Working at the Universities

On Monday, we learned which of the universities in the area we would be working at after talking about the typical Chilean student's attitudes towards life.  We're working in groups of three at some of the bigger universities in the city, evangelizing and helping with the English Clubs run by Vida Estudiantil.  My group is Anne Marie and Derek, and we're working at four schools in Barrio República.  Our schools are Universidad Alberto Hurtado (UAH), Universidad Diego Portales (UDP), Universidad Andrés Bello (UNAB), and AIEP.  Monday, we walked through all of them (by some of them, because we started running late.  Everything here starts about ten or so minutes after it's supposed to).  Isaías, who met us at the hostel the first night, is a student at UAH, so he met us there and showed us around the campuses.  We also met Glenda and Sergio at UNAB, who showed us through that campus and where UDP and AIEP are.

Pictures from a patio at UNAB.  I think there are mountains in the background, but I can't really distinguish them from the smog. 

The universities we're working on are very spread out and don't have a main campus area.  I think it's because the universities were founded after the city was built, so the universities purchased buildings close together, but not with the typical campus we have in the States.  Each of the buildings is devoted to a certain discipline, and most of them have a cafeteria, called a casino, and courtyards, so the students don't really mix within majors.
Then we went to Dunkin' Donuts, where they didn't have any hot coffee, but the iced coffee was better than anything I've had here so far.  After that, we went back to our hostel and took a walk around the neighborhood after getting dinner.  That night, the power was turned off, so we sat in the dining room and told stories for a while before going to bed.

Tuesday, after spending time talking about the Holy Spirit with the whole team, we went to UDP around 11 and met with Ronaldo, a student there.  We needed him to let us in because there are guards to prevent non-students from getting on campus.  When we told the guard who we were waiting for, she was really excited because she also knew Ronaldo and was a Christian, so we were friends now, too.  We spent the rest of the morning talking to students.  Kelly met up with us in the afternoon to disciple Anne Marie and I.  While she and I were together, we shared with three girls studying nursing.  One of them seemed really open to the gospel, but she didn't share a decision with us, so I've been praying for her.  After finishing at the schools, we went back to the Sede for dinner and sharing about our days.

Wednesday, we had our first English Club at UNAB, so we went there in the morning and met with Veronica and Juan Carlos, who teach the lessons.  We passed out fliers promoting the club for a while, and then had lunch.  We had a really good dessert called brazo de la reina, with manjar (caramelized milk) filling, chocolate and coconut on top, and raspberry sauce.  At the English Club, Anne Marie and I worked with the advanced students, just talking to them to help improve their speaking and pronunciation.  We talked about a lot of different things, including politics and TV shows.  After that, we went to AIEP to hold their English Club.  It was the first meeting, so everyone worked on the basic lesson.  Afterwards, we went to Japimax (pronounced "happy max") to hang out with students we had met.  One of them came, and Glenda and Ronaldo showed up, too.  After talking for a while, it was back to the hostel.

This post seems long enough for now, and I need to sleep soon.  I'll try to post again about the rest of my week tomorrow.