Valparaiso!

Ok, first things first: 1) No you cannot see the ocean from the top of San Cristobal. Why? Because it's 50 miles away and between Santiago is a wee thing called the Andes Mountain Range. 2) People were murdered at the Estado Nacional during the reign of Pinochet. I've heard that they buried the bodies underneath the field, but I don't know if that's for real. But they detained some 40,000 prisoners there at one point. Pinochet was un hombre loco.

Alrighty, so this was my first week of classes. Wahoo. I actually register this coming Monday, so this past week I just went to any classes that seemed interesting in case I wanted to take them. You know, I've always found it easy to zone off when my teachers spoke in English, but now that I have teachers talking in a different language, it's soooo much easier. Sorry Mom and Dad. It just takes so much brain power to concentrate on what the profs are saying! Gaaah.

Last night, the international welcoming committee (I'm sure there's a formal name of some sort) hosted a choripanada, which is una fiesta con choripanes. A choripan is a kind of sausagey thing, which is super tasty. And they served piscolas, which I found to be rather hilarious. There were a lot of other extranjeros from all over the world, which is super neat. I also met some more chilenos. It's weird, but I still think it's cute when people have Spanish-sounding names, like Gonzalo or Pablo or Francisco. Ha, I giggled as a typed that.






Today my program took a paseo to Valparaiso and Vina del Mar. This is my "creative" panoramic picture. We first stopped off at the beach and walked around for 15 minutes or so. I just wanted to test the water out, since I've never touched the Pacific Ocean. My friends and I wanted a picture of us with our feet in the water, so we went and stood in about an inch of water right on the shore. Right as the picture was being taken, however, a big wave came and hit us. And this is the result. Attractive.















This is from a lookout point in Con-Con, which is a little north of Vina del Mar. It was pretty. Let's see how this video works. You can see the sand dunes in the video and our guide said that people go sandboarding (like snowboarding, but in the sand) there.




Valparaiso is super neat because all the buildings and houses are painted different colors. There's no rhyme or reason to it, but the city (some committee, I suppose) tells you what color to paint your building. They wanted to maintain diversity in the city. I took pictures of the houses, but the postcards I bought look the prettiest. They always do.



Oooh, another cool thing is that you can be walking down the street and be like "Wow, that's a cool one-story building" and then you could turn the corner and see the other four stories of the building. Like in this picture, I bet that guy on the right didn't know there was another story beneath it. Ha!













Valpo also had some interesting graffiti. In a 10x10 ft space, we have a creepy boyscout, dogs humping, a cat craving cigarettes, and dolphins (to name a few). Viva Chile.



Once again, more pictures on facebook.

Next week starts my first week of real classes. Eeek. Wish me luck!


Abrazos y besos y chili con queso!