Seconds in Santiago

New and exciting things were happening everyday while I lived and interned in Santiago, and I realized I needed a way to appreciate and remember each moment. I'll always have memories, but memories can get lost: I'll remember that one time I chased after an ambulance on Cerro San Cristobal, but over time I might forget to remember that moment. And with everything that was happening and everything I was learning, I didn't want to forget to remember.

I found my solution without really even thinking in a café after work with one of my new best friends. I think he mentioned something his friend at home does: take a one-second video everyday. I was charmed by the idea that a single second could recall an entire memory.

So about two weeks into my two month study abroad, I compiled all the videos I had already taken and hoped it was enough for about a second a day. Most of the videos I had already were ones that I had recorded on Snapchat and saved before sending to my friends. They were vertical, not industry-standard horizontal, and not great pixel quality, but for me, they were perfect. They were moments I had intended to share with my friends in the most common way I knew how, and those were the kinds of moments I wanted to remind myself to remember. So I kept taking "vertical snapchat videos," as my friends and I jokingly referred to them in specific, and I edited them down to about a second each. I ended up having multiple seconds a day, not just one, but I realized I would need more than just one second a day to convey the aspects new and routine that collided so often in my life abroad.

So here it is: my reminder to remember.