First, I have decided that I’m a teen heartthrob in Santiago, after a high school girl on a micro bus called out to me to take my picture. This caused much high school girl snickering. Like the founding father of Chile, I sport some nice sideburns.
Second, you can learn a lot about what is going by reading the newspaper. However, if your Spanish is a little rusty and you have not had coffee yet your interpretation may not be correcting so a random sampling of stories from Chile that sound like the US. There was a story on how girls were much more likely than boys in Chile to read for pleasure. I would guess these figures were very similar in the US, it was something like only 20% of boy teens read for pleasure and nearly 40% of girl teens. This trend is perhaps indicative of females passing males in terms of education in several Latin American Countries. Another story like the US is that
Chilean children are not drinking enough milk, and their consumption of soda is approaching that of milk. As Latin American countries become developed they are starting to have the same types of obesity problems we do. I have heard there is growing research in how Mexico’s welfare program Oportunidades is actually creating obesity.
I also toured the presidential palace today. More thoughts on that manana.
