Hotel Asturias Vina del Mar

I took it easy today, especially after yesterday. I got up early to go with Kaye to a class that she teaches at a private girls' school. It's a small Bible class with 3 girls in the 8th grade. They reminded me of my youth group girls and spoke great English. The school is a British school so they do a lot of the instruction and work in English. After that I went back to bed.

I walked down the big hill to Renaca, the beach town below the house ...

... DESET prodavaca/farmaceuta (nisam sigurna) u jednoj ljekarni (koja se nalazi u sklopu trgovine tipa dm). i iza svake blagajne bile su barem dvije osobe koje su cekale. a ljekarna na svakom cosku, doslovce! imali su neke afere s pljackama od strane ljekarni, pricala mi je estebanova sestra.

kad smo isli do valparaisa, esteban mi je rekao da je najbolje drzat auto zakljucan dok se vozis jer je njegov prijatelj jednom isao otkljucan pa su mu na semaforu (ili di vec) upali s ...

... like! My host parents did not think that Americans liked to mix solids with liquids until I told them that we eat many different soups, like Chili and turtle soup. Everyone seems to get a kick out of turtle soup. They can't believe it!

During the afternoon, I returned to the house with another friend, Crystal. We hung out in my room for a while, had once, and afterwards we went out for another friend's birthday. Genevieve (who's in the ISEP program ...

... comer la especialidad de la zona: pescado) y de Valparaíso (el ascensor de Artillería por el cual subimos y esuvimos en el mirador de este cerro, La casa de Neruda "La Sebastiana", y algunos lugares que ya habíamos recorrido).

Valpairiso is wel een leuk plaatsje dat ergens wel wat op Salvador, dan wel Rio lijkt aangezien het stadje tegen een heuvel is aangebouwd (al heb ik het vermoeden dat het hier niet allerlei favella`s zijn). Hier een beetje rondgehobbeld en gerelaxed. De volgende dag hadden we om 10u `s avonds een bus richting Mendoza dus besloten om in het naast gelegen Vina del Mar een dagje op het strand door te brengen. Eenmaal aangekomen kwamen we erachter dat ...

... a potentially cute receptionist under less-than-ideal lighting conditions and at the time, I thought "I'll bet she looks even better in person ..." And I was right! Let's just say that Liszett was qualified to work the reception desk of any hotel in Spain ... Upon first seeing her, I thought "Hmmm ... maybe this hotel isn't so bad, after all ..." My second thought was "Maybe if I give her 500 pesos, she'll hug me like that homeless dude hugged me ...

... we go for a movie rather than going back to the hostel, we went for the movie 'Blindness'. This is a rather weird movie and till this day I'm still not sure the whole purpose or intention of the movie. After the movie, we took the ...

... hills such as Cerro Concepción and Cerro Alegre, the city's rundown buildings are being rebuilt. The historical importance of this city - a reason why UNESCO designated Valparaíso a World Heritage Site in 2002. Much like San Francisco, the city is made of a flat downtown surrounded by steep hills. The jumble of multicolored clapboard homes and weathered Victorian mansions that cling to sheer cliffs and other unusual spaces ...

... down into the Santiago subway expecting the worst and found the biggest, cleanest, fastest subway ever! A few stops later and I walked right into the bus terminal and bought my ticket without ever having to grace sunlight. The scenery along the way was pretty unremarkable--desert mostly, cactuses here and there, a few dingy-looking towns with rundown buildings, a few here and there a bit nicer looking. My first glimpse of the coast was as we descended ...