Math talks in Chile

USACH

In both Panama and also Chile, abbreviations include more than just the first letter of each word, making the abbreviation more pronounceable.  In Panama, I'd spent a week at the Universidad de Chiriquí, called UNACHI; here in Chile, I kicked off my talks at the Universidad de Santiago, Chile, called USACH.

In the fortunately/unfortunately genre . . . unfortunately, the department secretary there forgot to send out an announcement about my visit: fortunately, the chair figured out (the day before I arrived, at 10 p.m.) that it needed to get sent out; unfortunately, only 6 people showed up for the talk; fortunately, that gave me a chance to fix the mistakes in Spanish in my slides before I showed it to lots more people.  

One delightful thing I discovered at USACH was that their wifi is "eduroam", the same system my home college uses, and so I had zero difficulty logging in.  That was a delightful surprise, as I haven't discovered eduroam anywhere in Panama.  And in fact, every single university I've visited in Chile has had eduroam, so really feel like the internet gods are smiling on me here.

Universidad Valparaíso

A place with cheery buildings, painted a happy yellow.

The first day I was at U. Valparaíso, I met first with a class of first-year students. We did one of my favorite workshops, the one on "the most amazing cube you've ever seen", and they loved it.  They lined up to climb on the chair and see the cube from the right viewpoint.

Afterwards, we all took a photo together, some with their own cube handouts. I asked if they'd like me to come back and do a drawing/geometry workshop with them, and they all enthusiastically agreed, so we scheduled in a subsequent meeting.  (Alas, it was not to be; more on that later).

I also got to meet with a pair of fourth-year students who were in the process of beginning their thesis.  

Discutiendo la geometría juntos

And that was all on my first visit to U Valparaíso.  

On my second visit, I did a workshop for a large and enthusiastic group of students visiting from a nearby Montessori high school.

They had some great questions!

Standing on a chair to see the cube is amazing. 
I loved this student's face!

Outside on the cheery yellow stairs.

On my third visit to U Valparaíso, I spent a bunch of time talking research with Lianggi, a professor there.  We have a lot of overlapping interests in perspective and perception and teaching, and it was fun to share what we've been working on.  It's been a long time since I've gotten to chat with someone who knows the literature in my field.  

After our research jam session, we went for lunch at a beautiful restaurant on the beach.

While we were there, we discovered that classes that afternoon were canceled, so I wouldn't be (re)visiting his students that day, after all. In Pennsylvania, sometimes we cancel classes because of snow.  In California, my nieces' classes are sometimes cancelled because of fire. Here in Valparaíso (where the congress building is), classes are sometimes cancelled because protests shut down all the streets.  Go figure.

IMA, Universidad Católica, Valparaíso

IMA (Instituto Matemática: notice the abbreviation convention again) was the first place in my Fulbright travels where I gave a talk to graduate students.  What a treat!

Everywhere in Valparaiso is hills.
This view toward the tower of the university also
shows the ocean beyond, as many views do.

It's a historic building,
and beautifully preserved.
Here, we're outside with the tower in the background.

Here, I'm meeting with the grad students.
The rooms are beautiful inside, too.

Those that could stay for a photo afterward did so.

After the talk, my host there took me and my friend Ximena for a tour of the grounds. There's a courtyard with a tree growing through the roof, and with lots of chalkboards where people can work together. 

Is that math heaven, or what?

We got a picture in front of one of the very actively used boards.

And then we got to actually talk about math. Elizabeth (the host) has a grad student working on a thesis on 3D geometry, and we agreed it would be wonderful to get together once more. So we made plans to do so . . .  

. . . except the protests continued to block the streets, so when the day rolled around to meet again, we had to switch to zoom.

A lovely zoom chat about geometry.  
Look at all those smiles!

Apparently, in case you're curious, the protests are something about fishing rights and fishing territories.  Since so much of Chile is coastline, fishing is a pretty big deal around here.

Universidad Católica, Chile

I showed up early at the Universidad Católica, conveniently located across the street from the Universidad de Católica metro station. That kind of synchronicity makes it darned hard to get lost (but just wait, there's more!).  I wandered through a nearby park that had an amazing tree -- it looks like a volcano that erupted with branches instead of lava. 

The groundskeeper told me it's called a "Sego".

I headed from there to the lovely building that was easily identifiable with words and statues.

Beautiful.

And the guard let me in to sit on a patio and do my work (more eduroam)!  I let my host Coni know that I'd arrived, and she told me she'd arrive herself in 10 minutes.

A lovely area to sit and catch up on email
while admiring the weather and the view.

Ten minutes later the back-and-forth started.  Coni: I don't see you; where are you? Me: um, in the corner of the patio, under a statue? Coni: which patio?  Me: the one by this store. Coni: can you send me a photo? Me: The statue is of Pope San Juan II, here's a picture. Coni: Uh-oh, I forgot to tell you we have two campuses, and you're at the other one! 

So I hopped back on the metro, and went to the second campus, which is much larger and much more modern, but I didn't have time to take photos outdoors there, much. Connie was very apologetic, but I thought it was kind of funny, given all the other travel snafus I've had. 

A picture of me and Coni (and a truck) in front of 
a building decorated with Penrose tiles.

The talk was lots of fun; for this event, I met with the math club. Most of the students were very enthusiastic, although one or two clearly needed to catch up on their sleep.

Afterward, we had pizza together and the students pelted me with questions in highly accented English. At first, I tried to switch back into Spanish, but then I realized how much they wanted practice, so I switched to English, too.

And they asked if we could take photos together.
Of course I said yes!

Summary

Despite a couple of snafus (one talk where almost no one knew I was coming, protests canceling classes, showing up on the wrong campus), I did more talks and made more connections in these past two weeks than I thought would be possible. Both my husband and I have loved it here in Chile and have started talking about when and how I might return, and mathematicians at three different places here have urged me to make those plans reality some day.  It's hard to believe it's been just two weeks!

When the friends I'd been staying with here commented sadly, "Last morning in Viña del Mar", I could say, "or . . . we can think of it as the first visit to Viña del Mar!" We'll see if this happens again someday!