi costs around €3,- (2.000 pesos) for 15 minutes and buses are less then a euro (450
pesos). So it is not very expensive but by using it every day it becomes a big part of
your budget. Transportation from Santiago to other places is not expensive compared
to the Netherlands. A bus ride of 8 hours might cost more or less 10.000 pesos (€15,-).
Going out for foreign students is not expensive, since most places have free entrance
until a certain time for foreign people and it is most of the time free at any time for
girls. Drinks have comparable prices to the Netherlands.
In Chile no one buys books at the university, all texts are made available by the
professor at a copy point where you easily can make copies of everything. It costs
around the 17 pesos (€0,02) a page. I think I paid around €10,- a course.
Monthly budget:
Housing: €200
Food: €180
Transportation: €90
Books: €10
Cloths, drinks, small traveling, etc.: €250
In total I spent €7.500,- for 7 months including everything (flight, traveling for 3
months, cloths, food, housing, transportation, drinks and university). I think if you
have a budget of €1000,- a month you will be fine.
Culture and Language
Latin American culture is quite similar to European culture, I think. The language is a
European language, the religion is Catholic and the people always have some
European ancestors. Therefore I did not really have a culture shock, I just really liked
it when I arrived. It is way more relax than the Dutch culture and people are friendlier
even if they do not know you. Argentina and Chile really like foreigners, and you will
notice that in how they treat you. Everything is less strict and no one will be on time. I
learned that the Dutch culture can be a kind of cold, especially towards other people,
that it is very organized and strict, when you come too late in the Netherlands it is not
good, in Latin America they just do not care. But we are also not the worst on that
part, Germany and Canada for example are even colder, stricter and more organized.
Chile is very modern and rich compared to all other countries I have seen in Latin
America. The cities look like European cities and the people treat you differently than
in Peru or Bolivia for example. I was really surprised by the modern attitude of the
country, I did not expect that. But the strange thing with Chile is that, although they
look rich and wealthy they still have a huge population that is poor, the gap between
rich and poor is one of the biggest in the world, you would not say that when you
walk in the streets.
The people are very, very friendly, and especially when you speak their language it is
really nice to talk with them and they really like to talk with you and tell about their
country. Being on time is also more important in Chile than in the other countries in
Latin America, buses drive on time and people come less too late.
Chile is a country of extremes, not only in rich and poor, but also the nature cannot be
more extreme in a country. In the north you have the driest dessert of the world and in
the south you have the wettest region in the world, they have every kind of nature;
dessert, ocean, rivers, lakes, lagoons, mountains, fjords, islands, pampas, forest,
rainforest, glaciers, volcanoes and so forth. There are also regularly earthquakes or
earth shocks, and ones in a few years there is a volcano that erupts.
While traveling and speaking with the local people or the Chilean students in my class
I learned much about Chile, about the politics, the economy, the nature and culture of
the country. I really enjoyed that, but in order to be able to speak with people you
really need to learn their language because they do not speak English, students do, but
the locals in the street or on the road do not speak another language than Spanish.
The other countries around Chile where I have been are very different. Peru, Bolivia
and Paraguay are poorer, the people are smaller and have more indigenous influence
in their appearance but also in their culture. But the countries are very nice to travel
through, the nature is nice and the culture is just more Latin American than in Chile,
were it has a huge European influence. It is also cheaper and less organized in the
other countries, and people treat you more like a tourist in these countries than they do
in Chile. Argentina is comparable to Chile. The people have a bit the same
appearance, and the countries are both very influenced by European culture and
habits. Prices are similar and they are both better organized and stricter in time than
the other three countries mentioned above.
But in all countries it is easier to get in contact with the locals when you speak their
language, since they simply do not know English or any other language. But there are
differences between the Spanish of all countries. In Chile and Argentina they talk very
fast, for example, while in Peru and Bolivia the Spanish is easier to follow when you
cannot speak Spanish very well. Another thing is that Chile uses many different words
than they do in the other countries and also their accent is supposed to be the most
difficult, even after a few months living there I sometimes could not understand when
some one was speaking with a very thick Chilean accent.
All my courses were in Spanish, the university offers some English taught courses,
but for my study direction they did not offer anything. Therefore I really had some
problems in the first months. Some professors speak very clear and you can follow
what they say but others had a very thick Chilean accent and talked so fast that I did
not get a word, even at the end of the semester. All text were in Spanish and all exams
were taken in Spanish, that was a huge struggle for me, not necessarily because the
subjects were difficult but more because I needed more time to read and understand
the Spanish texts and courses. With the international students I spook either English
or Spanish or both mixed, and with the Chilean I only spook Spanish, because I
wanted to practice my Spanish, like in my house we only spook Spanish and that
really helped me. I did not take any language course in my semester, because for me
this does not work, I learn a language the best through practicing with speaking,
reading, listening and writing by myself and with other people in daily life. Another
reason for not taking a language course is the fact that I had five courses and that was
already a bit too much for me. I thought I can better focus and use my time for my
Chilean courses and since they were in Spanish they would help me learning Spanish
as well. Next to that I bought a grammar/practice book for Spanish and I worked an
hour a day in that book, to learn as well a bit of the grammar.
Tips
I would definitely recommend future students to go on exchange, I really had a good
time in Chile, socially and culturally but also academically. Universidad de Chile is a
very nice university with many opportunities. To go prepared, means learn Spanish
because you will need it. But even with my Spanish, which was not much in the
beginning, I survived and had a good time there, and of course my Spanish improved
enormously and although I have had some hard times with the language difficulties I
will never regret that I went. I met many nice people, I lived in an awesome house and
I can speak another language now. I definitely learned a lot.
Contact Me
s.d.suidman@tilburguniversity.edu
neeles12@hotmail.com