Trip to the north, continued

17th of October -
We had to wake up at 8am to take off in the bus to an archeological site. The city had been excavated several times (sand would keep filling it up) and was fully excavated in 1982 but the archeologists stopped work on it because the natives were having moral issues about what they were doing. They preferred it left alone. Now, tourists are allowed to see a portion of it, obviously, since I saw it. Later we saw a museum and outside of it we saw a thermometer that informed us the heat was dangerously high that day. Stupidly, later, we all layed out in the sun and got crispy. At the museum, I followed around a French tour with my friend Jess A. and we practiced some French afterward. We walked back to the hotel from there since it was just in town and that's when we fried at the pool. The pool at our hotel was ICE. Literally it was so cold we couldn't stand it, and we were in the frickin desert. Later around 4:00 we took a bus over to El Salar de la Atacama which is a huge salt field. There was random bodies of water with flamingos. Over those waters and the desert salt we watched the sunset. Incredibly beautiful. You can see a lot of these pics on facebook. Not only did we watch the sunset, but we watched the lights dance on the mountains behind us and the Valle de la luna. Heading back to the hotel we went through the indiginous, non touristy part and saw a celebration of the Día de San Lucas. We get back to the hotel and I happen to acquire a bloody nose because it was so dry. I forgot to mention the hotel supplies us with bottled water every day because its so necessary and because we couldn't drink the tap water. They would'nt even let us use it to brush our teeth. I was wary to shower in it. This night, some people went to this rave in the middle of the desert, but I was too tired so I passed.

18th of Octubre-
Some people were just getting back from the rave at 4:30 am when we took off to go see the geysers and the sunrise. Our tourguide told us there were only 3 deaths there this year... but never told us how they happened. Lets just say we were all very careful. After that we went to natural hot springs. They weren't actually that hot, and they were very enjoyable in the desert. The water was so clean and fresh! I actually had forgotten my swimsuit somehow and ended up using Cheryl's sports bra and shorts. After returning to the hotel, most of us napped or shopped. When I woke up I got ice cream and then dinner (yes, the ice cream came first). At the restaurant where we ate we watched an U de C game. We were losing for most of it but ended up tying 1 to 1. Returning to the hotel we bought some stuff to drink and just started gathering in the sitting area outside the main building just chatting and playing card games. We ran over to a bar called Milagro for a bit but ended up just going back to the hotel. Apparently, the person who is supposed to buzz us into the enclosure was being lazy or was sick of us gringos going in and out so when me Karl and Jess B tried to get in, he wouldn't open the gate. Therefore, we all jumped the 7 foot wall.

19th de Octubre-
Slept in a little to recover from last night and all the hiking in past few days. Later in the afternoon we went to a salt lake in the middle of the desert. Now THAT was incredible! We could stick our entire arms out of the water and still floated like a cork. It was so easy to float because of the fact that it was full of salt, just like the Dead Sea. Another thing about the lake was that we could actually swim faster. The bad part about it was that eventually the salt stung our skin so bad, it hurt like hell and we had to get out. After drying off, we headed back to the hotel and chilled some more, it was kind of a lazy/recovery day. Alison, Cheryl, Jess A and I just sat in the lobby downing cup after cup after cup of coffee and tea and talking about life.

20th of October-
I ran out of money so instead of going shopping, I fried by the pool some more. More like Hayley and Alison fried, they were tomatoes by the end of the day. Tsk Tsk.
Nothing really exciting happened that night in Santiago. We went for a walk at night and crossed paths with some male transvestites who said "Qué rico" to Trevor, but that was it.

Thats the end of the north trip. I shoulda kept a better diary huh?

My favorite part about this trip to the north was that I got really close to everyone in my group. I really got to know a lot of people I hadn't hung out with much yet, and got closer to the one's I've been hanging out with a lot. Cobquecura did it too, and I'm sure the south will. I love it. I love being close to these people. I've made some friends for life, which I usually find difficult to do.

The night of the 24th, Karl and I saw the movie "Bastardos sin gloria" or "Inglorious Bastards" as it was released in the states. It was AMAZING but most of the movie was in French and German and we were therefore forced to read the Spanish subtitles, but they scrolled so fast, we lost a little bit of the movie's content I think.

Besides seeing that movie, I was incredibly homesick this weekend. With my dog on the verge of death, I just wanted to be home. I got so homesick, I hardly did anything but sit in bed, and/or on my computer. It was probably the worst homesickness I've felt since coming here. I got over it a little bit on Monday night when I went out with some friends to celebrate a girl's birthday.
Well, on Sunday, I did go to the mall with Cheryl for a bit, to try to shake it off. We talked a long time and went back to her house to cook American/comfort food: aka Mac and Cheese and peanut butter (not together).

The funny thing was the next day when I told my mom about what me and Cheryl did to feel better, she went out and found Mac and Cheese for me, and peanut butter too! That stuffs not cheap here.

I'm severely sleepless right now, and I wish I had more interesting things to say in this blog besides listing what I did each day. I apologize to readers bored by my narration.

I thought about how wierd it'll be to go home today.
I'm going to miss the micros.
And my host family. My host family a lot.
chilean cuisine, esp cheap fruit/veggies

Many times a day I make lists in my head of what I'll miss about this place. I know as much as I missed home here, at home I'm going to miss Chile just as much.

Wedding/Cobquecura/Santiago/Viña del Mar/Valparaiso/San Pedro de Atacama

On Friday October 9th I don't think I did anything exciting. On the 10th however, I watched the Chile game and witnessed them qualify for the world cup for the first time in 12 years and only the second time in 26! It was sooo funny, my host brother Vlado and my host dad were SCREAMING at the television the whole time! "CONCHA TU MADRE!!!", "CHUUUUCHA!" It was so funny I was laughing so hard. The whole time they were standing and shouting, little mamá Sarita was running around saying "Sshhh callense! Catie no le gusta escucharles! Callense Callense por favor!" God I love my host family.

After Chile won the game, we headed over to a church near downtown Conce for the service of a wedding I was going to with my family. It was my dad's cousin, Javier and his novia, Sylvia. I had met them before so it was even more exciting. On the way to the service and during the service, people were constantly shouting and blowing thier horns. Soccer celebrations here are HUGE. Obviously, soccers a huge deal here in general. I can't imagine what the wedding would've been like if Chile would have lost. They even mentioned it at the recepcion: thank god Chile won tonight! hahaha.
After the church we went to El Dorado hotel in el centro for the recepcion. It was so beautiful! I wish I had taken more pictures, but my camera was freaking out a little that night. So we ate and ate and drank and drank and danced and danced. They played so much music! Lots of dancy music in Spanish and English and I loved every minute of it.
A funny moment was when the food came. It was in three cylindrical shapes and I had no idea what it could've been without trying it. Vlado sees my skeptical facial expression, leans into my ear and says "what the fuck is that" in English and I laughed so hard the table looked at me.
At midnight that night we changed the clocks and lost an hour. I went home at 4am with my family, finished packing for Cobquecura, slept for about 2 hours or so, and then awoke to head to my profs place to gather to go to la playa by Cobquecura.

We arrived at our cabins. There were 3 cabins for us with 5 beds in each. First thing we did was head out to go see a traditional chilean celebration with large fires cooking meat and ponche. Some of us rode horses, lots of us made friends with the local country people. After that we returned to our small stay city and either hit up a restaurant or bought food from a supermercado for almuerzo. After that and being lazy, we started preparing the barbeque for dinner. We ate, drank, ran around the city, and eventually hit up the beach where we built a fire on the sand. There might have been a time where I was hanging out the back of a pick up truck but I wont go into detail. At the beach there were a bunch from our group, a bunch of chileans, blankets, a guitar, and the sea. I had such a good time! At one point a group of us ran down to the water and just screamed at the ocean. It was so exhilerating. Too bad half of us got soaked. Poor Alison lost her camera and flip flops to the ocean that night. OH did I mention the stars?! The stars were incredible! I have NEVER seen so many and so bright. If only my stupid camera could capture pictures at night!

The next morning most of us were dead to the world, but we got up around 10 and just started cooking and feasting. Our breakfast consisted of eggs, noodles, apples, manjar, and garlic bread: yummy.
Later that day we hit up another nearby beach and climbed many a hills. Once again, see facebook pictures! At this beach, Triana bought two live crabs to cook and eat later and they cost her ONE American dollar, for BOTH! That bay was famous for the seafood they bring in. Om nom nom.
The picture I posted on top of this post is from the second beach, isn't it neat?
At the end of this trip I was so behind on sleep, I slept every single time we sat on the bus.

Between Cobquecura and the trip to the north, we only had two days of class.
They went by so quick and nothing important happened! I hung out and packed for the north and soon I was gone again!

Viaje al norte= Trip to the north
By far the best week long vacation I've ever had!
We squeezed the money and hours out of every single day. The week felt more like a month to me. I think the part I loved the most was getting closer to everyone in our group, I feel so much more connected now.
IN GENERAL I'M SO HAPPY AND ITS FANTASTIC!
Pics are up on Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=332439&id=660420332&l=372b622504

Day One: 15th of October:
We flew from Conce to Santiago and took a tour bus to Valparaiso, a coastal city almost directly west of Santiago where we got a small city tour and walked around some. That city is SO beautiful! If only there was more sun! There we saw one of Pablo Neruda's houses built in the 1960s or so, La Sebastiana. It had the best view of the city and ocean.
Returned to Santiago to stay in hotel/apartment things. They were super nice and we were stoked to be there. We went to the Unimarc nearby, a supermarket, and bought a bunch of food and wine for the night. I ended up staying up all night for no reason with Karl!

16th of October:
I got my stuff together and met everyone downstairs at 5am to get to the airport for our flight to Catama. We went straight over to the worlds largest still functioning copper mine called Chuquicamate. Después we had a descanso and returned to San Pedro de Atacama. We had the afternoon free so most of us ran around the downtown and touristy part of the city. Bought souvineers, watched the sunset, went to bed.

I have spent so much time blogging, I must go for now! I'll finish this another time. Thanks for reading!

Interesting things and Santiago

Leaving Buenos Aires was quite sad, I really fell in love with the place. More so than Chile. Like I mentioned earlier, we had huge problems leaving the country because none of us had our Chilean ID cards. Well, I was the only one who had problems getting back INto the country. It was ridiculous, I told the guy I didnt have my cédula card and he said "Well, how am I supposed to let you pass?" I explained to him that the three girls waiting on the other side for me didn't have theirs either but he didn't care. I just sat there till he stamped my stuff and let me pass with a gruff scoff.

Well the Monday we get back, we find out that since last Friday, students from certain departments on campus have been on strike and protesting. Therefore, students have TAKEN certain buildings. Literally, there are student-made signs that say "en toma."

Tuesday night I slept horribly and Wednesday night I paid for it. I told my host parents at 6 that I would wake up at 8 and eat own-say with them. Well, I woke up and thought to myself "wow, its fairly light out for 8pm." Then I looked at my phone and saw that it was 6:30... IN THE MORNING.

Thursday the first of October I went out with a buncha gringos, but I ended up getting really sick really early, so I went home. The day before, Alison and I decided we were going to embark on a random journey to Santiago. My mom took us to the bus stop on Friday morning and we took of on a bus at 12:30. We get there, and have NO IDEA what to do. I call my friend Sean and he tells us what we need to do. We hit up the metro with our bip! cards and make it to his appartment. We decided to just spend the night there since we had a place to stay cause his roommate was gone. He was a sweet view of Santiago, it was pretty incredible. I loved the name of his barrio: Ñuñoa.

Saturday we woke up so early and took off to explore the city. First thing we did was climb San Cristóbal to explore the Zoo and then to take a cable car all the way up to the top to see a giant statue of the virgin Mary. The whole reason that statue and a make-shift church is up there is because it was made for the pope when he visited Santiago years ago.
Sean met up with us a while later and took us to another famous hill in Santiago que se llama Santa Lusia and it was from the 1500s if I remember correctly. See facebook pictures as usual!

After that we found our hostel, RIGHT on the famous Plaza de Armas de Santiago. It was sooo beautiful! The plaza and the view out our window! There is a really old church there that is right next to a very modern building there and it just looked so beautiful. I wish I had better words to describe it.

Took a bus home Sunday afternoon and my mommy picked us up from the station.

Monday the 5th, we had a new professor in our Literature class and he was AWESOME. His name is José Rodriguez and I think I laughed the entire class period. He was also very smart and a great speaker.
That night I went to Cheryl's to watch the Packer/Viking game (which went HORRIBLY).

Oh I forgot to mention there is a hole in the o-zone layer here.
AND I also forgot to mention almost getting mugged when we were looking at the obilisk in Buenos Aires. Some guys came up behind us and saw us taking pictures. One of them started bugging Cheryl to take her camera. Eventually Cheryl shouted "NO!" And thats when the rest of us noticed what was going on, he had his hand on her purse! We yelled "No!" and booked it across the street. Cheryl was pretty shaken and this was before the Fantasma de la Opera show so we were all dressed up.

The 6th of October I did some work-study stuff for Luz, basically doing her job for her.
During a break Karl and I bought this NASTY veggetable of the street: BAD IDEA.

The 7th a bunch of us met these two 20 year old guys from Germany on the street. Johan came up to us and said "Americans?!" and we talked for a bit. Him and Ian met us at Go! and Tercer Tiempo that night for some drinks and they were so excited to find people who could speak English (their English is better than their Spanish).

THURSDAY the 8th I booked tickets to Cusco, Peru to go to Macchu Picchu!
Today has been super lazy but I really needed it.
Soon I need to stop eating and work out more.
The end.
I'm FINALLY caught up with my blog! :)

Argentina continued...

Saturday we walked ALL OVER Buenos Aires. Since the taxi's are so cheap, we had the hotel call one of those and we asked him to take us to the tourist attraction with all the different colored houses. We all forgot the name of the place (La Boca) so we just described it to him. Well the idiot took us to the wrong place and we were like, well now you know what we're talking about, since we explained it again, can you take us to La Boca? And he's like, nope, sorry! And took off.

Well he left us in a pretty sweet place, there was a feria artesania going on (art fair) and there were stands set up by tons of people selling handmade things. I was happy to know they were legit and not stuff shipped over from India. It was a little expensive for me, but the girls bought some stuff and it was fun to walk around and get to know people. After that we thought we could walk to La Boca but since its the poorest barrio in Buenos Aires, people advised we take a taxi.

La Boca was pretty sweet, its solely a tourist attraction though. There were more artesanías and people trying to take our money as usual.

There is a free museum in Buenos called "Museo de Bellas Artes" so we checked that out. It was sweet, I saw a lot of famous paintings like "the reading boy" and works by Picasso, Monet, etc. Then we hit up this café that we were supposed to get discounts for through our travel agent but the idiot gave us expired vouchers. The food was still good though and it was our first meal without wine haha.

We returned to the famous cathedral by la casa rosada so that Hayley and Cheryl could take more pictures of it. Alison and I waited outside and found a celebration accross the street. Cheryl and Hayley re-joined us and we found out it was "Buenos Aires celebra a Chile." It was basically Buenos Aires celebrating Chile! We felt at home again, haha.

Well we get back to the hotel and haul Hayley's computer to the lobby so that we can look up more information about the pub crawl that night. Hayley is pulling the glass table closer to the chair so that she can put her computer on it but she didn't realize it wasn't attached! It shattered and the poor girl was just having a bad time already! La pobrecita, everything bad was happening to her :(

After getting dressed up and pretty we head over to the bar where the pub crawl starts, "Nacional." We were pretty early but we paid and got our wrist bands and started off with some classy wine. Soon people started to show up and we met some pretty great friends. Two of the girls we met there were actually studying in Santiago and happened to be in Buenos the same weekend we were. Their names were Caitlyn and Laura. Caitlyn was from Colorado but Laura happened to be from Brookfield, Wisconsin, about a 10 minute drive from my house there! Incredible coincidence. They both go to a private school in Missouri, if I remember correctly. The rest of the people were mostly from the states, the organizers of the crawl themselves were from Georgia.

In summary, we went to three bars and then took a bus to one of the most popular discotheques in Buenos Aires called Crobar. Ah-mayz-ing. I had crazy deja-vu when we were there, I swear I had dreamed about it before. We got to skip this huge line AND get in for free with the crawl, so that was fantastic. We stayed there till SEVEN IN THE MORNING. I finally sucessfully partied like they do in South America, WOOT!

CONTINUING....
Sunday we forced ourselves to wake up at 12 so we wouldn't waste the day and we dragged our crabby asses to the world's most famous cemetery: La Recoleta de Buenos Aires. Very fittingly, it was raining that day. I saw tons of graves of famous latinamerican writers, poets, presidents, ex-presidents, and figures there. The most famous buried there is Eva Perón who is a huuuge figure in Argentine history who really helped out the poor. Theres a musical about her called "Evita" if anyone is interested.

We treated ourselves to a nearby café for a late lunch where we found out two of Hayley's 100 peso bills were fake (about 40 american dollars she could've lost). The waiter touched them for about 2 seconds and said he couldn't accept them. That day we found out that counterfeit cash is a HUGE problem in Argentina. Something we probably should've researched before coming. The worst part about that was she got them at an ATM in front of a bank. If we had known they were fake we could've brought them in and asked for help but we had no idea, they were so well done. (I took a picture, I think its on facebook.) After that we found another very legitimate artesanía fair where we all bought handmade things for very cheap. Hayley kept trying to use her fake bills, but everyone knew they were fake and we kept getting lectured about how tourists have to be very careful. At that fair I bought a sweet bracelet, a knitted shirt, and a necklace for my mom made of the official stone of Argentina, the rodocrosita.

Walked back to hotel, shopped on Florida for the last time. We bought Hayley a map she wanted since all the bad luck happened to her, and then took her to a tango show. Cheryl, Alison, and I shared some wine and enjoyed the night.

Argentina, and then some

Obviously I've been too busy to keep up with this blog.
Good and bad thing.

Well. The night of Wednesday the 23rd of September, Cheryl, Alison, Hayley and I took off for Santiago. We took an overnight bus at 11 and got there a little after 5am.
We get to the terminal in Santiago and even though my mom gave me a general idea of where to go, we really didn't have the slightest idea.
Ended up we had to cross the street to the other side of the bus terminal to find a bus that would take us from the bus station in Santiago to the aeropuerto. Since those buses didn't run till 6:15 and our plane left at 8am, we just found a cab and took that, it might have even been cheaper than the bus we would've taken.

Get to the airport, get our tickets/boarding passes, decide not to go to Uruguay anymore since it would've cost us 60$ and thats half a plane ticket already and we had already paid.

We go through the place where our paper work is processed and realize we don't have our cedulas (cards that say we're chilean students for the time-being). They almost didn't let us leave, but thankfully we had started the registration process the week before and we merely needed to pick up the cards. Thus, they looked up our information and let us pass.

We get to Montevideo and are glad we decided not to stay there. The airport was a JOKE. We literally started laughing. There were 8 gates TOTAL. And we had to climb down onto the tarmac, it wasn't connected to the airport. We get into the building/structure and I'm looking for an Uruguayan flag for my host dad, when I realize there are exactly three stores in the entirety of the airport and none of them have flags nor anything Uruguayan. It was seriously so disappointing. I mean, I'm sure if we would've ventured out to Montevideo's downtown it could've gotten more interesting, but the airport didn't even have anything besides Uruguayan pesos. In which, those are my only souveniers.

Getting out of the airport in Buenos Aires, there is supposed to be someone waiting for us through the travel agency we used who has a taxi to take us to our hotel. Well theres only one woman holding a sign that says "Adison Fos" which we can only assume was meant to say "Alison Fox", one of the girls on this trip with us.
We climb into the classy cab and get a tease of the city as he drives us to our hotel.

Before we even settle into our rooms we meet with a woman who worked with our travel agent and she gave us some vouchers and coupons to use around the city. She also set up our City Tour for the next day. Gave us some maps and sent us on our way.
Dropped our stuff off in our rooms before we hit up the local grocery store to buy some food to keep in the rooms like fruit and bread. I think the best part of that night was the juice-box wine. They were grown-up juiceboxes (see facebook pictures, if those ever decide to upload). It was a relaxing night to blow off some steam of the stress of traveling.

Friday morning we wake up around 8 to take a bus tour at 9:30 of Buenos Aires. Though we could've seen what we saw ourselves, it was a good idea to go with the bus tour because then we more easily figured out how to navigate later. I think all of us fell in love with Buenos on day one.
After that we walked around to some sights that were close to our hotel, for instance, the street with all the shopping (Florida) and the obelisk. Walking by a theater, we saw tickets available for El Fantasma de la Opera (yes, the Phantom of the Opera) and decided to buy tickets for that night. After we bought our tickets we got a little dressed up and hit up Café Tortoni where the food and wine was spectacular. Not to mention the waiters were really formal and the place sparkled dispite it being a decently priced café. The sandwich I had was like gormet grilled cheese, deeeelicious.
After that, walked over the the theater to see El Fantasma and after that ended the night a little early.

To bed for now, To be continued...