Unsatisfying update... but at least an update!

Sorry everyone about the lack of updates but I've been rather busy between classes, homework and friends. Mostly friends and sunshine and fun that has been keeping me away but I'm in CHILE!!!! ^_^

This will not be a satisfying update as I am finishing packing my bags to leave for Mendoza, Argentina in a few short hours! I will be there until the 7th along with Leah, Chaz, Eric and Jacob! Then off again to La Serena with the IFSA group on the 8th - 11th!!! Hopefully I'll have time to update when I get back from those places with lots of fun adventures!!!

Hope everyone is amazing and loving life as much as I currently am!!!

<3Annie

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