Relaxation Weekend

This weekend was very very very nice and relaxing. Some may say I didn't really do much of anything, but I on the contrary think I did quite a bit, a majority of it was just intentionally relaxing!

How many times did I set my alarm this weekend? 0.
How many times did I put make up on this weekend? 0.
How many times did I sleep until after 11am this weekend? 4.
The list could go on and on.

Friday evening, after a rainy day in cuddling with blankets and catching up on some things I headed out for our weekly Date Night and a theater production. We ate dinner at a restaurant called Patagonia (thus there was an ongoing joke all night that we were going back to Patagonia, how I wish this had been true) and ordered a bottle of vino (wine) with our dinners (how I love being able to do that down here) before heading over to the Instituto Norteamericano Chileno (Chilean Northamerican Institute) for a low budget theater production that cost about $6. It was in Spanish and called "De Cristal", an adaptation of a Tennessee Williams productions (The Glass Menagerie). It was clearly somewhat amateur and there were only 4 actors and no props, but it was a really fun experience and I'm really glad we went! The story was also pretty interesting! Afterwards, we got some ice cream for dessert at our favorite heladeria, Bravissimo, before heading home. I thought the day would never come after the countless days of sweating bullets where ever I went and wearing shorts and tank tops and still overheating, but I even got to comfortably wear jeans, uggs, a long sleeve shirt, a sweater, and a scarf! I think fall has officially arrived!

On Saturday, I slept in once again which felt so good after waking up and going going going for 3 days straight during the school week. That afternoon, Gina and I finally tackled the laundry beast that had been building for nearly 2 weeks and found the lavanderia around the corner from our apartment. A unique cultural thing down here is that many people never do their own laundry. For instance, we don't even have that option. Our building has a washer but we have to pay the owners to do our wash for us. We instead opted for the no more expensive location around the corner and our clothes saw a dryer machine for the first time since we left the US! A source of much excitement when we got our clothes back today and they didn't feel starchy and stretched out for the first time in 3 months! We also cleaned our apartment that afternoon, even the bathroom (Mom would be proud!)! That evening after preparing some pretty awesome guacomole involving mashing up 5! avocados and after Gina got carded buying a six pack of beer (which is hilarious since no one gets carded down here unless your 12), we went over to Lindsey's apartment and met some other friends for a movie night. Lindsey had made brownies from scratch and put manjar (dulce de leche) in the batter and her roommate Ariel (Chilean) had set up a big projector on their white wall where we watched a movie and then youtubed hialrious videos until 2 in the morning while eating copious amounts of guacomole and brownies. Yum!

On Sunday, I slept in once again and began to tackle the mountain of reading I have to do for the two tests I have coming up next week. I skyped with my parents and with Jess (who is now a Western District Officer of Psi!), and then Gina and Lindsey and I headed out for some dessert and planned to go ice skating later that night. As it turned out, the ice skating rink was really empty so we decided to go back on a friday or saturday soon and instead headed back to Lindsey's and had a drink while watching a movie meant for 8 year old girls, but boy was it fun!

After setting a sleeping in record today (noon, eek!) I was actually fairly productive. I finished the mountain of reading for one of my tests so now I just have a book for the other class, we got back our laundry, I went for a run, and we made a delicious dinner of pasta with sauteed eggplant and zucchini with oregano and garlic and sauce. Chile is starting to turn me into an actually decent cook, thanks to the general lack of flavor I am learning to modify things to make them delicious! Cooking will never be the same when I return to the US! Tonight, we attempted to go to a Yoga Class but due to the seeming inevitability that nothing we try in Chile will actually work out the first time, we failed. We did however, figure out how to successfully attend one of these yoga classes and will be doing so soon!

Besides these things, the weekend was spent making reservations, plans, and preparing for our trip to Buenos Aires and Montevideo this coming Thursday-Monday (SO EXCITED!), and enjoying the feeling of fall being upon us! I looooove not being unbearably hot every where I go these days, it is glorious! I definitely feel like I'm ready for a vacation so I am very excited for this weekend, just have to get through a day of class and a day of interning and then we're off!