Moving, La Serena, and BUSY!

(sorry for the lack of fotos in this post, I'll try to add them later when my internet is hopefully more functional)

Hello! Sorry for the lack of blogging, 4 days without internet plus 2 very busy days with very crappy internet has resulted in a bit of a dry spell. In fact, I’m currently writing this in word processor and going to copy and paste it when my internet decides to function enough to let me log into blogspot.

Thursday was spent packing up all of my things like a crazy person and swearing there was NO way it was all going to fit back into the bags I brought it here in. By some miracle, it fit and I said goodbye to Claudia, hauled all of my stuff down, and got a taxi to my new apartment finally around 7 PM Thursday evening. Now here’s the kicker: we had to leave for our weekend trip Thursday at 9 PM and had to very quickly throw our clothes out of our bags, throw some weekend packing together, and head out towards the bus station after a very quick dinner and brief stint at our new abode. We got a teensy bit confused on our way to the metro, having never done it before from this location, and ended up going for a half hour walk through Las Condes with our backpacks on. Finally, we arrived (only slightly late but hey, it’s Chile) at the bus station and departed for La Serena with the big group around 11 PM for an 8 hour overnight bus ride.

Thus began a weekend we will certainly remember and in which a vital lesson was learned: WE WILL NEVER DO A LARGE GROUP TRIP/BUS TOUR AGAIN! The $150 weekend was full of “included tours” most of which turned out to be free, “included food” most of which turned out to be bad, “non-included lunches” which turned out to be meals you were forced to buy, a bus driver that took forever to get everywhere and took out power lines and air conditioner units in one foul swipe, a total f 10 minutes on the beach in the Chilean town famous for it’s beaches and not much else, being verbally harassed and discriminated by a Chilean man on a crappy catermeran to a sea lion island that equaled a rock with way fewer sea lions than Pier 39, and a ridiculous amount of time on a bus!

That being said, we did get to see another part of Chile that was very pretty and I spent the weekend with some very good friends!

On Friday, we ate breakfast in Tongoy and then trekked up to a cross on a hill overlooking a very pretty harbor before heading to Coquimbo to an elaborately hand built and very gorgeous Muslim Mezquita (for the 5 practicing Muslims in the greater Coquimbo/La Serena region). After that we headed over to another cross that was HUGE and concrete on a hill where we took an elevator up for a view (although it was pretty overcast and cold!). Then, we headed to our cabañas, one of the upsides of the weekend as they were very nice! Gina, Lindsey, and I ended up rooming with 4 other exchange students from the US that were each very nice and cool people to meet and hang out with! Later that day, we spent 10 minutes at the beach and headed into the center of La Serena where we went to another church and saw a Good Friday procession. We then went to an artisan market where I bought a little coin purse that I later was INCREDIBLY thankful for and ate some delicious cheese empenadas and ice cream. Then, we headed back to the cabañas where we ate some yogurt and cereal for dinner and watched a movie with our cabin mates.

On Saturday after waking up and running along the beach, we spent a whole day in the Valle de Elqui that was full of lots of ridiculous group dumb-ness but I will focus on simply what we did and the upsides. We toured 2 Pisco factories, ate lunch at a restaurant that used only solar ovens, ate some cactus fruit, went to many plazas and churches, went to a Chilean Nobel Prize winning poet's grave (but not her house since it was closed since we had obviously spent vital time at the Pisco places instead, sacrcasm), at some empanadas, and went to an observatory. The stars were INCREDIBLE! There are exponentially more stars in the southern hemisphere than the northern and we even saw mars and saturn! So beautiful, even if we did walk up a very steep hill in the pitch black to get there since our bus driver decided he didn't want to drive up the hill. We ate dinner at 2:30 AM when we returned to the cabañas and then went to sleep.

Sunday involved sleeping in, eating peeps and robins eggs, the lovely catermeran trip I have already mentioned, lunch, and the very long bus journey back to Santiago in which I swear the girl by us NEVER stopped talking and boy did her voice carry. Upon returning to Santiago in the bus station that our Chilean guide swore was safe, my wallet was stolen. LUCKILY, it was pretty much empty thanks to my new coin purse. All the thief got away with was 5 Argentine Pesos (~$1.25), my apartment keys that were easy to replace, my school ID which I'm in the process of getting replaced, and my llama ring from El Calafate :(. All of my money and credit cards and Chilean ID were elsewhere and safe.

So overall, not the ideal way to spend my first Easter weekend away from home, but at least we spoke a lot of Spanish, met some new people, and saw a new part of Chile. We also learned that we will be returning to our previous traveling ways from now on!


Since returning to Santiago, Gina and I spent all day Monday unpacking, doing homework, shopping for food and apartment things, and settling into our new apartment. Besides the current internet issue, we love it! It's great to finally be able to really feel like we live here and cook our own food again and everything! Last night, Lindsey came over for our inaugural apartment dinner of grilled cheese and ketchup (we splurged for the imported Heinz!). Then I skyped with the parents and prepared for a very busy week to come!

Today, I had class all day as my 3rd class on Chilean Culture has now started. It seems like it will be educational and not that hard at all which is good to know! In my 4 hour break between classes I traveled all over Santiago running errands such as turning in my internship form and buying an ethernet cable. Tonight, we had some delicious hamburger patties with cheese and lettuce for dinner, I finally broke down and dyed my hair (the roots were absolutely ridiculous), and I skyped with Jess.

All of the sudden I have become very busy! I have my internship tomorrow (hopefully I succeed in getting there from our new location!) and then am studying with some friend for the test we have on Thursday! Then it's mandatory EAP cemetary trip time, half marathon time, tandem time, and then time to do it all over again! AH!

We're looking into going to Buenos Aires with Gina's Mom while she is here, hopefully that will work out!

Love and miss you all! Sorry this update is so list-like, but so much has happened it's hard to regurgitate it all!