Well... I kind of suck at keeping up with this blogging business once I start to get busy, I apologize. To fill in the last week or two weeks or whatever of my life I don´t really even know where to start. It has been crazy and so much fun. I love this country.
To start... I moved into my new apartment! I don´t know if I have mentioned that yet but I moved in about two weeks ago now and love it. Its on the fourth floor of a nice building in the middle of the city (Barrio Santiago Centro), close to everything I could possibly need like supermarkets and such plus a huge gorgeous park called Parque O´Higgins that has huge fields, a lagoon, and a theme park called Fantasilandia. I have my own room and we share a really cool balcony and I get to cook for myself (veggies!). And my roommates are tight. I haven´t got to spend too much time with them yet because we have all been pretty busy but I am living with a French girl named Fanny and a Chilean girl named Miriam, both students. Fanny studies econ at the same university I go to and Miriam is studying social work. They´re super nice. And all of this comes for less than half of the rent I would have to pay for a Westwood apartment at UCLA (muahaha).
I haven´t really been home too much though because I have been all over the place. Last weekend I took a trip with some friends to a place called La Serena, about 6-7 hours north of Santiago. We left on Thursday night after our evening class that we all have to take with our program on a night bus. `We` on this trip was myself, Matt (my now ex-neighbor from UCSD), Molly (UCSB), Meg (UCSB), Nadine (UCD), Danny (UC i forget), Annette (UCB), Casey (UCSC), and some Molly/Nadines Spanish roommate Juan plus his chica and friend and the friend`s chica (all Spanish as well). Plus Maggie (UCLA) and some other people joined us on the second night. It was a bit large of a crowd and kind of un-weildy at times but worked out in the end... Upon arriving at around 6am we had a little time to nap (although we did sleep on the bus) and got ready for our Isla de Damas tour that came to pick us up at 8. The tour took as about another hour or two hours away to a little fishing town where we loaded up into smallish wooden boats and headed out toward the islands. The islands are well known because of their wildlife. The whole way out our boat was chasing the tails of 3 dolphins and when we got to the island we go to see HUGE sea lions (although in spanish they are called lobos del mar, aka sea wolves) and condors (the national bird of Chile) and best of all penguins! Penguins are so cool. They are everything you expect from them and more and are endlessly entertaining to watch as they waddle around and try to scuffle up rocks and stuff. After circling the island a bit we got to get off the boat at a neighboring island and walk around a little bit to explore before heading back to the port for a heart and delicous late lunch/dinner and then heading back to the hostel to pass out. The following day we took at bus out of La Serena to a little artsy town about an hour or two away called Pisco Elqui where we wandered a bit and ended up going to a Pisco Distillery. Pisco, as previously mentioned, is the main hard alcohol in Chile and Peru. They make it from white grapes by basically making a really sweet wine and then further distilling it. It is generally served with coca cola (piscola) or with cirus and egg white (pisco sour) but it was kind of funny because they gave us all tastes of some really fine pisco without anything to cut the harshness and everybody was having a hard time putting it down. We were all a bit wimpy. The town was gorgeous though. And the guy that founded the pisco company (Mistral) had two last names that were both Rodriguez. Ha. But yea... from Pisco Elqui we headed back a bit in the direction of La Serena to a place called Vicuña where we wandered a bit and went to the Gabriel Mistral Museum. She is the `other` poet of Chile basically, beyond Pablo Neruda, who also won a nobel prize. She is from that area so they have all of her stuff and she is buried near by. When it finally got dark that evening we headed for the Mamalluca Observatory to go on an astronomy tour which was really amazing. Annette had organized it (and pretty much everything else, with some help) and was really nervous all day about it panning out because the tours get canceled if there are clouds or bad weather but it ended up being pretty much perfect. There were absolutely no clouds and the moon was almost gone so you could see the stars really well and I have never seen the Milky Way so defined. It was amazing. The guide pointed out the llamas in the Milky Way (who knew there were llamas in the Milky Way PS?) and showed us the stripes on Jupiter and a couple galaxies and all sorts of things in the telescope. Chile is famous for astronomy, especially in the region of La Serena because there is so little air pollution and it is in credibly dry so there are hardly any clouds or rain ever. I think they have the second largest telescope in the world in Chile actually, second to the Mana Lua or however you spell it one on the top of that mountain in Hawaii... If all that were not enough though, we headed back to the hostel to still have one more day in La Serena to mill around. We went to the beach and got some ceviche (its kind of a fishing town so there is a lot of really fresh sea food) and went to this archealogical museum that had mummies and one of those Easter Island statues. And then around mid afternoon we headed back for Santiago, all in all quite a cool trip. Plus on the way back on the bus they were playing episodes of this tv show called Gags where they play pranks on people and there was one where somebody random would be sitting in a room and the pranker would turn of the light and sneak into the room in a giant gorilla costume and hover right over the person so that when the light went back on it scared the shit out of them. It was pretty funny. I was giggling.
La Serena is however, not even close to all that I have been up to as of lately. I have now been skiing in the Andes twice which is phenomenal. The mountains are so gorgeous in the snow and so distinct because it is all above tree line so the peaks look so much more jagged and crisp. Both times I went to a place called El Colorado. There are buses that leave from the ski stores in the eastern part of the city and take skiiers up so its really easy to get up there and a hundred times worth it. Plus they´ve been having all sorts of deals lately so my life ticket the second time was only 6000CHP or like $12. The first time was right after it had been snowing so everything was just covered in like 3 feet of powder and the snow was so nice although it was a little gray. The second time the snow wasnt as fresh but it was like 70 degrees out and so nice. I remembered to put sunscreen on my face but unfortunately forgot to put it on my neck which was exposed since it was so hot that I could ski in just a long sleeve shirt and my rain jacket and ended up getting a really awkward neck burn that has yet to fade completely. I have a nice line now when I wear v-necks. And my roommates were making fun of my for being a `blanquita`, aka extremely white. Ha. Oh well, lesson learned.
AND, if I didn´t love my life enough already, I got to go trekking this past weekend with EAP and like 30 other students. I wasn´t really sure what to expect going with such a big group as often times there are some really unexperienced people that can´t keep up or don´t really know what they are doing but everyone really pulled their own weight to a surprising degree. Granted we stopped pretty much once and hour to take it easy but it was a difficult hike. The first day was a pretty easy 3ish hour hike just up to this little valley where we were camping for the night. On the way we saw all sorts of cactus and bones and an entire dead cow completely hollowed out. The second day though, we got up at 6:30 am to get on the train by 7:30 just as the sun was starting to rise to start on the real trek. We spent nearly 12 hours climbing 1600 meters almost straight up the mountain in the snow. The way up was pretty difficult as everyones legs were getting tired and it was a bit sketchy at parts where we were forced to do some bouldering on lose rock with pebbles (and some slightly larger rocks) were falling down the mountain with the other 30ish people coming up below but we made it and it was absolutely gorgeous being so high up. The peak of the mountain we hiked to was at about 2800 meters, small compared to other Andean peaks which are more like 6000-7000 meters but still a feat. The way down was a little easier too as we quickly discovered that the easiest way to do it was pretty much to just run through the powder since it was so deep or just sit and slide. We were pretty much like a big pack of penguins slidding down the mountain until the guides started getting paranoid about avalanches and made everyone conform to one trail. Since people have class Friday and Monday the trip could only be a two day thing so we had to hike all the way out to the bus that same day although I´d like to go back for a longer trip. I was talking to the guides about it and they had plenty of areas to recommend but its a little different to figure out here than in the US because there aren´t really many trails or trail heads, there are just sort of open regions. And people in Santiago don´t really ever explore up there for various reasons (mostly economic) so there aren´t many people that really know a lot about it. Its kept so pristing for that reason though which makes it all the more worth it to see.
Ahh... im a little tired after re-counting all of that because I get kind of excited over it but yea... that may be all the adventures I have to share for now. This weekend we are going to a Copper Mine which should be pretty interesting. And I´m working on planning trips to Bolivia, Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires again, Chiloe, Patagonia, and Brazil so thats pretty exciting.
Oooh! And I´m learning to salsa... free classes every Wednesday night that are a lot of fun.
So... yup.
Se la vie.
Viva Chile!
PS:
24) The typical social groups tend to be the same across national borders... the cool kids, the punk kids, the grunge kids, the goth kids, etc... However, each country does have its own flavor. While the US of A may have the jock category, this is lacking in Chile without a football (not futbol) team to support it. Instead though, they have what are known as ´pokemonas´. These people are known for herrendous haircuts and switching off make-out partners in the park.
25) Olives have pits... there do not exist pitless ovlives in Chile, whether it be in an empanada or caserolle or on a pizza. And furthermore, I would like to throw it out there that I really don´t even understand how pitless olives exist elsewhere. It is hard to get those suckers out.
26) Wearing alpaca is like wearing clouds.
27) The world is small. I ran into a girl here that went to kindergarten with one of my UCLA roommates.
28) While I cannot confirm this observation with actual factual data, it seems to me there is an unusually high proportion of midgets in Chile. I see at least 2-3 a week on a regular basis. What is the proportion supposed to be?
Maggie and I
The crew
The Chilean flag
A fat woman and man with no leg... or a fat woman and a man with a boot that camouflages really well... depending on how you want to see it
If we didn't stand out already...
C-H-I-L-E
