¡Obamanos!

Finally.

Chi Chi Chi Le Le Le Viva Chile!

Last Wednesday night Chile won against Argentina 0-1. This was a fútbol miracle. And the whole of Santiago came out in full force to celebrate.

We took Plaza Italia by storm, trailing flag capes, shaking micros with our cheers, littering the street with confetti, with Escudo, with red, white and blue.

The streets of Santiago covered in confetti

Forget studying for my exam the next day. This was huge. Carmen Gloria and I hopped into the car, waving the flag out the window, and joined the throngs of people blocking the streets in Santiago Center. Sitting in traffic has never been so much fun. Chi chi chi le le le VIVA CHILE! Honking, screaming, cheering, we were all there, together.

Plaza Italia, in the heart of the city

Moments like these make me love this country.

Brazil nuts and raisins

It's been too long. I know.

But considering I've been out of Santiago for four nights of every week for the past four weeks or something absurd like that, I feel okay about the delay.

So jumping backwards, last time I left off I had just returned from Valdivia and Puerto Varas and was spending the week trying to catch up (which has pretty much been the theme of my time in Santiago...) But that studious drive didn't last long. Wednesday night Maggie and I met up with a very international crowd of kids (I think five continents were represented) and headed out to After Office Santiago, a very posh club/party scene held in the castle on top of Cerro Santa Lucia. It's technically meant for the professional crowd (hence After Office) but somehow we managed to get our names on the list. I can't imagine anything more surreal than this whole ordeal. You arrive at the foot of Cerro Santa Lucia (a hill/park in the middle of Santiago) and hop into vans with tinted windows that take you up to the castle gates and drop you off in front of a fountain lit with torches. I felt like I was on an episode of some dating show like the Bachelor. The guards at the front check to make sure your name is in the massive book of guests, then stamp the underside of your wrist with a UV-light stamp (invisible under any other light I suppose so you won't get in trouble the next day in the office). Then you follow a winding prom staircase into the castle, which has been completely transformed into a club. We somehow manage to get VIP bracelets and we are escorted into a supposedly nicer upper level (though it really looks exactly like the non-VIP section). Madonna is blasting (Oh those Chileans and their obsession with the 80s), everyone is dancing and drinking and being oh so posh. The median age is about 35 but no one seems to care much that we're there. By the end of the night Maggie and I are exhausted so we hop our respective buses home and that is that. Certainly an experience...

The next day, I was lucky enough to be visited by my lovely Elena Pinsky, a friend from home who made the trip from Buenos Aires all the way to Santiago just to visit me and get a taste of Chilean culture. She got in before I was done with classes so I met up with her at my home, where she was already deep into conversation with Carmen Gloria about the differences between dulce de leche and manjar, condensed milk candies in Argentina and Chile, respectively (I know I may be denying my Chilean loyalties, but I really do prefer ducle de leche). My family prepared a traditional once for Elena to experience and we just kind of hung out and caught up and discussed with Marta, my host mom. Then I took her down to Bellavista to check out the night life. I guess it was too early for us to really see some action (it was only midnight, after all) so we just holed up in a cute little cafe for a taste of Pisco Sour and Vaina, traditional Chilean drinks.

The next day I showed Elena the best of Santiago (which, for a tourist, can be covered in a day or two--this is not the most beautiful or most tourist-friendly or most exciting the world...Chile has better to offer). We walked through Santiago Centro, hit up the Plaza de Armas, wandered on Cerro de Santa Lucia and ate some delicious fish in the Mercado Central.

Mercado Central

So Chilean...the market, the flag, the Pisco Sour

Then, off to the bus station to meet up with Maggie for our adventures on the coast...

The three of us got into Valparaiso, Santiago's coastside counterpart and the most important port city in Chile, at around 6 PM, just in time for sunset. Valparaiso is the English muffin of South America, full of nooks and crannies. It's completely organic and surprising and in constant movement. It's a bright, colorful city of houses sprouting out of hillsides and murals splashed on crumbling walls. Standing on top of one of the many cerros (hills) and looking out at the horizon is like an I-Spy game--endless details pull you in. The clotheslines blowing in the breeze, the port machinery slowly and deliberately lifting cargo onto ships, the micros crisscrossing the hills. No matter where you are there's something to see. It's a city with character.

Me and my Pinsky standing on one of the cerros of Valpo

Wandering the colorful streets

That night we checked out one of Valpo's mainstays: El Huevo, a huge warehouse club with five levels of different music styles and a salsa lesson on the rooftop patio (how could we miss that?). The next day we hopped a micro to Viña del Mar, the neighboring beachside city that's a bit more posh than Valpo, making it a popular weekend spot for santiguinos. It looks like it was ripped from Florida. Palm-tree-lined streets, pizza shops, beachside boardwalk. It was nice for a day trip and a nap on the beach but I mostly liked it because it gave us a great view of Valpo...which meant it was time to head back. On the way over to Valpo (a 10 minute micro ride) we stopped to eat some chorrillana, a local favorite. I'm sure my friends and family will not believe this but what we ate was this: a HUGE pile of french fries smothered in chunks of steak, onion and fried egg. Oh, it's good. But I mean it's good.

Maggie had to get back to Santiago that night because she was planning on climbing a mountain the next day (oh my crazy friends) so Elena and I were left to our own devices in the hostel. We decided to go out with the other guests. All in all, we were two Irishmen, three Germans, one Frenchman, one Mauritian (That, for those of you who don't know--because I sure as hell didn't--is an island close to Madagascar) and the two gringas me and Elena. Quite a sight and quite the noise we made (English and very very weak Spanish were the only options for common language). As interesting as it was to talk with them about their various experiences traveling and such, it felt kind of strange. It didn't feel like I was really in Chile. It felt like I was in a hostel the whole time, even when we were out on the town.

Maybe this will explain that a bit more: The Irish couple, when we first met them, explained they were doing the "Around the World" trip that is apparently very common in Europe. It's a yearlong traveling extravanganza that offers you 8 plane tickets to anywhere in the world and a year of traveling insurance. They were in their 8th month and told us they "did Asia and Australia and were now doing South America." Maggie's first question: How do you DO Asia? Isn't that a ridiculous claim to make? It's fucking HUGE. (They explained that they'd traveled through most of Southeast Asia for a few months.) At first I was impressed and almost jealous. But with time I began to realize more and more how little I'd like to travel for that long and over such a great distance. The Irish couple kept dropping names of the places they'd been and, while I would definitely like to go to all of the places they mentioned, I'd like to go for more than a few passing days and I'd like to go not just so I can check them off on my list or tell people I've "done" Asia but rather so I can really get to know them. And they had traversed three continents without speaking the languages (except in Australia, obviously), without getting to know the people or the culture or even the food (they had to eat spaghetti ALL of the time because it was cheaper that way), without really experiencing anything.

So, that night out with the hostel crew, I realized that this is what the Irish couple's life must have been like for the past 8 months. Being in a country but not really being there.

Maggie also pointed out that after a while, traveling, which should be a break from a routine, becomes the routine. After so much time, everything would just become a huge blur, jumping from hostel to hostel, plane to plane, bus to bus, spaghetti to spaghetti. And it would be exhausting. I need a home base, a sense of stability, a solid ground. Traveling for a year would be a year of making frustrated phone calls and sending harried emails and living out of a backpack and missing friends, family, English, just missing. There's no home on the road.

I wouldn't like to be 25 and have seen the whole world already. It's like a bag of trailmix. You can either eat all of the best parts at once and end up with only peanuts and gross raisins. Or you can space it out and eat the cashews and the dried cherries slowly and really savor them. I'd much prefer to take my time.

Elena and I spent the whole next day wandering the hills of Valpo, tiring our poor legs with all of the uphill climbing but finding it completely worthwhile when we hit the top of the hills and looked out over the splendor of this organic chaos.

At one point we were trying to get directions to this cafe tucked into one of the cerros, so we asked a girl passing by. She shook her head, she didn't know, she said. "Soy de otro cerro," she explained. What an Urban Studies moment. Everyone, as we say in URBS intellectual speak, has their own map of the city that is defined by their own daily movements through space. This girl, who is a Valpo native, was so entrenched in her own understanding of the city based on her personal experiences that she couldn't even give us directions one hill over (Valpo, by the way, is a pretty small place). I find that I love my major more and more every day...

Elena left Monday morning and it was back to routine...kind of...

Monday and Tuesday night were Rosh Hashanah and despite everything I hadn't done for school or life, I decided to celebrate Santiago-style. I met up with a few Jewish friends from my program and we rode a bus up into Las Condes/Vitacura, two of the most upper-crust comunas in the city, to go to services at the conservative synagogue there. The synagogue is in an unmarked building surrounded by tall fences and security guards with earpieces. The second night I was there I was interrogated by one of the guards and my ID was photocopied, just in case. I clearly look like a serious threat haha. But as a Chilean girl there explained to me, there is anti-Semitism in all parts of the world and you always have to be careful. I guess I didn't realize just how careful that meant. But anyway, services were really lovely (despite the professional chorus and piano--that played even during silent prayers!) and being there just made me so grateful for my own Jewishness. I really felt like even here, thousands of miles from home and in another language, I was really part of a community. That was confirmed for me when I went to Rosh Hashanah dinner with two Chilean families. They invited me into their homes both nights and were incredibly welcoming and interested in me and my story. We ate gefilte fish and drank wine (they had both Kedem and real Chilean wine) and talked about Israel and Jews in Chile and it was fascinating and warm and real. I suppose that Judaism has kind of lost its religious side for me but I definitely never ever want to lose this side of it. The family, the community, the tradition. It's a huge part of who I am and I'm realizing that more and more.

Thursday night Helen and I caught a bus across the border to Mendoza, Argentina. Some hostel mix-ups, some money issues, some way-too-early-in-the-morning-to-understand-Argentina-accents but we finally found a place to throw our stuff and eat some dulce de leche before trekking all over the city for about 8 hours nonstop. It's a gorgeous, tree-lined city with wide tiled sidewalks and some of the most interesting and open public spaces I've ever seen (oh me and my obsession with public space). Plazas on every block, a HUGE park that takes up half of the city, open boulevards, just really quite beautiful. Helen and I stopped along the way for a real coffee, wandered around the massive park and got lost along the way to the zoo (which, once we finally got there, we decided was too expensive--$3--to actually go in). That night we met up with Maggie (who decided to come in a day later) and Andres and Ernesto for our first Argentine parrilla full of steak and Malbec, Mendoza's famous wine. [Interesting side note that will make sense a bit later: Helen and I paid for Andres's and Ernesto's meals but they got there so late that there was no meat left and the hostel refused to return their money.]

In the huge park in Mendoza.

The next day, in honor of Ernesto's 23rd birthday, we jumped off a mountain. I guess fly is the better verb, actually. Ever since scubadiving in Belize in March I've been on an extreme sports kick. I suppose that may actually go back further to when my parents introduced me to white water rafting at the age of 7 and we went on class 3 rapids without a guide having never gone rafting and I almost fell out. But back to the point: So, there we were, in Argentina on the other side of the Andes and we decided it would be great fun to do parapente, or paragliding. So four of us (Helen opted out) jumped in a van for the precarious switchback ride up the mountain (joined by a video crew from a Mendoza TV show about extreme sports--no contracts, no permission, nothing formal or legal, the Argentine way). We got to the top, still not exactly sure what we were about to do, and we see people with backpacks and parachutes flying away. Everything was tandem (thank god because otherwise I would never have made it out alive) and the way it worked was you hook up to this backpack contraption with a seat kinda hanging from it and you wait for the wind to hit just at the right moment and you literally run off the mountainside and get carried away and up in circles and all around over Mendoza and the mountains and the valley below. I was flying. The ride was about 25 minutes and before landing my instructor performed all sorts of crazy tricks and flips and circles and spins and it was incredible. We landed and I was ready to go again. There really is no feeling like floating miles and miles above the ground. Absolutely beyond compare. Up next on my list: bungee jumping.

My feet dangling over Mendoza

Maggie flying below me.

That night, we brought the birthday boy some cake and wine and managed to find a Mexican restaurant in Mendoza just for him. The whole city was still alive when we left the restaurant at around 2 AM.

Early wake-up call for a wine tour, a Mendoza favorite. So here is where the shit went down. We paid $15 each for a wine tour that the hostel said should include two bodegas, one chocolate factory and one olive oil factory. It would've been a really great deal had it not turned out that the chocolate factory (the part I was most looking forward to) was closed and that the company who ran the tour said the hostel lied about the olive oil factory. So here we were, about 10 tourists with just enough wine tastings in our bellies to fire us up, and the tour guide didn't offer us anything but an awkward apology. So, naturally, tensions began flaring up. Andres took charge (thank god because as annoyed as Maggie, Helen and I all were, we didn't even want to attempt to pick a fight in our non-native language) and asked to speak with the company office. The tour guide put him on the cellphone (to get, of course, the same response that nothing could be done) and then somehow the van driver got involved and then it was Andres and the driver shouting at each other in their own Mexican and Argentine accents, respectively, and it was so obvious that there were some underlying racial/national tensions and meanwhile the 3 of us gringas were just sitting there in the middle of them unsure of what to do. Andres started making comments about how all Argentines are like this (he brought up the meat incident at the hostel as another example, which was prob a bad idea since it really didn't relate and just stirred up more tensions) and how they are ineffecient and irresponsible and who knows what else. And the driver was shooting similar comments back at him. The clash of cultures was fascinating for us to overhear but also frustrating for all sides. Anyway, moral of the story is that nothing could be done and we left Mendoza that night without a resolution since everyone kept saying it wasn't their fault. No one claimed any responsibility--something that, as Helen pointed out, would never happen in the States, where everyone is so eager to ensure that the customer is king. Very interesting comparative experience.

At least the wine was good...

Maggie, Helen and I spent the rest of the day at a cafe talking about marriage and sexism and love and everything under the sun. Then the ride back across the border through the Andes and then, all of a sudden, it was already Monday. Time here always seems to take me by surprise.

Cafe in Mendoza

Speaking of which, it is now another Monday morning (a week later than the after-Mendoza-Monday) and I just got back from a weekend in Pucon, in the south of Chile. But before I get there I want to rewind a bit...

Tuesday morning of last week I had a major presentation for my favorite lit class (the Vargas Llosa one I can't stop talking about). The way it works is that you are in a group that has to read an additional novel that the rest of the class doesn't have to read and then you present on it. I began reading the novel about three weeks ahead of time because I knew I was going to need the time to do it (think about adding another 350 pages in Spanish to your already busy workload and absent weekends). We got to the Thursday before our presentation and I met with my group only to find that while I had been compiled all of these thoughts and notes and plans for the presentation, they hadn't even started reading the book yet. Okay, I thought, I'll give them to weekend and we'll meet again on Monday. We divided the Powerpoint up and one of the members threw the slides together and sent them to me Tuesday morning so I could bring it to class. But when I opened my mail on Tuesday morning (two hours before we had to present) I was horrified. The Powerpoint was FILLED with stupid mistakes (two of the group members are also gringos) and was lacking obvious accents and contained completely made up words. I scrambled to try to fix up as much of it as I could but I had to leave my house to make it to class on time so when I got to campus after a nervewracking hourlong commute, I grabbed my group members, dragged them into the computer lab and hastily tried to fix everything. It was a complete mess and everything that could have gone wrong went wrong. We didn't have a computer to show the presentation on, we couldn't figured out how to work the projector, the color scheme didn't show well on the screen, the presentation went too fast. Not to mention THEY WERE MAKING WORDS UP. They hadn't even taken the time to put their text into Word and spell check it at least. I was so embarassed. I take great pride in my schoolwork and I have to say I have never felt worse about myself academically than in that moment. I was so incredibly upset that after class I went up to my professor and struggled to explain to him in my broken Spanish that I was incredibly frustrated because I had put so much work into the project and my group members not only didn't contribute much but their lack of diligence and their carelessness felt like a huge lack of respect for the professor, for the class, for me. I have never felt myself choking up in front of a professor before, but there I was, frustrated with having to explain myself in a language that's not my own, frustrated with the horrible surprise of waking up to a shit presentation, frustrated with everything, and I almost started crying right there in front of him. I composed myself and he said that in his many years as a professor he's learned that that's the trouble with group work and he's learned how to tell who is better prepared than others. Regardless, I was still feeling terrible about it so I sent him an email, to which he responded that I should send him some examples of my personal work with regards to the project. I did so and he wrote back telling me not to worry. It felt really good to have taken such an active approach to dealing with the problem and if nothing else, this whole terrible experience taught me a great deal about group work.

What made that Tuesday even harder on me was that I found out the night before that a friend from high school who had been severely anorexic and bulimic had died in her sleep.
To top that off, my mom told me she was unsure about my parents' trip down here to visit me. What with the economy, my mom's business and my grandfather's faltering health, it is just bad timing for them. Which, while I completely understand, is still pretty hard for me just because I've been missing my family a lot, especially with everything going on with my grandparents, and I really needed a taste of home.
All in all, Tuesday was pretty horrible.

But anyway, Thursday came and it was Yom Kippur and I skipped classes and fasted the whole day long (which was interesting for my very Catholic host family) before boarding a bus with 20 other kids from CIEE to head down south to Pucon, the tourist capital of the lakes region. The program rented out ridiculously nice cabañas for the weekend (think big screen TVs, jacuzzi bathtubs and fireplaces) and we got in the first morning for a short tour of the area (though I find that as beautiful as it is there, it's quite difficult to appreciate it when surrounded by a huge mass of gringos--my Spanish always suffers on CIEE trips, for example) and a dinner out at a local restaurant. After a few glasses of wine (it's part of Chilean culture, I promise) Helen and Maggie forced me onstage to sing for everyone. It got me thinking about how I define myself so much by what I do and how here no one really knows any of that about myself. My friends, up until that point, hadn't ever heard me sing. My host family doesn't know that I act or write or am studious. Everyone's impressions of me here are based on such different understanding of who I am because I don't have that same résumé to hand to them to explain it. Which means that I am a singer and an actress and a writer and a student but I'm also all of these other things that I never really gave myself time or space to be back at Penn just because I was so overwhelmed with everything else. This has been such a great chance for me to explore and define and re-define me.

The next day in the morning we did some major zip-lining through the canopy of the forest (though I'm not going to lie, it was nothing compared to zip-lining through the Costa Rican rainforest), took a Saturday-afternoon nap with the Saturday-afternoon sun and went to bed early to prep for Sunday. When signing up for activities (since Pucon is so touristy the only thing to do is to pay WAY too much money to do excursions like rafting and hiking and so on--it felt like a strangely surreal resort vacation weekend), Helen and I had mentioned to the guide that we wanted to do a longer horseback ride and with better horses since both of us have had pretty significant experience in the past and most horseback riding tours are meant for beginners so they're impossibly slow and boring. The guide shushed me, motioned me closer to him and told me he could set us up with a secret deal where we could ride for several hours on rodeo horses (side note: rodeo here, while it can refer to the rodeo you think of out West, also refers to rounding up cattle and things like that). Of course we took him up on that so on Sunday morning (yesterday to be exact) we set off with another friend to do an epic four-hour ride through the mountains overlooking Lago Villarrica. We trotted and galloped and got off to climb down to a private waterfall that was one of the most spiritual, moving things I've seen yet in Chile. It was four hours of bliss despite my incredibly sore legs (not that the ten-hour bus ride home helped with that at all).

In the end, as much as I love traveling, I am also learning I love some sense of stability and familiarity. As Maggie said, I'd rather save some Brazil nuts for later...

Chilenismos # 11-13

11. What is the point of Decaf Nescafe? It's just cruel.

12. Dear Cleaning Lady, why are you sweeping the steps/cleaning the bathroom/mopping the floor when it is the middle of the day and there are five hundred people trying to get past you?

13. Thank you for giving me this receipt for my 20 cent bathroom trip. I will really need that when the IRS comes.

¡Viva Chile!

In a strange combination of events, this past week of Fiestas Patrias in Chile began with a small fiesta for Mexican Independence Day (which is not, as most Unitedstatesians would believe, Cinco de Mayo). Maggie, Helen and I convened at Andres's apartment on Monday night to make guacamole, homemade salsa (the trick is to boil whole tomatoes before blending it up), quesadillas and Mexican flags from tissue paper. Arts and crafts are always so much more fun with a little Mexican tequila.

But that was just the kickoff to a full week of festivities. Tuesday night Maggie and I hopped a TWELVE-hour bus way down South to the Lakes Region. We arrived in Valdivia, a little lakeside city with a huge German influence, Wednesday morning, threw our stuff in our hostel and set off to explore. We hit up the fish market, kicked it in a park and wandered about on a leafy island across the bridge from Valdivia.

Valdivia from the bridge.

Feria Fluvial, the fish market.

Then, settling down in a cafe we ordered a very typical South of Chile lunch: the best hamburger I've ever eaten in my life (granted, that's pulling from a rather limited selection), apricot kuchen (a German pastry similar to a very yogurt-y cake), and crudo. Crudo, if you don't already know, is the Spanish word for raw. But it took us quite a while to make that connection. We had heard it was very typical of this region, and without knowing more than that, we ordered it. When it came out it looked like a peice of white bread covered with a thin layer of bright red tomato sauce and chopped onions. They provide lemon and a mayo/cilantro spread for you to add to taste. And it was really quite delicious. But that good memory was kind of tempered when we looked it up online at the hostel and discovered that what we thought was tomato sauce was actually thin slices of raw meat. Hence crudo. Oops.

Then a lovely nap in the hostel. Sleeping on a bus is never satisfying so we were pretty exhausted--and it's pretty funny that I still feel this strong need to justify spending my time asleep. I'm slowly learning that it's really okay to nap. That sleeping is not a waste of time. That it's not unproductive. I hope I can remember this when I get back to Penn.

Anyway, afterwards we hopped a colectivo (a cab shared by lots of people) up the road to the Cervecería Kuntsmann, a local German microbrewery. We shared a desgustación (a tasting) and discovered the most amazing beer ever--so amazing because it tastes like honey. Not sure they export it, but if anyone ever finds a Kunstmann Miel, DRINK IT. It was so good we even made the trip the next day just to relive the experience--and to buy a few more for the road. Also, that first night there we shared a sampler of German appetizers. When it came out it was literally a huge bowl of various German sausages, beef and chicken covered with a layer of french fries. Which we ate with our beers. Wait, what? Who am I?

We called it a night, played jenga with a Spaniard at the hostel ("losh lagosh shon prethioshos" he told us) and woke the next morning to begin, at last, our celebration of September 18, Chile's independence day. After taking far too many photos of the sea lions that hang out on the docks of Valdivia, we walked across the bridge to Isla Teja and from there all the way back to the Cervecería for the aforementioned Miels.

Sea lions everywhere! Do they really look like fat sausages with fur? Do they really bark like dogs? Do they really live outside of zoos?

We flagged down a micro and made our way to Niebla, a neighboring city, without knowing anything more than that it was supposed to be beautiful. So many of our adventures in Chile have happened by chance, and this was no exception. We weren't quite sure where to get off so we just followed the other passengers. We suddenly found ourselves in a small fairgrounds of sorts with stalls offering all sorts of empanadas de mariscos and anticuchos and artesanal ice creams and chocolates and chicha (fermented apple cider in the South and fermented grape juice just short of being wine in the North). Red, white and blue everywhere, barbecue smoke, a guitar on the bandstand--it was almost like July 4th Chile style. Maggie and I sampled some of everything (I swear the food in the South is not to be compared. SO good) before leaving the fair and heading towards the beach, which was literally a 2 minute walk away. How did we end up here? That seems to be the theme of my Chilean stories...Anyway, the beach was stunning and filled with people flying flags and sleeping in the sand (which was more like very small pebbles) and climbing the rocks. The South is supposedly a very rainy region but there was not a cloud in the sky. (Meanwhile it was grey in Santiago--so ironically perfect). It was even more amazing because we were literally the only tourists there in Niebla--a real peek into local life without being categorized as the gringas.

The beach in Niebla. In the corner you can see a Chilean flag kite.

Niebla.

We micro-ed back to Valdivia at around 5 PM and headed straight from the bus to the big fonda (huge party/fair) in celebration of the 18th. There were hundreds of people milling about, flying more flags, playing carnival games, wandering through the artesan market, eating endless meat and empanadas and cotton candy, riding ferris wheels, and dancing up a storm. The traditional dance, the cueca, is a huge part of the Fiestas Patrias, but sadly Maggie and I never got the chance to show off what we had learned the week before. But we enjoyed watching it, nonetheless.

We met up with Andres and Ernesto at our hostel. They drove down from Santiago that day and we only overlapped in Valdivia for one night but we had a great time together. Ernesto had purchased charqui on the drive down and I had to try it. Charqui is jerky. But not just any jerky. Horse jerky. Which rounds my list of crazy Chilean foods out to: llama, raw meat and horse.

We brought Andres and Ernesto back to the fonda and took the opportunity to drag them onto the carnival rides. This is an episode in my life that I'm glad I did but I'm not too eager to repeat. We began with the Pirate Ship--the ride that resembles a boat that swings from side to side. Except we did far more than swing side to side. We ended up literally upside down. The metal bars that were supposed to keep us securely in our seats were hardly secure. And the sound of screeching didn't help. After being on the ride for what seemed like an inordinately long amount of time (my stomach got completely accustomed to the upside-down feeling--which it should never be accustomed to), I was ready to get off. Until the "conductor" hopped on the side of the ship, which was still swinging upside down, and hit the wheel below us WITH HIS HAND to stop the ride. Things are done differently here. The next ride--"Tagada"--was no exception. Not sure why it's so popular in Chile but I've definitely seen this ride three times here already. It looks like a big round thing with seats all around the edges. The idea is that you get on, sit on the benches, and hold on for dear life as the Tagada begins to circle and shake up and down and go crazy. Except for everyone wants to be really cool and stand up and prove how they won't fall. Except they invariably fall. And they fall on everyone else. They fall hard. And so limbs (and full humans) are flailing everywhere and people could easily be vaulted over the edge and there's just no safety anything. Afterwards everything hurt. This would never happen in the States. Fun while it lasted and a good story, but I think I'm done with Chilean carnivals for a while.

At the fonda in Valdivia.

The next morning Maggie and I caught another bus to head three hours further South to Puerto Varas, another lakeside city but this one right next to a volcano covered in snow. Possibly some of the most incredible landscapes I've ever seen. We got in at around mid-day, spent a few hours in a German cafe snacking on ajiaco (a traditional beef-egg soup), a massive empanada and a real coffee (finally!), and then wandered in an artesan market (they are EVERYWHERE) to pick out some handmade chocolates and local liquors. We also found time to go to the local casino (!). We played some slots in Spanish and lost between the two of us a total of two luca (CH 2000), which is the equivalent of $4. But it was worth it since we won't be able to do that in the states for another two years. And slots in Spanish are quite amusing. That night, we bought supplies at the supermarket to throw together a makeshift dinner, which we ate over a lazy game of chess (which Maggie had to reteach me but surprisingly I won!) at the hostel.

Volcán Osorno over Lago Llanquihue

We woke ourselves up at 5:45 AM to watch the sun rise over Volcán Osorno over Lake Llanquihue. We walked out to a bench sitting next to the lake and hugged our mugs of hot chocolate and tea while the mist paled and the outlines of the boats anchored in the distance became just visible.

Back at the hostel, still before anyone else had woken up, I ate the leftover tortellini from the night before and Maggie scrambled some eggs before we crawled back into bed for a few hours. Then breakfast number two with the other guests at the hostel (who happened to be mostly French for some odd reason--don't know how we picked this one but it was definitely interesting trying to make breakfast conversation). Then off to go horseback riding through the farmland overlooking the volcano and the lake. Maggie had never been before so we took it slow (which was so hard for me since I had to restrain myself from galloping through the cattle who slowly rose to their feet as we rode past as if greeting us). The views were spectacular and the day was beautiful so it was a perfect end to a fantastic trip.

Horseback riding outside of Puerto Varas. You can't see it here but we rode up into the mountains to see some ridiculously gorgeous views of the volcano and the lake.

Or it would have been a perfect end had our trip not actually ended with FOURTEEN hours on a bus. We had to make our way back to Valdivia from Puerto Varas and then all the way up to Santiago. We left at 3 PM on Saturday and didn't get home until 8 AM on Sunday. Quite the trip.

I have to say that if I were ever to return to Chile, I'd head South. The food, the views, the architecture, the animals--all of it was just so very rico.

But in the meantime, happy birthday Chile!

Guerra de Bolas de Nieve

Short update before I run off down south for Fiestas Patrias until Sunday:

Saturday I went out to Cajon de Maipo, a collection of mountainside Andes towns about two hours south of Santiago. We didn't have plans, we just hopped on a bus and off we went in hopes of finding something to occupy ourselves for the day. But we found so much more than that. On the bus down there, a Chilean sitting in front of us overheard our confused conversation about where to go and offered to help us out. We hopped off that one bus, followed him onto another and then when a third one wasn't coming to cart us off higher into the mountains to Baños Morales--a scenic hiking spot close to El Morado, a national park with a glacier in the mountains--we decided to begin walking our way up from the town. Luckily about 20 minutes in, our new Chilean friend flagged down a passing pickup and we hitched a ride up into the Andes in the bed of the truck. Crazy adventures abound when you're young and traveling.

We got there, did some hiking and when our friend heard that I hadn't been up to the snow in the Andes yet, he swept us out to the peaks of the Andes, the El Morado glacier just in view, and I had my first taste of Chilean snow. Scrambling up the shifty rocks, I passed a group of Chileans potoganning (literally poto-gan, as in tobogan but on your butt or poto) down the snow. On my way back down, a seven-year-old Chilean boy caught me off gaurd when he pounded me in the back with a massive snowball. And there began a quite epic snowball fight in the Andes.

And even though I had snow in my pants at the end of the day, it was well worth it.

9/11

We stole September 11th. Even in Chile, where universities shut down, people stay indoors all day long, powerlines are cut, tear gas is thrown, protests abound, even here where September 11th is marked as the day of the coup, the day Pinochet took power, even here, our September 11th is still the front page news.

My host brother--who calls today a celebration rather than a memorial, who wore a huge Chilean flag on his back to classes to show that he does not support the "comunistas" that were in power during Allende, who is planning a barbecue tonight to toast to Pinochet--told me last night that the only issue he has with Pinochet is that they didn't kill everyone that they should have.

Those deaths, he said, were necessary.

What death is ever necessary?

Chilenismos # 6-10

6. Why are there five girls brushing their teeth in every public bathroom in the middle of the day?

7. Not just for tourists anymore: Fanny packs are apparently back in style.

8. Leaving leftovers out on the counter and putting them in the fridge two days later means they are still edible.

9. Excuse me sir, you have ONE dreadlock.

10. Salad = celery. beets. tomatoes. frozen peas. shredded carrots. all covered in salt. each vegetable cannot touch any other. hence the five bowls of separate "salads" on the table.

Empanadas y Llamas

Last Wednesday I spent FIVE hours on the bus and on the metro. Not joking. It was all just so I could come home from campus for the homemade empanadas we were going to have for lunch. FIVE hours. SO WORTH IT.

There must have been about a hundred empanadas. This is the raw batch.

And this is the finished product. Which didn't last long. Because I ate them all.

Then, after stuffing myself on empanadas, I made sushi for the third time (I am now a master sushi chef--not exactly a skill I had anticipated picking up in Chile) at Andres's and Ernesto's apartment and we played Mexican card games and drank cheap wine and took the bus home at 2 AM (which is just as sketchy as it sounds but I have no choice).

I spent Thursday reading and reading and reading. Just for my one Vargas Llosa class I've already read about 900 pages. In Spanish. and it's not even easy Spanish. It's possibly the most difficult literature in Spanish that I've ever tried to read. Vargas Llosa loves being complicated. To give you an idea, his biggest influences are Sartre, Flaubert and Faulker. So imagine a novel written half in narration, half in interior monologue but never announcing which is which. And then you have about eight time periods going on all at once. And in one coversation, what you're actually reading is three conversations that all overlap and invade each other so you have one person in one time period and space seemingly responding to another but not really because the second person is actually having a completely separate conversation in a separate time and space with a third person. But there's nothing marking that change. So it's just a big ol' confusing mess. And everything is very ambiguous on top of that. And characters change names. And there's about a million of them. And it's all in Spanish. So I've been doing a lot of reading. I'm on to my third novel--100 pages in, 630 to go.

Friday afternoon I packed my backpack and headed to the airport to catch a flight up to San Pedro de Atacama, a desert area in the north. CIEE took us for an official program weekend. We arrived Friday night, went out for a stroll around town (which is so touristy it reminded me of Antigua, Guatemala) and split off for dinner. I got quinoa (mom, you will be excited about that. everyone else will probably have no idea what that is) and coca tea. that's right. coca. Oh Evo, you had it right all along haha. But really, it doesn't do much and it tastes a lot like spinach.

The next day we headed off to see the salt fields, stop for a million photo ops with flamingos and llamas, buy some alpaca gloves/hats/socks and climb a sand dune to watch the sunset over the Andes.

Helen and the salt fields. The flamingos live off of shellfish that live in the briny pools.

The two of us in the desert.

Valle de la Luna. So named because it looks like the surface of the moon. NASA even tests here.

Sunset on the dune.

Early to bed because we had to get up at 4 AM the next morning to make it up to see natural geysers at 4300 m above sea level. FREEZING. 14 degrees C below zero. but at around 7, the sun finally peeked over the mountains, illuminating the mist rising from the ground and warming our nearly frostbitten toes. Then we peeled off our newly-purchased llama gloves/hats/socks and jumped into a natural hot spring in the mountains. Fully refreshed, we bussed down the bumpy desert road, past the vicuñas grazing on dry grass, and made our way to a tiny village with a llama farm and anticuchos (the Chilean version of kebobs). So while traipsing through the llamas, I ate one of their friends. Llama, let me tell you, is delicious.

Me and a geyser. All bundled up in my new llama hat and gloves. It was so misty before the sun came up that you could barely see ten feet in front of you.

The sun hitting the geysers was spectacular. Especially for my poor toes.



The tiny llama farm in the desert.



Eating llama while wearing llama and seeing llama.



LLAMA!

A full day of traveling home and then back to the real world. Or sort of. Since I am still in Chile.

Yesterday I began my salsa class and the best compliment I received was that afterwards a kid from El Salvador came up to me, introduced himself and asked "Where are you from in Latin America?"

Santiago. Obvio, po.

Chilenismos #1-5

1. Take a block of cream cheese (queso filadelfia) out of the package. put a thin layer of sesame seeds on top. pour some soy sauce over it. serve with crackers.

2. Not only is white bread "healthier" than wheat, but if you take the center part out, it's suddenly "less fattening."

3. If you are on a diet, don't eat cheese, wine, bread or chocolate. but dousing your low-fat cracker in butter, jam and manjar is perfectly okay.

4. Taco≠Mexican food. Taco=traffic jam.

5. Eggs can be found on the supermarket shelves next to flour and sugar. For some reason, as soon as they make their way into the house, eggs must be refrigerated. But only once in the house.

Catching up...

Let's see...where I left off...Two weekends ago my life was full of carretear-ing (Spanglish is my new favorite language in the world). Thursday (we're talking August 7th now) I went out to a Bienvenidos party for the students of La Catolica. I had met up with Helen, a friend from CIEE, and after getting pleasantly stuck with her host parents for a late-night snack of homegrown oranges and pepinos (a Chilean fruit that oddly has the Spanish name for cucumber), we left her house at around 2:30 AM. Wandering the streets of Santiago in search of one of the campuses that was supposedly close-by seemed like a sort of bad idea, but we decided that too late and ended up walking in what we hoped was the right direction. Finally realizing we needed assistance we flagged down a taxista, who assured us he could take us there for a bargain. We hopped it, drove for about two seconds and stopped exactly one block away from where he had picked us up. It was a waste of 500 pesos but a good learning experience haha.

So anyway, Helen and I arrived at the gate to the campus and after standing around awkwardly since it seemed no one was there (maybe the party was already over? we thought), we decided to go for it and introduce ourselves to two Chilean girls standing next to the entrance. I find that in general Chileans are not the most outgoing and extroverted people, especially with foreigners, but if I take the initiative, they are quite friendly and helpful. So while I'm still getting used to the lack of "Buenas tardes" on the street and the poker face public culture, I am learning that if I take the first step, I can meet some pretty amazing people. It's just a matter of putting myself out there. Back to the point: Helen and I made friends with these two Chileans and they assured us that the party was far from over. In fact, the reason there were so few people there was that it was too early. Keep in mind this is already 2:30 AM. Culture shock=learning to live with lack of sleep.

Finally heading in to the party, which was held on the La Catolica campus that used to be a convent, we danced the night away, drinking three piscolas each and stumbling into bed at 5:30 dizzy and exhausted and pleased. Too bad that feeling didn't cure my hangover the next morning. And by morning I mean the next entire day. Instead of doing something cultural and productive I spent Friday recovering...until Friday night.

Maggie and I met up with a few friends (Chileans, CIEE, and other exchangers) at the La Catolica Choripanada (yes, that makes two officially-university-sponsored, very alcoholic parties in one weekend) on another campus. Still feeling the after-effects of the night before I cut back on my consumption (good move) but had just as much fun as the night before. After getting gently kicked off campus when the Choripanada came to an end, a huge group of us hopped onto the metro, belting songs in Spanish and English and Spanglish and Chilean and Mexican and anything else we could think of. We wound up in a two-story apartment with abalcony overlooking the entire city before Maggie and I met up with two Chilean friends we had met earlier. We somehow ended up at McDonald's (I'm still unclear how I always end up at American fast food restaurants in other countries when I avoid them like the plague at home) and then back at our friend's house for a short guitar session. Utterly exhausted I collapsedback at Maggie's house (which would make it the second weekend in a row where I managed to avoid sleeping at my own house--such a huge pain in the ass to get all the way out to where I live, especially at 5 AM and tipsy).

This long intro to this catch-up session is not to say that I have spent the past two weekspartying. I actually managed to squeeze some work in there somewhere, writing my seven-page Spanish paper on the importance of public space in post-dictatorship democracy in Chile (oh URBS you are my life), reading La ciudad y los perros by Vargas Llosa (fantastic read if anyone is interested) and FINALLY finalizing my schedule. Saturday was a working day, for example. (my host sister was thoroughly surprised to find me in my pajamas by 8 PM--"aren't you going out?" "No, not tonight." "What?"). But before I move on...

Sammie and Maggie check out some greda. Empanadas and pastel de choclo (a traditional corn-topped meat stew) in a window in Pomaire.

Sunday I dragged myself out of bed (much better rested after actively avoiding any more university-provided pisco) and met up with Maggie, Sammie Lammie and Matias, a Chileanfriend. We hopped a bus out to Pomaire, an artisan village an hour and a half from Santiago. We spent a few hours roaming around, checking out the clayware (la greda) and eating traditional foods like a one-kilo empanada. It was a nice break from Santiago and an even nicer break from the pollution. I really never realize how much I'm affected by the contamination in Santiago until I realize I can breathe better once I get beyond city limits.spent the week (Monday to Thursday is my week since I deliberately avoided Friday classes) figuring out my life. And I think I'm actually one step closer to that--surprisingly. But I did have a few ugh moments, especially with transportation, the bane of my Chilean existence--and also a potential research/job interest. Transantiago (the name is where the cleverness of the system ends) was created a year ago to supposedly improve upon the bus/metro situation in Santiago.The government took out the bus routes that used to crisscross the city and replaced them with routes that are much shorter, much less convenient and much less user-friendly in general. Now, for those who live in the suburbs of Santiago (the poorer sectors--Latin American cities have a reverse socioeconomic geographic breakdown so the ghettos are in the periphery of the city rather than in the center as in American cities), just getting to work on time requires getting up at 4 AM and not getting home until 11 PM. The idea was to encourage people to use public transportation by making it more local or something, but instead it's actually encouraged even more car usage, contributing even further to traffic congestion and to the terrible air pollution that drowns Santiago in a constant smog. Now that I have direct personal experience with a public service system that is so utterly idiotic (spending an hour each way to and from campus and having to make a million connections), I'm really interested in the administration and planning behind things like this. Who the hell thought that Transantiago was a good idea? Because I would personally like to kill them. Or at least force them to take their own damn public transportation everywhere (since I'm sure they drive, as do all upper-class Chileans) just to show them how hellish it is.

Anyway, so my schedule is looking something like this:

1. Mario Vargas Llosa: a lit class about the Peruvian author. It's seven full-length novels (roughly 400 pages each) all in Spanish (I know that should be obvious by now since I'm directly enrolled in the schools here and all, but I still can't help commenting about it again just because I still have moments of "What?! Everything is in Spanish?!"). It's actually a ton of work by Chilean standards, and as much as I was planning on taking it really easy this semester since I really believe that I didn't come to Chile for the classes, I really think this class is worth it. The professor is one of the most charming and hilarious teachers I think I've ever had and I love love love Vargas Llosa (think Peruvian Gabriel Garcia Marquez mixed with a more modern-day Faulker).

2. Urban Geography. Very similar to most of my URBS-y classes at Penn but from a LatinAmerican perspective. And it's based more on salidos a terrenos (literally "terrain trips") and group projects so I should get a chance to explore Santiago from a more academic perspective while at the same time getting to know some Chileans as well. Maggie (who is also in the class) and I made friends with a Mexican architecture student named Andres on the first day when no one else showed up to the class and we were told about 30 minutes later that the prof had sent out an email about not coming though since we were all exchange students none of us had been notified. Since then we've hung out with him a ton--more about that later.

3. History of America Latina in the 20th Century. The professor came very very highly recommended and he definitely didn't disappoint on the first day. He is known for being somewhat of a Marxist, which is definitely something to note on a very conservative, very Catholic campus like La Catolica and in a very neoliberal country like Chile. I'll keep you updated on what he says since it should definitely make for an interesting perspective...

4. Seminar on Waste Management and Public Health in Santiago: Since the other three classes are all at La Catolica, I knew I wanted at least one class at La Chile. But since La Chile started a week after La Catolica and the university itself is generally a lot more disorganized and still recovering from a month-long student strike last semester, I was a little nervous about finding a class that I not only really liked but that also managed to meet at consistent times each week (not to mention actually existed--so many classes are listed that are never really held!) Luckily I tagged along with Maggie to this seminar last week and I'm really intrigued. It's oddly specific, but I like that. Like Urban Geo, it's going to include a ton of salidos a terreno, but unlike Urban Geo, we spent the entire first day talking about experiencing a city through smell. And trash. Strange but I'm up for it.

I would really love to fit in a salsa class somewhere in there and maybe some volunteer work (perhaps with an orphanage to get a different perspective for future Ties to the World work?), but I'm just now finalizing everything and I'm really concerned about too much stability interfering with my traveling plans. And, I know this will surprise a lot of you, but I'm making a very concerted effort to avoid over-booking myself. And to allow room for spontaneity. What? Who is this?!? I guess this is my one opportunity to really just chill and experience the city and take time for myself and try a different kind of college life. I just hope I can commit to it...

Thursday was the beginning of a great weekend. In between classes I went to the Mercado Central, a fish market in the heart of Santiago, with a Canadian friend I met at a party (I'm learning that follow-up is key to creating friendships). I think markets are the most fascinating urban spaces in the world. I could spend hours just wandering through the aisles, marveling at the strange seafoods, breathing in the fishy smell. Such an interesting cross-section of people, such a cosmopolitan canopy.

That night, after a few hours of attempting to finish up my homework before the weekend (attempting and realistically failing), I packed my backpack and met up with Maggie, Helen and Felipe. We took an eight-hour night bus up to La Serena, a beach city in Northern Chile, arriving at 5 AM and passing out for a few extra hours in our hostel. We cooked our breakfast of eggs, palta (avocado), toast and Nescafe and lingered in the hostel kitchen before Felipe went off to meet up with some family members that lived in the area and us three girls headed off to wander around. We had no formal plans so we ended up making our way through Mercado La Recova, famous for dried papaya (which, I must admit, is delicious, even though I think papaya tastes like feet, and I HATE feet).

The orange packages on the left are all local papaya products. That do not taste like feet.
Maggie is the smiley face on the right.

Then down to the beach, which is a long stretch of shell-specked sand in the shadows of the Andes. There were horses galloping down the coast and the sun was shining and we were full of empanada and palta and dried papaya and secret stories shared only between new friends.

Walking down the beach we happened upon this little oasis of sorts--the tips of the palm trees just barely visible from the water's edge, the town below just slipping into view.

While there we happened upon Laetitia, a French woman who was also staying in our hostel. For the past four months she has been traveling straight down from Canada to Chile, exploring the entire Western Hemisphere along the way. So impressive. What I wouldn't give to have her life. And maybe one day I will...

For dinner we met up with Andres (from Urban Geo--he also happened to be traveling up to La Serena this weekend) and Ernesto, Andres' friend from Guadalajara, and several people also passing through the area. We were quite an international crowd--US, Mexico, Australia, France, Switzerland, Germany--and it was so interesting hearing all of our different accents as we spoke in Spanish, the only language common to all of us. We went one town over into Coquimbo, had dinner and pisco (surprise) and then went to a club to dance ourselves silly (another surprise there....I seem to be finding a pattern haha).

The next day it was pouring rain (which I had expected since I checked the weather report right before coming--expected but preferred to ignore, hoping the weather report was just completely wrong. Which is hard to do with an 80% chance of precipitation). But while that sidetracked our original plans to check out a famous observatory and take a tour of a national penguin park, it didn't ruin our fun. We made another breakfast for ourselves and then bought supplies to make lunch at the beachside apartment of Sarah, a girl living in Santiago who happens to be really close with Grant, the boy I stayed with while in Honduras. Again with the connections being key. So anyway, the three of us girls went over to cook with Sarah and her roommate Claudia and we spent the rainy day chatting until the sun was setting and the rain had turned to drizzle and the sky was stained orange. We wandered the beach until settling down for a bottle of wine at a restaurant on the sand. The five of us then met up with Andres and friends at another bar for dinner and wine-induced charades. So the whole day was spent sitting, eating and talking. All in all, a pretty good deal, I would say.

Sunday, despite the rain, we chartered a tour to Valle de Elqui, a nearby wine-making region famous for pisco and for being the birthplace of Gabriela Mistral, the Nobel-Prize-winning Chilean poet. We made stops to buy homemade papaya jam, homemade manjar (YES!), homemade pisco (how could I say no?), homemade raisins (so much better). We had a four-course meal, took a tour of an artisanal pisco vineyard, visited Gabriela Mistral's grave. But the best part about the whole day was realizing how incredible Maggie and Helen are and how lucky I am to have found them here to share this experience with me. I love that moment of realizing when you just connect. We giggled and argued about Israel and the Middle East and recounted the entire plot of Cloverfield and shared a few teary moments in the back of the van all the way back to La Serena.

The three of us girls in front of a water reservoir in Valle de Elqui.

Helen and I pose in front of the pisco vineyards that dot the mountainsides in Valle de Elqui.

Back at the hostel, in the few hours remaining before our eight-hour return bus trip, we sat down to a makeshift dinner and a long discussion about politics over tea and cookies. With Laetitia (French), me and Maggie (US) and Helen (Germany) it made for some really fascinating arguments about the US electoral system, about faith-based politics, about Mexican-US relations, about World War II. There's really something about hostels and traveling and meeting new people that just breeds the most intellectual conversations I've ever had. I always leave wanting to learn more and know more and experience more. It's like the college experience that I had romanticized and dreamt about but never really quite experienced while at Penn itself. I'm realizing more and more how much of my education has been outside of the classroom (and not just in a college-essay-please-accept-me-because-I-am-well-rounded way).

So despite barely being able to function in class this morning since I was running on no sleep and despite still not having done any of my homework, this weekend was absurdly incredible. My favorite thus far. Easy.

So maybe I could really love Chile after all...

Up and Down

I took these photos last week on Wednesday during our final day of orientation classes with CIEE. We had an hour or so to wander around the Plaza de Armas, a local plaza surrounded by government buildings in the center of Santiago, for an assignment. It was quite great getting to just observe and soak everything in.

Anyway, after a week of relative hell due to errands and registration and so on, and after still not picking out classes until two or three more days of leafing through endless catalogs and schedules and evaluations, I finally arrived at this weekend and I was about dead. We had orientations for La Chile and La Catolica and then came Friday, which was the absolute worst. It was raining, I messed up the train schedule, arriving late to register my visa and I ended up waiting around for about four hours in this horrible government building that far too closely resembles the DMV.

In my time there, I decided that if hell is a real place this is what it would be like: Sitting in an overcrowded DMV, with an incredibly high number, no food, no bathroom, no space. Right as it's about to hit your number, the counter starts repeating over and over and over.

So that gives you a good picture of where my mind was on Friday. There was definitely a moment, right after I realized I'd messed up the trains, where I was waiting for the stupid metro to come and I was looking at a sign and all I wanted was for it to be in English. Anyway, I finally got home and I couldn't drag myself to leave the house again so I decided to watch Gossip Girl. I hate to admit it, but I really needed some reminder of home. Terrible, but it was actually really comforting in a strange way. Maggie came over and we attempted to watch a Chilean movie but failed miserably since we were both so exhausted.

I took this photo the next morning from my street corner. With the smog cleared from the horizon because of the rain the day before, we set out to explore Cerro Santo Lucia, a hill with winding pathways and gorgeous views of the city and the Andes right in the heart of Santiago. We walk past it every day but we just hadn't ever gotten the chance to go up it. On our way to climb the Cerro, we stopped into a random little cafe on the street. The owner saw us looking at the menu and beckoned us inside where he was sitting with Felipe, a friend of his who also happens to be an American exchange student. We chatted with them for a while and then Felipe decided spur of the moment to join us on our expedition.

These are just a few views from the top of the Cerro.

It turns out Felipe's family is Chilean so he has tons of friends here already, including the originally Italian cafe owner. Not only did he invite us to his aunt's apartment in Viña del Mar, a seaside mountain town right next to Valparaiso, but Felipe also invited us to the secret basement part of the cafe where tons of Italians and Brasilians and Chileans and people from all over hang out if they're friends with the owners. Suddenly we were invited to this very exclusive little bohemia. Having just stumbled into this quaint Italian cafe, met this interesting Chilean-American and hiked up this gorgeous, sun-soaked hill overlooking the city, it was a very study abroad moment. Guatemala taught me a lot about spontaneity and this was just another reminder...

So things were looking up...I ran home for a bit to have lunch with the family before rejoining Maggie at her house for her host sister's birthday party. We made sushi again (I'm getting to be quite the expert!) and drank pisco sours and danced salsa and chatted the night away with some of the people we'd already met (including one Chilean that Maggie and I had gone out with on Thursday night) and tons of new people and ended up staying up until 5 AM. It was great fun and I ate too much and talked until I couldn't remember if I was speaking in English or Spanish.

The only downside (which is arguably an upside) is that we had to get up 3 hours later to go to Valparaiso, a seaside city west of Santiago, with Maggie's host family. We went to meet the widow of Santos Chavez, a famous Chilean artist, to see some of his works in person. It ended up being a private meeting in her home, the five of us and the widow, and she showed us TONS of his works up close and personal. It was incredible, even if I was running on next to no sleep. If anyone is interested in Chilean art, you must check out Santos Chavez.

Then lunch at a beachside restaurant before driving back to Santiago. Then, with only ten minutes to spare, we rushed off to an Inti Illimani and Napale, two AMAZING Chilean folk bands. No joke I think it was one of the best concerts I've ever been to in my life. Ever. The level of talent was absurd. Every single person not only sang but also played at least three or four instruments, sometimes more than one at once. GREAT music.

But despite the packed weekend, I was still having some adjustment issues. So thank god for today. It was my first day of classes, and while I skipped my first one to sleep in (which I really needed for my own sanity), I went to the La Catolica campus at around 11 to catch my second class, Geodemography. The prof didnt show, which isnt that rare here, but it was for the better since Maggie and I ended up meeting two students, one from Mexico and one from Italy, who are studying similar things and we hung with them and had coffee and made quite an international group when a few of our Chilean friends joined in and some of their Finnish and British and German friends joined in. We went with them to the next class, Urban Development, and then parted ways until Wednesday. It was another study abroad moment. And it made me feel so so so much better.

Maggie and I had a bit of time to kill so we explored the campus, which is huge and stunning and surrounded by the snowy peaks of the Andes. We camped out on a bench hanging over a pond and took in some sun before checking out our last class and heading home.

Tomorrow is another full day of window-shopping (I don't have to finalize anything until next week or so)...

I hope (I know) there are more study abroad moments in store for me.