Hi!!!! I'm alive and everything. So I have a little bit of catching up to do. I'll start with as far back as I remember which was about 3 weekends ago. I went to my first movie in Chile. Libranos del Mal. It's a movie of the U.S. and was in English with Spanish subtitles. It was really freaky and scary. Not a lot happened the following week....just school which is good. On Friday my class went on a field trip to one of the 3 houses of Pablo Neruda, La Chascona. It's named La Chascona after Pablo Neruda's mistress who had a lot of hair(on her head). HIs house was pretty incredible. Sooooo many things from around the world and just had so many cool, interesting and colorful things. I really liked his wine glasses which are colorful because he believed wine tasted better with more of the senses being activated.
Last weekend was the Viña del Mar/ Valparaíso field trip. The field trip was only for Friday, but a lot of us stayed the entire weekend. I kind of organized for a lot of us to stay at the same hostel. It was called the Street Garden Hostel. Having their entire hostel booked out kept the owners pretty busy, but I think they really appreciated the business because they thanked me for organizing it when I checked out.
On Friday my group first stopped in Valpo where we had a boat tour which was pretty cool. We got to be on top of the double decker boat. The weather was perfect too. We then went to a military museum there. Then we went to Concon where there are huge dunes....like bigger and steeper than pacific city. They were super fun to just run around on. The view from them was absolutely incredible. It was a pretty liberating experience. We then went to Vina and stayed there since we were gonna stay the night. We got to our hostel and kinda got our party on for the rest of the night. A lot of people partied a little too hard... The hostel was really cute. I was in an 8 person room which was filled with people from my group. The beach was pretty close and really cool too. It was too cold to go swimming ,but the sand was nice and the surfer's were fun to watch.
Saturday it kinda rained, and a lot of people were recovering from the night before. So Alysa, Sara and I voyaged on a bus to Valparaiso to check out another Pablo Neruda house called la Sebastiana. It wasn't huge,but was narrow and 5 stories. It was somewhat similar to his other house ,but I think I enjoyed the architecture more. Pretty amazing. I think this one belonged to his second wife. Afterwards we went to el Museo del cielo abierto. It was a street with a bunch of incredible graffiti and artsy shinanigans. It was funny because at La sebastiana, we ran into a guy that I guess people met when they went skiing on the Andes....wasn't the last time to run into him either haha. We also accumulated another gringo named John who was from Georgia(the state). Museo del cielo abierto was incredible. I'll have some photos of it put up. I felt like I was in wonderland. It was just so cool how colorful of a place it was. I think when' I return to the states I'll be obligated to become a graffiti artist and paint amazing things on buildings. After that we found a cafe to have lunch at and then headed back to Vina del Mar.
Sunday was checkout day so some of us headed to the beach to relax it up. It was a lot of fun to watch the stray dogs play on the beach....because they love it as much as any dog does. They run at the waves and just run around and seem pretty happy there. Matt was encouraged to dig a really big hole, so he was doing that and got one of the dogs to help him out. At one point there was a vender on the beach who was walking around. A mass of the dogs ran to him and began barking and growling. So that was scary. You could tell that they didn't like him. He left and came back with a pole or something to hit them with. That made me really sad and was scary, but luckily another man confronted him and talked him out of harming the dogs. Really didn't want to see that happen. For leaving Vina, we had a plan to meet everyone at this one place at two to go find the bus station together as a group. I was with Forrest and Matt and No one met up with us. We were even 10 minutes late. So that got kinda messy cuz no one really knew where the station was and it was kind of far, and we had a late start from waiting for everyone who didn't show. As we were practically running to the bus stop( cuz we were late) we were calling other people in our group to give them directions. We got there 10 minutes before the bus was about to leave. Totally didn't think everyone else was going to make it in time...unless they had been running, I guess that had been running so they made it. It was awesome. SO, in the end, everything turned out okay.
So, Independence week! I probably didn't have a super typical Independence week...,but I managed to enjoy it very much. The people at my college had the whole week off. I had 2 days off which was pretty good. I guess it was kinda like my Thanksgiving break. One thing that I respected a lot is that it's pretty much prohibited to make people work on 18, Septiembre and even like the day after. The streets are dead and nothing is really open. I guess some exceptions are a few bars/restaurants. I felt bad for the security people at my apartment. Especially because in the states... it's not a huge surprise when you have to work on a holiday and so many people do have to anyways like at grocery stores, but here...really like nothing is open. Some small businesses are open I think just by the owners ,but that's all I really saw. There are festivals that go on all week called fondas. I went to my first one yesterday. I also went to a military parade. I couldn't see a lot, but it was fun to just watch all the crash landings of kites...because nearly every kid was flying a kite. The trees were full of kites. There were a lot of venders..but it was nearly impossible to move around in that area. A lot of families were there , BBQing and was just a cool atmosphere(not the bbqing). The next day I went to a concert with some friends..I'm sure the music was good...but I was too far in the back because I was too drunk to really care about the music. It was fun. Practiced the merengue and salsa a little bit. Then.. yesterday I went to a fonda at Parque Ines de suarez. I mostly went there because there were 3 chilean bands that would be playing and I reallllly wanted to see Chico Trujillo. Even though you aren't here in Chile...I totally recommend these artists. First was the band Inti-Illimani, 2nd was Manuel Garcia and lastly was Chico Trujillo.. I kinda was standing for 5 hours because I wanted to keep my spot. It was so perfect. After each band I would move up a bit..or get pushed up but pretty willingly. By the time Chico Trujillo was playing I was pretty much in the front. All of the music was so amazing. Definitely the best concert I've been to. It was at a stage outside too. I had my first experience with mosh pitting. Which I didn't really choose. It was pretty fun actually. Just wanted to make sure to stay on my toes and not fall down to my death. It was really powerful and I didn't fall down. Lots of good energy. It was kinda like jumping and moving without moving yourself but being moved by people. Today I'm probably going to go to a market or something.
I've been sick ish this week, but it never got too bad.
People have been very nice to me here. I once dropped my metro card without knowing and someone ran to give it back to me. Or when I was with Alyssa and Sara in Vina, someone stopped to ask us where we were trying to get to or if we needed help. Then yesterday after the concert someone tapped my shoulder to give me a cue of the direction of the exit and the day before at a metro station a security officer asked if I needed help or anything because I was just kinda waiting for some people.
I love seeing how important this celebration is to Chile and the people here. It's just special.
Other than that, I'm going to Machu Pichu in later October/early November. I love you all and I miss you. I hope you're all well and muchos besitos. I hope to talk to you all soon. Shoot me an email about how you're doing if you feel like it:)
Last weekend was the Viña del Mar/ Valparaíso field trip. The field trip was only for Friday, but a lot of us stayed the entire weekend. I kind of organized for a lot of us to stay at the same hostel. It was called the Street Garden Hostel. Having their entire hostel booked out kept the owners pretty busy, but I think they really appreciated the business because they thanked me for organizing it when I checked out.
On Friday my group first stopped in Valpo where we had a boat tour which was pretty cool. We got to be on top of the double decker boat. The weather was perfect too. We then went to a military museum there. Then we went to Concon where there are huge dunes....like bigger and steeper than pacific city. They were super fun to just run around on. The view from them was absolutely incredible. It was a pretty liberating experience. We then went to Vina and stayed there since we were gonna stay the night. We got to our hostel and kinda got our party on for the rest of the night. A lot of people partied a little too hard... The hostel was really cute. I was in an 8 person room which was filled with people from my group. The beach was pretty close and really cool too. It was too cold to go swimming ,but the sand was nice and the surfer's were fun to watch.
Saturday it kinda rained, and a lot of people were recovering from the night before. So Alysa, Sara and I voyaged on a bus to Valparaiso to check out another Pablo Neruda house called la Sebastiana. It wasn't huge,but was narrow and 5 stories. It was somewhat similar to his other house ,but I think I enjoyed the architecture more. Pretty amazing. I think this one belonged to his second wife. Afterwards we went to el Museo del cielo abierto. It was a street with a bunch of incredible graffiti and artsy shinanigans. It was funny because at La sebastiana, we ran into a guy that I guess people met when they went skiing on the Andes....wasn't the last time to run into him either haha. We also accumulated another gringo named John who was from Georgia(the state). Museo del cielo abierto was incredible. I'll have some photos of it put up. I felt like I was in wonderland. It was just so cool how colorful of a place it was. I think when' I return to the states I'll be obligated to become a graffiti artist and paint amazing things on buildings. After that we found a cafe to have lunch at and then headed back to Vina del Mar.
Sunday was checkout day so some of us headed to the beach to relax it up. It was a lot of fun to watch the stray dogs play on the beach....because they love it as much as any dog does. They run at the waves and just run around and seem pretty happy there. Matt was encouraged to dig a really big hole, so he was doing that and got one of the dogs to help him out. At one point there was a vender on the beach who was walking around. A mass of the dogs ran to him and began barking and growling. So that was scary. You could tell that they didn't like him. He left and came back with a pole or something to hit them with. That made me really sad and was scary, but luckily another man confronted him and talked him out of harming the dogs. Really didn't want to see that happen. For leaving Vina, we had a plan to meet everyone at this one place at two to go find the bus station together as a group. I was with Forrest and Matt and No one met up with us. We were even 10 minutes late. So that got kinda messy cuz no one really knew where the station was and it was kind of far, and we had a late start from waiting for everyone who didn't show. As we were practically running to the bus stop( cuz we were late) we were calling other people in our group to give them directions. We got there 10 minutes before the bus was about to leave. Totally didn't think everyone else was going to make it in time...unless they had been running, I guess that had been running so they made it. It was awesome. SO, in the end, everything turned out okay.
So, Independence week! I probably didn't have a super typical Independence week...,but I managed to enjoy it very much. The people at my college had the whole week off. I had 2 days off which was pretty good. I guess it was kinda like my Thanksgiving break. One thing that I respected a lot is that it's pretty much prohibited to make people work on 18, Septiembre and even like the day after. The streets are dead and nothing is really open. I guess some exceptions are a few bars/restaurants. I felt bad for the security people at my apartment. Especially because in the states... it's not a huge surprise when you have to work on a holiday and so many people do have to anyways like at grocery stores, but here...really like nothing is open. Some small businesses are open I think just by the owners ,but that's all I really saw. There are festivals that go on all week called fondas. I went to my first one yesterday. I also went to a military parade. I couldn't see a lot, but it was fun to just watch all the crash landings of kites...because nearly every kid was flying a kite. The trees were full of kites. There were a lot of venders..but it was nearly impossible to move around in that area. A lot of families were there , BBQing and was just a cool atmosphere(not the bbqing). The next day I went to a concert with some friends..I'm sure the music was good...but I was too far in the back because I was too drunk to really care about the music. It was fun. Practiced the merengue and salsa a little bit. Then.. yesterday I went to a fonda at Parque Ines de suarez. I mostly went there because there were 3 chilean bands that would be playing and I reallllly wanted to see Chico Trujillo. Even though you aren't here in Chile...I totally recommend these artists. First was the band Inti-Illimani, 2nd was Manuel Garcia and lastly was Chico Trujillo.. I kinda was standing for 5 hours because I wanted to keep my spot. It was so perfect. After each band I would move up a bit..or get pushed up but pretty willingly. By the time Chico Trujillo was playing I was pretty much in the front. All of the music was so amazing. Definitely the best concert I've been to. It was at a stage outside too. I had my first experience with mosh pitting. Which I didn't really choose. It was pretty fun actually. Just wanted to make sure to stay on my toes and not fall down to my death. It was really powerful and I didn't fall down. Lots of good energy. It was kinda like jumping and moving without moving yourself but being moved by people. Today I'm probably going to go to a market or something.
I've been sick ish this week, but it never got too bad.
People have been very nice to me here. I once dropped my metro card without knowing and someone ran to give it back to me. Or when I was with Alyssa and Sara in Vina, someone stopped to ask us where we were trying to get to or if we needed help. Then yesterday after the concert someone tapped my shoulder to give me a cue of the direction of the exit and the day before at a metro station a security officer asked if I needed help or anything because I was just kinda waiting for some people.
I love seeing how important this celebration is to Chile and the people here. It's just special.
Other than that, I'm going to Machu Pichu in later October/early November. I love you all and I miss you. I hope you're all well and muchos besitos. I hope to talk to you all soon. Shoot me an email about how you're doing if you feel like it:)