Bacán!

One of the unique aspects of this program is its location in Vina/Valpo, most programs tend to be in Santiago and I liked being outside of a big city because it allowed me really try and immerse myself into the culture and gave me the opportunity to speak and practice my Spanish. There are a lot of college students in this area and it’s close enough and inexpensive to get to Santiago.

It’s a flexible program and you really have to be very independent because there’s not a lot of administrative support. We basically had to figure everything out on our own. However as a girl traveling alone I really liked that Vina feels safe.

I really enjoyed my internship a lot although they never really gave me real work to do. In terms of getting actual experience I really didn’t feel like I did as much as I wanted to. My internship was in Valparaiso, which was nice because I was able to get to know both cities and everyone I worked with was great. They were also really flexible which is convenient if you’re coming to Chile to travel.

I personally didn’t like being forced to take Spanish lessons for three weeks; it was annoying to have to spend three hours doing grammar everyday especially because I’m a fluent native speaker. Learning a bit about the culture and slang was really useful especially once I got to my internship (but I probably could have learned on my own).

The housing placement was good, I had my own room, it was super central, and a five-minute walk to the beach but it’s poorly run. It’s not very well taken care of (filthy and falling apart) and the last month of my stay was considerably better but it took two months of insisting that things on my part to get to that point. The staff at the international center is nice but honestly I felt like I had to constantly bug them to get info that I wanted or needed, they don’t particularly go out of their way to help you. They’ll do it but only because you insist, which was really frustrating at times.

However despite any of these problems, the program does live up to what it promises.