Adventurous Kristina

Apparently, Chile has made me a little bit adventurous. The last five days have been completely and totally different from anything I would ever do.

Wednesday: Ropes course in the rain forest
Thursday: Getting on a bus to Pucon without a clear destination in mind (don't worry--we made it somewhere!)
Friday: Riding horses up a mountain
Saturday: Glorified kickboardingHidrospeeding down a river
Today: Climbing a volcano. For 11 hours. And then sitting in the snow (!) and sliding down the whole way.

Do you know the last time I walked for 11 hours? Yeah, that's right, NEVER. Do you know when I'm going to do it again? Mhm, NEVER. (Um and do you know the last time that I got up at 6 AM? It's been A LONG TIME.)

I'm about to get on a bus to return to Vina (which I REALLY miss) and after I recuperate and regain feeling in my feet, I'm going to show you all the cool pictures. It will be exciting! But for now, I'm going to sleep.

P is for Pucon, Pretty, and Pain

We arrived in Pucon yesterday morning at 8:30 after a long, and horrible time on the bus. However, the buses here are absolutely amazing. They have a leg rest that folds down so you can sleep, but I didn't sleep much.

Yesterday morning we found ourselves a hostal (yeah, we didn't really have a plan in mind when we got off the bus), and went down to the tourism place to make reservations for the volcano climb and a horse back trip up a mountain.

The horse ride was gorgeous. We stopped god knows where at a waterfall, and because we could we decided to stand under it.

We ate hamburgers the size of my face (no lie) for lunch, and then rested the rest of the day.

Our volcano trip this morning was cancelled because there's really bad weather here today. We've just hung around the hostal. In about an hour, I'm going on a hidrospeed trip down the river, and Aften and Casey are going shopping. Im not sure what hidrospeeding is exactly, but once I know, I'll let you know!

I'll post pictures as soon as I get the chance!

Packing for Pucon

This weekend, I'm headed to Pucon, in the south of Chile with Aften and Casey.

We leave tonight (we don't have class tomorrow), and will return Monday morning at 8:30 AM (just in time for a 9:00 class, joy..)

I haven't decided if I'm taking my computer with me, so I may or may not blog from there!

Ciao!

Waffle College

Every once in a while, my Chilean mom will look at me inquisitively and say, "Waffle?" I usually just say "No, Gracias, Estoy Bien". (which means, no thanks, I'm fine). I finally figured out last night at dinner what she meant.

My Chilean dad started a sentence with, "A Waffle Universidad.." (At Waffle University). And it clicked. My Chilean family thinks that I go to Waffle College.

Obama, oddities about Chile, and where's my snow?

So, because EVERYONE likes Obama, our third class was cancelled today so that we could come home and watch the inauguration. My Chilean mom was so great about it, because she knew I wanted to watch it, even though it was lunchtime, and so she set up this little number:

So sweet! After the rest of my family ate lunch, my mom turned on CNN and was watching the inauguration. She already told me she doesn't really like politics that much, but every time the people at the inauguration would cheer, I would hear a big "WOOOOO!" from her room..too funny..

Other than that, I have two strange (maybe we're the strange ones, I'm not sure?) things about Chile to share.

1) Unless you are in an apartment or a condo and you hate hot water, you're going to want to know about this one. Every house has a box where you light a pilot light for the gas and then you turn the gas on to get hot water:

2) Chileans don't use dryers unless they absolutely have to, but my family doesn't even have a dryer. So, I've learned to like jeans that feel like cardboard:


Also, here's some pictures from my new host family!
My room:

And my bathroom:

And our sweet view of Viña from the living room:


I assure you though, the walk up that hill after school is everything but sweet.

And, in closing, please talk to the snow fairies and make sure that they return sometime after January 30th. I'd appreciate that! :)

Estoy acá (I am here)!

I don't really want to do much explaining, but there was a bit of a hiccup with my host family..as in, they didn't feed me. Like, I don't even think they ate. And last night a remark was made about my Spanish is so bad, why am I even in Chile?

So, today I moved in to a different host family. Our lunch (!) was amazing, and I just had dinner (!!). It's like a whole other world exists in Chile that I wasn't informed about! I'm so glad to be in a family that sincerely wants me here!

Ciao, ciao!

Chorrillana, La Sebastiana, Chile through the decades, Isla Negra

Here's my long post, as promised!

Wednesday, we had class and then went to the house of Pablo Neruda, a poet and ambassador for Chile (he's dead now). Apparently he's super famous, but to be quite honest, I've never heard of the guy. His first house was in Valpo, and it was gorgeous. Before we went though, we went to this little hole in the wall place (think Bowens Island) for lunch. Carlos (one of our teachers) took us there, and we thought we would have the option to choose what we wanted. We got the option to choose Chorrillana for two, or Chorrillana for three. In case you're wondering, Chorrillana has a nice thick layer of grease on the bottom, topped with french fries, scrambled eggs, onions dripping with grease, and meat:

It was as good as it could be, I suppose. However, it's a once in a lifetime kind of food because every time you eat it, you lose 10 years off your life, I'm sure.

I branded the restaurant forever, with my name (don't worry, all the furniture and walls looked like this--I'm not just writing on random pieces of furniture in random restaurants):



We then went up the hill to the house of Pablo Neruda:





We walked through the garden at the Neruda house, and I took this picture for my dad to identify this strange plant:

And more pictures:




And since what goes up must come down, we walked back down the hill through the horrible twisting winding gross and disgusting oh so lovely streets of Valpo:


We walked down Ferrari street (the name was misleading, let me tell you):

And saw some amazing graffiti:


And then headed back to Viña:


Thursday was pretty uneventful. We went to school, I came back and took a nap, and that night, Aften and I went to a discotech (a dancing place), stayed out til three in the morning, and had a grand old time. (Really, it was a lot of fun).

Yesterday, we went to school (the days would be so much more exciting without this), and took a trip to Pablo Neruda's second house in Isla Negra. If I thought the first one was pretty, this one was AMAZING. We stopped to eat lunch at a little bit nicer place where we actually had some sort of say in what we ate, but of course, the menu was all in spanish. I know the spanish word for fish, but I couldn't tell all the types of fish apart. So I did what I could, and closed my eyes and stuck my finger somewhere on the page, and ended up with this:

It was really, really good!

We went to the house at Isla Negra, which was fairly uneventful and dull:





Here's where dear old Pablo lies:

And here's what his head looks like, in case you were wondering:

Then we went to the beach at Isla Negra. I have never seen a beach like this before in my whole life. I spent a good hour just sitting on a rock and watching the waves, it was mesmerizing:
Hey, welcome to paradise!:










After we got back from Isla Negra, Aften and I wanted to do something, but we weren't sure what. I knew that I couldn't do another "let's not come home until 3 in the morning" kind of thing, but I mean, we're in CHILE, why sit at home?!

So, we went to the beach to watch the sunset. It was awesome. And then, we went to the casino. Because we can do that here. We each played a 500 pesos (less than one dollar) slot machine, one time, and we each won nothing. So we left and got ice cream, because that makes everything better. We went to a karaoke place where we watched people make fools of themselves, and then we came home. It was pretty fun and eventful night, and I was in bed by 12:30!

I've been working on an accurate description of Chile, and I think I'm finally on to something:

They live like it's the 60's (technology wise), smoke like it's the 70's, dress like it's the 80's, and party like it's the 90's.