Tour of Valpo

Despite being very exhausted Saturday was a very fun day! It started with the Valpo tour where we first visited the house of Pablo Neruda! (or one of his houses!) It was on top of a hill in Valparaíso and was a very vertical house! There is a photo below! I wanted to live in this house soo much!!! The bedroom, complete with brass frame bed (!!!), was on the 4th floor, 5 floors in total and had a great view! (Unfortunately we couldn't take pictures inside.) After that we rode a bus, complete with talking tour ("and on your left...") and walked around Valpo.

When we got back I had plans to eat a large lunch and go to sleep. This was interrupted by people telling me they were going to the beach (I'd been going most days) so I called off the nap to go sleep on the beach, waking every few minutes to turn over as not to burn! It was really funny because there were like 6 of us lined up on the beach all sleeping.

Later that evening my friends wanted to go out again so I said I would go somewhere as long as it was more chill. We headed over to Café Baul, a place with couches and drinks. Some of us hadn't tried the terremoto so we ordered another one, which turned out to be waaay stronger than the last one. I had about the same amount as on Wednesday but got rather tipsy for the first time in my life! After drinking a lot of water, we moved to another place which had happy hour until midnight. I ordered a pineapple dakari, which was simply delicious, and some water. After a while of being there we went to a club to dance and by the time I got there I was feeling completely sober but still had lots of fun! We stayed out until around 4 this evening, which lead me to sleeping in until about 11:30 that morning. But it was a blast!!! ^_^

<3Annie

If you look up in Valpo, this is how most of the architecture looks! ^_^

yay owls!!!

This painting is so accurate that my camera detected the face as it normal does on people when I was taking this picture!!! ^_^

Pablo and I

Pablo Neruda's Valparaíso house!

The Extended Weekend!

In case I didn't mention it, I don't have class on Friday, also being the first week I didn't have really any homework. This lead to mucho carretear (Chilean word for "to party") and spending the days on the beach with my sunscreen and friends.

On Friday night my friends convinced me to go dancing, so we went out and wandered for a while until we found this biker like bar where I tried the terremoto (earthquake in spanish but also a Chilean drink), this contains white wine, rum, pineapple ice cream, grenadine and pisco (a Chilean alcohol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pisco ). Sometimes the drink doesn't contain all of these things it seems. Anyway it wasn't bad, a strange combination but almost sweet enough for my taste. After we went next door and danced! I thought it was quite amusing cause the girls had to pay like $2 to get in, which included a free beer (which I didn't drink), but the guys had to pay $4 to get in! ^_^ heehee We danced until about 2:30am when we decided that we should call it a night since we had to go on a tour of Valpo the next day with IFSA. So by the time I got home and asleep it was late and I had to get up at like 8:20am to get to the tour. ahhh!!! little sleep... ^_^

<3Annie

The Past Few Days

Hey Everyone!
Sorry about the lack of updates but I've been trying to get in the swing of school and such! So here's a bunch of news hopefully sort of interesting and hopefully I don't forget anything!

On Wednesday of last week (the 17th) I went out with a large group of friends, possibly most of all of our IFSA group, minus a few to Café Journal, which is actually not a café but a bar. This is the gringo hangout of Viña. To clarify, the word gringo is not an offensive term here as it sometimes is in Mexico or other places. It is more just a term to define people who are clearly not chilean. Anyway, this bar was rather fun other than all the smoke and noise level. The music was turned super loud so that shouting was necessary for a conversation. I got home at like 2am, not so late but enough, though I'm pretty sure I lost like $20 there. Which is extremely unfortunate.... :(

Thursday the 18th: Today I went to classes then after Mike and I were going to hang out but my family said they wanted to drive up the coast a little and look at the rocks and view. So I invited Mike with and away we went! It was quite fun, only like a 10-15 minute drive and then we got to get out of the car and climb around on the huge rocks, some granite and some volcanic, which made for a great look. Jorge's mom came with us and we met the cousin on the way back. So I had to squish into the back seat on Mike's lap for all of us to make it back to Viña, luckily the drive wasn't long. Here are some photos that I took while we were there!

Thursday night I stayed in and watched "The Legend of Zorro", the second one with Antonio Banderas, which isn't as good but I was tired.

<3Annie

Chile flag!!!

Mike and I

Reñaca, the Malibu of Chile apparently

Murales en Chile!

Here are some of the murales that I thought most excellent from Valpo! All are super cool but here some! ^_^
<3Annie

Yesterday and Today

Well yesterday was fun! First day of classes but only IFSA offered classes so I went to my Advancer Grammar spanish class which seems like it will be a little work but not too bad. After school my dad came and picked me up again and Chaz, Leah, Jorge and I went to exchange money in Valpo (Chaz and Leah needed money), this is apparently a bad idea as it is super dangerous but luckily nothing bad happened with us! After we went to Paris, a large store so Chaz could buy a phone! After that Leah left and Chaz, Jorge and I went for a stroll around Valpo, much like my first day here! It was lots of fun and lots and lots of walking but I took pictures! We rode 2 ascensores (elevator things that go up/down the side of the hills) and wandered back down both times. See the pictures below for more detail. I also took pictures of all the murals that are in Valpo. There is lot of graffiti but there are also lots of murales that are super sweet! I'll try to post a couple of my favorite below! I also bought some super sweet earrings made of glass!

The sweet glass earrings I bought!
Looking down a road
Host dad, Jorge and me!
Going up the ascensore

Chaz and I waiting to go up!!!

After getting home and trying to figure out where to go for classes tomorrow (17th), Chaz and I realized that we had a choque de horario (quite literally a schedule crash but really just a conflict in schedule). The art building was not where I thought it was and was in fact on the other side (not in the right direction) of Viña. This led to much stressing and skipping a class today to go talk to Claudio, the super nice director of study abroad stuff at PUCV.

So today we went to talk to Claudio and after a mess of talking to people and coming up with alternatives and such maaay possibly have a schedule. Though it is definitely not the one I want. For starters I can't take the sculpture class that I want and may have to take the poetry class I was thinking about dropping. So currently I'm just waiting and hoping things work out but sad that I can't take the sculpture class.

Despite this, after class and lunch Chaz and I went to the beach and bought ice cream and I got to walk in the sun and sand and ocean. So all things considered today was pretty sweet! Thanks to Chaz for helping me work through this mess with him! ^_^

<3Annie

Registering for Classes!!!

AHHH!!!! What a mess Monday was! We all met at PUCV (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso) where we will be taking most of our classes to learn a little about the school and register for classes! This normally sort of difficult task of registering classes was made about a million times worse as we had to register for more than we wanted so we had backups in case we want to drop a class if we don't like the prof or whatever. We also had to make these fit into a schedule and didn't know until the registration time, the time of the classes offered by IFSA, only the ones from the schools! This was a nightmare and took about 3 hours to figure everything out and walk around to the different people in the room and individually put our names on a list for each class that we want to take! Ahhh! It was a mess! Eventually I got registered and am currently taking 19 credits of classes but only need 15/16 so I'll probably drop one!

Here's the current list:

• Film class

• Lecture of Poets

• Advanced Grammar and Composition (IFSA class)

• Contemporary Chilean Literature (IFSA class)

• Sculpture art class

• Silk printing art class

• Traditional Dances class

Whew! Lots of stuff but now I'm all set for the moment! ^_^ I also bought this sweet notebook! Awesome artsy looking! ^_^

<3Annie

Orientation Weekend!

The pool at the hotel!

Pretty flowers on a vine, possibly called a Trumpet Vine or something...

The sweet water tower next to the even more sweet playground!

PLAYGROUND!!!!

Palms in our lovely hotel!

Oh man lots to write!!! Also, I would have updated this last night but there was a blackout in basically all of Chile but I'll comment on this later!

So Friday all of the students who were already in Viña had to be at el Museo Funck at 7:30am to go to Santiago to pick up the kids from the group flight that were flying in! This was super early as I had to get up at like 6:15am to shower and such. Then when we got to Santiago at like 9:30 or something we had to wait until probably 12:15 for all the other students to get through customs and such. I was not much of a happy camper from this... I mean poor planning on IFSA's part, we totally could have slept in for like a few hours more but nevertheless we left the airport and headed for Olmué that is a little north but mostly east of Viña. Just out of Santiago we stopped at una bomba (the word for bomb but here they say that instead of the normal gasolinera for gas station) and picked up some food for lunch but my wonderful mom had already packed me one! Yay! Also while at the airport which really consisted of white tents, a few people (not including me), went for a drink in one of the white carnival-shaped tents since we had to wait so long. This was quite amusing!

We arrived in Olmué in time for lunch, which turned out to be a fantastic place for orientation because it was calm and not busy, with dirt roads and all. I thought lunch in my house consisted of a lot of food but I was completely wrong! The food at the hotel had like 4 courses and I could have had like 2 and been done but it was all so delicious that I couldn't help but try to eat most of all of it!!! ^_^ After lunch we had a talk about culture shock and what to do in a tsunami and terremoto (earthquake) then there was a class of dancing that I was too tired to go to. Also, if you didn't know I can't move my hips very well so latin dances are kinda out.... haha ^_^ I spent my time sitting in the sun and dark reading "A Clockwork Orange" and relaxing! After we ate dinner, which was also a ton of food. Then, with a large group of people, probably more than 3/4 of the 23 of us, we took a trip to the Unimarc (a grocery store) for the whole group of gringos to look at all the alcohol and be loud and attract attention as most of us proceeded to buy cajas de vino (boxed wine) y ron (rum) y mucho más alcohol (much more alcohol). This lead to a fun evening of talking and kinda partying in the rooms.

The next day we learned more about Chilean spanish, which is almost nothing like the spanish we learned in school, and school stuff. Then we had to take a written spanish test and in the afternoon an oral test to see what level we were in grammar and speaking. We had lunch between these and free time. During the free time I tomé sol (sun bathed) and walked around the town with a new friend named Leah, where we controlled ourselves from buying tons of stuff at the market. Despite this I went back later with some other new friends, Ben and Anna, and bought some delicious sexy, spicy perfume that is cinnamon and orange flavored! *sizzle* It kind of makes me smell like chai tea... it's delicious! The evening went similar to the one before and I got to sleep late again!

All this going to sleep late and waking up early made me reaaally tired but finally on Sunday was our last day. I was also having a great time getting to know all the students who are from like everywhere in the United States and all super nice and fun and different and amazing!!!!! ^_^ Our last day we learned more about Chile, security in the city, and more about classes and the universities. In the late afternoon we left to go back to Viña and meet/reunite with our host families!!!

That evening when I was attempting to pick classes and pick up/arrange my room all the lights went out. Because of this the internet also wasn't working so I basically had nothing to do. I waited for a while, cleaning my room a la luz de una vela (by the light of a candle), and picked out some class choices as sitting next to a battery operated emergency light! We also heard by the radio on our cell phones that basically all of Chile didn't have lights! How crazy is that!!!!!! Pretty crazy! That was when I decided to give up and go to sleep! Though the lights came back on in like an hour!

<3Annie

The Weekend

So tomorrow morning I get to wake up bright and early to head to Santiago with the other 6 students to meet up with the rest of the group who are flying in tomorrow morning... From there we are all going to Olmué, Chile, for our weekend orientation! So I probably won't be able to update things until Sunday night at the earliest!

Have a spectacular weekend everyone!

<3Annie

Only in Chile...

Only in Chile would there be an earthquake in the middle of the changing hands of the leaders of the country which would cut the ceremony short as everyone evacuated the building.

So thus far today there have been 12 aftershocks/earthquakes and a tsunami alert which was interesting to watch as people ran/drove/walked briskly up the roads to higher grounds. I just had to stand outside the apartment for a while so nothing major there... but I actually felt the earthquake this time! I've been missing most of them but now I have felt a couple!

Later this evening, my papa and I walked a circle around the block and near the ocean to see if la mar fue anojada o no (if the sea was angry or not) but papa said that it wasn't. We then ended up getting on a micro (bus) to Valpo to visit his mom which was fun! We picked up pan (bread) on the way home and are now waiting for la cena (dinner)!

Ciao!

<3Annie

Day 2: Part 2

In the evening when I was getting all settled in for the night my family told me to get my jacket and my camera. I did and we got in the car and drove maybe 5 or 10 minutes north next to the ocean. Then we stopped and walked on the boardwalk for a while (this was at close to 10 at night). From there we could see the amazing sight of Valpo and Viña at night! The hill was all lit up from the lights in the houses, it was like the milky way but closer and brighter! You can kind of see it in the back of the picture with my host mom, Isabella, and my sister, Andrea and me!

Despite there being lots of lights in the city the apartments/condos on the boardwalk were almost all dark. Andrea said that many people left after the tsunami but that a tsunami usually doesn't strike the same place twice. After that we drove back toward Viña and stopped at Bravissimo, a restaurant, where we ordered chocolate caliente (hot chocolate) and galletas (cookies). They were very good but the hot chocolate was not as sweet as at home, but still delicious! Also on our way to the boardwalk when stopped at a semáforo (stoplight) a guy with a stick came into the middle of the road and lit both ends of the stick and twirled it around and through it into the air! It reminded me of the fire days at juggling club! Very cool!

Then I got home, sat on the computer and went to sleep for a long time as we have un día libre hoy (a free day today!). If the sun comes out in the afternoon, Chaz, Mike and I are supposed to go to the beach but we'll see and hope! ^_^

ciao!

<3Annie

Day 2

Hola!

Today I woke up earlyish (8:30am) to go on a tour with the group of students (Chaz, Mike and I and four other super nice girls) who are here of the different schools that we can take classes at. They all seem really cool, some much prettier than others and such. There is only one that I can't imagine attending as it is on the other side of town and doesn't appear to offer any classes that interest me.

In the afternoon, after getting a phone (yay!) and minutes on it I met up with Chaz and Mike, my two gustie guys, and we hung out and wandered to the beach! It was cloudy, overcast, and a bit chilly this morning but by afternoon the sun was out and it was quite warm! Mike and I took off our shoes and walked in the waves though the water was a tad cold! We also had a friendly guy talk to us about his fe (faith) in Jesus and such for a while for some reason speaking english though spanish would have been easier for all of us! ^_^ Then I walked home all by myself as I live around 10 blocks from where Chaz and Mike live! And I made it home fine and it was awesome!!! I'm starting to get a feel for the roads and where they are but hopefully I'll know more in the days to come! Everything is super good and I'm starting to figure things out and not be so rusty with my spanish! ^_^

<3Annie

ps: only 3 mullets seen today

pps: I realized I didn't mention the number of stray dogs around Viña! There are tons of them, one which followed us for a time on our tour today! But our guide, who works with international students, Helen, said to probably not touch them as they have pulgas (fleas)!

We Walked and Walked and Walked Some More!

Hello everyone!!!
I have arrived in Chile safe and sound! Though I'm not sure my shoulders/back and feet would agree.

The flight went well except for having to wait a while once we got to Santiago. We then were ushered off the flight and had to find our baggage which was lined up on the runway. Luckily we all found our baggage and got in a long snaking line through white tents to get through customs which went very smoothly! We then found a person with an IFSA sign who helped us get to a van which drove us to the bus station which we rode for about 2 hours into Viña del Mar.

There we found three people waiting with our names on signs (YES!!!) who drove us separately to our host families!

My family is super nice and keeps trying to feed me more and more food, which of course I can't eat all of.. which makes me feel a little impolite... I have a cute little room in the apartment which even has a tv, which I won't be using that much!

After a quick but very filling meal (their lunch is like our dinner) I took a quick shower then even quicker and not satisfying nap before heading off to Valparaíso with Jorge, my host dad, to show me where the school was and apparently walk almost every street there (haha okay that's an exaggeration)!!! Nevertheless, it was lots of fun and I got to see some great views!

This evening after dinner I went to find a converter to be able to charge my computer and am now here updating my blog and checking email!

So everthing is wonderful, other than being tired.

Also, the mullet is still a strong hairstyle here along with 80's music, which I can't object to.. but my mullet count for the day was around 16 though I'm sure I missed a lot when I was looking at buildings instead of people!!!

<3Annie

Goodbye Minnesota, Hello Chile!

Hi everyone!!!
I'm finally all packed and ready to go and will be leaving in a few hours!

Wish me luck!

I love you all!

<3Annie

Wonder of Wonders, Miracle of Miracles

So after a lot of waiting, more hoping and a little magic I finally have tickets (for the seconded time) to go to Chile!

I will be flying out of Minnesota on the 8th in the afternoon and arriving in Santiago in the morning of the 9th!

I am so excited to finally have a date and tickets! Thanks to Mum for sitting on the phone with the airline for hours trying to get this figured out!!!

<3Annie