Aventuras!

Today was almost a 180 from yesterday, I felt particularly upbeat for some reason or another nearly all day. This morning, I woke up and met two friends at a metro station where we further ventured into the heart of Santiago to los mercados de La Veca and El Patronato. La Veca was really awesome to see, just a HUGE somewhat open air market of fruits and vegetables and squashes and meats. The people were a little. . .I don't even know what the right word would be. Let's just say the men kind of took the regression of Latin American machismo and regressed its progress. I had also been told it was not a good idea to eat any of the food because it may lack sanitation, so this trip was mostly to see the place, which was definitely worth it!

We then walked towards the neighboring market of El Patronato, not exactly sure of where we were going but we did eventually end up there! This is a multi-street market (both on the streets and in established stores) of clothing. There are TONS of clothes including crazy Chilean pants, dresses, tops, toms-look-a-like shoes which I bought for 3000 pesos~$6, and more! I will definitely be returning here!

We then found a cute little greek cafe where we sat down and ate some schawarma (mmmmm) and started to meticulously iron out the details of our break plans! Right now, it sounds like we will be doing only Patagonia and doing it in a fairly significant depth! I'm really excited for it, even though ironing out all the details is a pretty daunting task we seem to have a pretty good handle on it and I think we will likely purchase our plane tickets to Punta Arenas and back this weekend! Trip plans so far include: Punta Arenas, penguin colony (!!!!), Puerto Natales, Torres del Paine (The W Trek), Puerto Natales again, El Calafate and the coinciding glacier (this is Argentinian Patagonia), and Tierra del Fuego, all in about 2 weeks! Pretty much the dream Patagonia vacation, only done so in hostels and camping and busses. :)

The rest of today consisted of class and then an adventure with our group and cultural monitors to dinner in Providencia in a restaurant that was pretty swanky haha. We had a Mexican food platter (OMG I already miss mexican food)! Then we ventured to ice cream and headed back home where I got to skype with Jess, Court, Katie, AND Milo, alll at the same time! A perfect ending to a pretty awesome day in Santiago!