Around Santiago po...

Sidenote: the word ¨po¨ is used at the end of sentences in Chilean Spanish. It was weird at first because I was so not used to it, and it completely stuck out, but I am actually starting to use it oo!

The last few weeks, I have hung around the homestead, taking in the sights and getting to know Santiago, po. I´ve found that Santiago is literally a city of extremes: on the streets, people sleep with stray dogs for warmth and get fed by church groups while other people enjoy wine tastings and ballets without the same worries, po. I went with my two friends Ali and Michelle, and Michelle´s family´s church group to help feed the homeless in five different destinations in Santiago, po. The group meets every Friday night and hits the same exact spots, where sure enough there are plenty of people to feed, po (you get the idea). I was freezing by the end of the night, and welcomed the fact that I got to go home to a warm bed in a nice apartment where I wouldn´t have to return to those places if I didn´t want to. It´s horrible that people are stuck there.


I also went to the Chilean national ballet, a collage of dances featuring one or two characters in each one, and a wine festival in the Plaza Ñuñoa close to where I live. The ballet was a little too modern for my tastes, but we also saw a group of dancers outside the theater doing capoeira, a Brazilian martial arts dance. It looked exactly like that, with a little African thrown in there. The festival was fun, a little classier than the one I went to in Curicò because you went into a restaurant, sat down and tried a glass at each place. All the wines were from the same type of grape called Carmenere, and there were 14 brands in all. The above picture is Ali and I sampling from the brand Cremaschi Furlotti.



One of the restaurants on in the wine festival. El amor nunca muere = Love never dies. A little bit of typical Latin romance there.



Ali, Michelle and I also explored some of the more touristy destinations, like the Plaza de Armas, Mercado Central, and Museo de Bellas Artes. We came upon cueca dancers from Chile dancing with Native Americans from Ecuador near the Plaza de Armas while be were shopping in the marketplace. Chileans are intensely proud of being Chilean, but many people claim that Chileans lost sight of their identity during the dictatorship. They say this about Santiago especially because being here is not the same as being in Buenos Aires, Argentina or Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It was nice to see this and say that there is still culture here.



Yes, that is Mary in a wedding gown. We stumbled into a beautiful gothic style church that had unbelievably glamorous decor, a bunch of paintings of saints surrounded by flowers, and an entire separate chapel dedicated to Mary.

At Mercado Central we experienced what I guess is aggressive marketing. We couldn´t go 5 steps without someone asking where we were from and trying to get us to eat at their restaurant. Grrr. We ended up leaving rather quickly and ate ice cream at Bravissimo, a local chain. The ice cream here is colorful, healthy, and tastes unhealthy all at the same time, so you can´t go wrong. We settled on pistacchio, mousse manjar (manjar is like carmel), piña (pineapple), lùcuma (a fruit that only grows in the Chilean desert) and mora crema (blackberry).


That day I also bought another Chilean food creation: the chorrillana. This is a heap of layers of cholestral-induced heaven; a layer of beef cutlets, followed by fried onions, then a layer of fries, topped off with a fried egg. It sounds disgusting, but it was really too good for words.




I went back to Valparaìso on a paseo with the program this past Saturday. I liked it because instead of walking around the city, we took a boat ride around the port. That was Hanna and I cruising aboard the I Love Jennifer.




Sea lions on the dock. They perched themselves on small boats and buoyes as well.

Deja vu! More colored houses in Valparaìso and a sign for a silver smith!

Some of the more creative graffiti. It´s mixed with glass. Yo volarè hacia ti = I will fly towards you.

The guy that owns this weird looking puppet must run a show in the exact same park all the time, because it was the seond time I´ve seen him there. All of the puppets are made from recycled garbage.

All of these things make both Valparaìso and Santiago what they are, and it was good to get out and explore them a little more. I do think each city has its own culture and something that makes it a little different from anything other one. Sometimes they do all seem the same, but I think you can always find something that makes it unique.