Schroeders-Squadritto Hotel Vina del Mar

... i nakon razgovora s estebanovom sestrom (koja je fenomenalna) odlucila sam da ipak ne prihvacam svinjsku gripu i da cu bit zdrava jer mi se sutra ide van!

zasad mi je plan ici iduci tjedan na dva dana u santiago, poslije toga do la serena pa onda u atacama pustinju na par dana i zatim u peru. kako cu do perua i gdje tocno idem, odlucit cu u pustinji :D uglavnom, previse dobrih stvari sam cula za buenos aires i za rio de janeiro tako ...

... that some chilenos put in their tea. My classes are very interesting, and I'm learning many many words that are only used here in Chile. Bacan means cool, and there are several other words that I probably shouldn't mention here!

Some of the words that I learned were taught to me by mi hermano Oscar and his friends. He picked me and one of the other girls from the program, Crystal, up and took us to his apartment ...

... like this....He asked where I was from and when I revealed the USA, he started shaking his head and the one Spanish word I picked up was "bad". I then think he was telling me it was bad that I only spoke a pocito (BTW, I'm focusing on Spanish talking, not spelling.) of Spanish (It was 2:30am and I was relying more on my sign language than attempts at Spanglish). Our 3rd and final customs line had lots of signs with pictures of fruits, vegetables, etc. to ...

... murs. En rencontrant plusieurs graphistes de rue, on apprend que c'est le lieu le pplus connu du continent pour venir y 'poser'. On fait le tour en une journee, assez etouffante, et decidons de nous diriger vers Vina del Mar, a 15min de la, LA station balneaire chilienne. Tout y est neuf et un peu surfait mais la qualite urbaine est la. Il y a de l'espace et on respire bien mieux quq Valpo. Un casino geant ...

I met up with a few Aussies at the hostel last night and after sampling some Chilean beer we wandered down the cobblestone streets to find dinner. We settled for a place with pizza called 'Ritual'. None of us knew much spanish and the restaurant owner didn't speak much english. We tried to order one of the things on the menu that we didn't know what it was, so we could find out, but ...

... search of a restaurant. It was like trying to find a needle in a haystack. It appears that Christmas Eve is more important to Chilean people than Christmas Day and so everywhere was closed. We couldn't find a single open restaurant anywhere. Even McDonalds was shut! Eventually, afetr we had been walking for ages and had pretty much covered the whole town we came across one restaurant that was open, and for obvious reasons very busy. It was a little more expensive than we were ...

... Greek! That´s pretty impressive. Super sweet, funny and friendly guy as far as I can tell. He definately doesn´t look like a typical Chilean- he has light brown hair and clear green eyes- and it turns out his family has European- Italian roots. His father is an architect and mother opened up a ¨clasico¨style of univeristy here I believe. He comes from a long line of scholars. Anyways, he wanted to take us to this cafe in order to introduce us to his favourite ...

... awesome if I was 15 and hyped up on sugar. Tuesday, if my credit card ever decides to arrive, we are going to start making our way to Antofagasto. It is going to be a 16 hr bus ride so we are probably going to stop somewhere in the middle for a night and continue the next day. Lets hope I dont have a crazy sitting next to me with a knife! lol just to make you a little more worried! Anyways thats all I have to say so far! Keep me updated on what is going on in your lives!! Later!

... It's a beach town about an hour an a half away. Both Laurel and I don't have cars, but I prefer it that way. (I don't want one because of the $$ and because I think people drive kind of crazy around here) So, we had to figure out how we were going to get from here to there and to be honest with you, it couldn't have been easier. My apartment (I promise I'll post pictures soon) is a block from the metro. Laurel lives by Nido ...

... out in the street at 3:30 AM. It also has even more stray dogs than Santiago, which is actually some achievement! One night here is enough though, and it´s time to move on. I had intended heading south towards Pucon & Puerto Montt in the Chilean Lake District, but a friend in Buenos Aires has got me a ticket for a Groove Armada gig there on Thursday night. Change of plan: I´m now going to head across the Andes to Mendoza, before heading east again to BsAs...