I'm Officially Part of the Chilean Census!

Yesterday the door bell rang, I opened the door to find the census information collector. In Chile, a census is taken every ten years and the information collectors go door-to-door. None of my roommates were there to fill out the census, so I agreed to try out my Spanish on census questions. Thankfully, my Spanish did not fail me and I was able to answer the questions. I also found out that the information collector studied history and so we chatted for a bit about that. (I don't know if a lot of people study history or if we magically gravitate to each other but I have met a disproportionate amount of people who studied history.)

The one questions that I was surprised that was not on the census was the race question. Maybe because this question is such a big deal on the US census, I kept waiting for it and waiting and then realized that race is not a part of the Chilean census. I found this surprising for a country that talks quite a bit about heritage and the color of skin. On an exciting note, I received a sticker for completing the census. It reminded me of voting stickers in the US. (Sidebar, if you want to ask someone why they do not have a race question on their census make sure you use the word, "raza" for race. It may sound similar to the word "raíz" but that means roots. And yes, this is personal experience speaking here.)

In other news, the weather is cooling down here. The vibe in Viña definitely changes with the seasons and the city feels a lot emptier not that summer is over but it is still a beautiful city-