Spring has hit Santiago, and it has been warm and sunny lately. The smog tries to block out the sun once in a while but thanks to
the thin ozone layer around here, it doesn't do a very good job. Good weather during the day means that it doesn't get freezing cold inside of houses/apartments at night, which is a nice change of pace from when I first got here. My friend Lucy has a really charming back patio behind her house and we have eaten our there three times over the past two weeks (pictures!). We also had coffee out there one morning before school, sitting at the big wooden table dappled in sunlight. It would be perfect but they have this crazy dog who is alw
ays running around, jumping on laps, and trying to steal food. We love her but sometimes you just want to throw her on the grill with the burgers. Nooooo - she's a lover. Anyway, one night Lucy made caprese salad, our favorite, and last night another friend of ours made these delicious burgers and we had sauteed onions, mushrooms, and peppers to go on them, along with avocado and tomato. AND Heinz-brand ketchup and mustard. Loved it. Last weekend we had another go at pie-making (strawberry this time) and this one was much more successful.On Friday night a
bunch of us went out with Mariana and her friends to a club a bit south of downtown to dan
ce some cueca, because Mariana's friend plays in a cueca band. It was soooooo much fun (more pictures!). What I have realized about dancing the cueca is that more important than knowing the actual steps is having the cueca attitude. It got packed in this club with people of all ages, and the pañuelos were flying. Really, if you haven't done it yet, look up a video of chilean cueca on youtube. We decided it must run in Chilean blood because even after the band stopped playing, people started banging the rhythm on tables and couples were just as happy dancing to that. Awesome.Soccer has been so good to me lately. I'm becoming much better friends with some of the girls in my class, and the team I play with on weekends qualified for the gold bracket! We thought we were still in qualifying rounds, but we showed up for our game on Saturday and found out we had already made it! And we tied our first game 4-4, thinking we were going to lose. PLUS I think we're getting t-shirt uniforms, aka my favorite thing in the whole world. That will be a great souvenir. I might add another weekly soccer session to my week too - another girl in our class has a team in a different league, and our teams might get together to play pick-up on Wednesday nights. Which would bring the total to 5 days of soccer a week. Beautiful.
Today I went rock climbing for the first time. It is so much fun!! I had gone in gyms maybe twice in my entire life, and not since I was probably 10 or 12. This was on top of a cerro, real live rock climbing. (Pictures, obviously). I only went up once but I can tell my arms are going to be sore tomorrow. Not to mention the hike up is no easy task. A few of my friends have enough gear that we can go ourselves and be self-sufficient. I love climbing anything, and this was no exception. We also have two really good climbing trees outside of the apartment building. I might have to start being more of a monkey in those now that I've gotten a taste of the real thing.
Volunteering at the high school is going well. The boys whistle at me less outside of the classroom now, and the students are getting more comfortable asking me and the other volunteer questions when they're working. I'm going to show one of the classes a powerpoint about places in Madison. They're doing a unit on cities. (Speaking of Madison, what a season to be a Badger football fan, no? I don't even like football but I do like beating the gophers in their new monstrosity of a stadium :D)
Next weekend I'm going up to the Atacama Desert with some friends. It is purported to be the driest desert in the world and some people think it hasn't rained there for decades (for example, me and my Dad), but my geography professor told us just the other day that that is BS. It rains a little bit every winter, and also she said, "and what does 'dry' mean anyway?" Apparently some guy wrote an article about it a long time ago and called it that, and the reputation stuck. It should be a fun trip. Hopefully I'll get another chance to blog before I leave!
Here's a picture of the view from where we were rock climbing today. That's all for now! Missing home, loving Chile.
No comments:
Post a Comment