Bing me!

I just finished a letter to 826 Valencia telling them why they should hire me and now I can’t think of anything to write. I was going to go backwards but that just seems to complicated right now, so here’s the beginning:
This was the week of Bing.
Tuesday morning, I headed down to the tourism office to talk about Torres del Paine, which seems totally do-able, even if we just wanted to do day hikes. I’ve decided that Chile is the most beautiful country I’ve ever been to; so pretty much, no matter where you end up going, it’s pretty sweet. And the people are nice, like the lady who helped me at the tourism office. I spent the rest of the day catching up on schoolwork, or starting it, and went to dance class. This was a Stanford-sponsored dance class. Like most Stanford dance classes, I was disappointed. Sad panda.
The highlight of Wednesday was that incredible jazz festival that the Bing’s paid for. The performance was on the banks of the incredibly polluted river in Santiago, but it was gorgeous anyways. The guy who was performing, Al Di Meola, was wearing an incredible seventies-style vest, played a zebra print guitar and didn’t speak a single word of Spanish for the minute and a half he talked. Note even “Buenas Noches.” Jeff pointed out that all the pictures of Al Di Meola showed Al Di Meola minus five years. But the guitar playing rocked, as did the percussionists and the keyboardist’s smile. Afterwards, we headed out to the “Phone Box Pub.” Fabia, the center director, has described this place as “crunchy,” as in granola, as in hippie. I wonder if Fabia has ever had granola.
Thursday was another classless day, besides meeting with Mabel, who is super-bien. I found a pool, and it’s cheap. Go discounts! That night I had a great meal with my family, who decided that I needed to know more chilenismos. “What bad words do you know?” my host mom asked. After they finished my Spanish lesson, I headed off to Bellavista with Kiran and Ilana. We got lost by bus and ended up taking the most pimp taxi I have ever been in. Seriously, this guy had bought a new speaker set, put in a new engine; so there we are, racing between taxis and buses, about 100 miles an hour, blasting Bob Marley. Luckily, we see Kara and Sabrina at a stoplight and throw ourselves from the car to meet them. Then, salsa. There was live music and much dancing and spinning, oh my!
Friday: Picnic with Chileans. Today I learned that picnic is a racist word, coming from colonial America where they would pick a nigger to lynch and celebrate with food. To say the least, our picnic did not involve racism or lynchings, only soccer, paddle boats and card games. I then treated myself to a private dance party, which my room is just barely big enough for. Chileans are an interesting bunch. But Americans are definitely weirder.
I mean really who doesn’t go out on a Friday night and starts drinking on Saturday morning at 10:30. The Bings do! Or at least, they paid for us to go on the wine train. We had to be at the center at 8 in the morning, which means leaving the house at 7:15, which means it’s harder to find public transportation. But we made it on time and were served wine from the moment we stepped on the wine train at 10:30 to the end of our tour of Santa Cruz Viña around 4:45. That’s a lot of wine. Luckily, there was an interlude of Dylan, the tallest American among us, dancing the cueca with a girl who was about 4 ft tall. The wine valley is stunning, covered in a sea of grapevines and surrounded by green mountains. We all decided that we could get used to that type of life for a little while at least.
But instead, we headed straight off to Pichilemu, surfing capital of Chile. Okay, so only 5 of us went. Dawn and I had a little trouble, because the hostel we booked at was full, so we hostel hopped until we found one that had space run by a scary old man who sat in a glass office all day and night. We grabbed some empandas and ice cream, caught a couple songs from an outdoor concert, watched some skaters and went on the great ATM search so that we could pay for these really cool cloths we found. There was also some excellent rally, but I think we were both to cheap to pay for it. The next day we went surfing. That’s right, I totally surfed in a foreign country and caught one of the most perfect waves ever. But that’s about it. I caught one. In my defense, the currents sucked (literally) and I eventually gave up trying to paddle out. We then went to go find the bus and caught it to come home. And now I am totally sun burned (did you know that there’s a hole in the ozone layer right over Chile), exhausted and Binged out.