Student Blog Post

Amanda West: An Experience of a Lifetime

When I was preparing for our trip to Valparaiso, Chile for a short month-long study abroad I was thinking of myself. How much fun I was going to have in a new city. All the new things I was going to see. All the experiences I was going to have with my newfound friends from St. Edwards. All the work I was going to have to do for class. All the Spanish I was going to learn while immersed with my host family. How I would put the things I learned on my trip to use in my daily life back home. But after arriving in Santiago on June 1st with a group of 27 other Hilltoppers, that all changed and my perception of the trip switched from my to our. We were forced to be close due to the new situation we were in, the strange city we wanted to explore, and the fact that we couldn’t go out into the city and see it for ourselves if we weren’t with another member of the group. Although our experiences are slightly different due to the different families we have, we can still see the beautiful country of Chile together with an edge of excitement. Together, as a collective, we have been called gringos “affectionately” by the local peoples. We have seen the sunset on the horizon at Viña del Mar and over the picturesque mountain top view from Cerra San Cristobal in Santiago. We have been to vineyards with very funny English-speaking tour guides and tried to listen intently to the Spanish-speaking tour guides in the Natural History Museum for all the bits of information we can understand. We have been greeted by the Valparaiso Mayor and have been escorted around the cities like a group of grade-schoolers on a field trip. However, our experience here in Chile, as a group of SEU Hilltoppers, would not be complete without the ever important pillar of service in our Liberal Arts curriculum.

Our work with the young girls from the Escuela Uruguay in Valparaiso brought us together, not only for our community service but also to gain an unbelievable experience. A few of the girls had their homes unfairly stolen from them in a huge fire that ripped through 7 of the 44 hills of Valparaiso only a month ago. We were given the opportunity to help the students create iMovies on an iPad with pictures they had taken on a disposable camera of their families, friends, school, neighborhood, or anything else they wanted to capture on film to represent who they are. As a group then, we transformed these images into a digital movie in which they would record their voice describing the picture in English. This exercise, therefore, would help them grasp basic English phrases and help them gain a confidence in speaking English, as well as allowing me to practice Spanish.

This field experience was unlike anything I expected. The photos spoke a thousand words about the lives that these young girls live. While we get to see the country in an immersed environment due to living with host families, there is still a certain amount of the city that we don’t get to see. Some of the photos from the disposable cameras were to dark or blurry to see the real image, but the majority of the pictures gave me valuable insight into life in Valparaiso. Through these pictures I got to see parts of the city I wouldn’t have been able to normally.

There is no better way to learn about a countries school and education system then to be involved with it yourself. There is mountain of differences between this particular public school and public schools in the United States. Images of Jesus Christ were on the walls in hallways, prominently displayed. A corporation, Nestle, sponsored their field day, and they all wear uniforms. The girls we worked with told me the school had ten floors in total, a very large building for roughly 700 students.

Even though we were only at the school for three weeks, I felt welcome welcomed and appreciated during our time there. I doubt however, that these girls got more out this experience than I did. I will always remember the accomplished look on my students face when she completed all the necessary steps to complete a 1 minute long video in English! All in all- the field service we did in the Escuela Uruguay was very successful and empowering.

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