Fuimos a Vina...

The past couple of days have been a little crazy… in a good way. Friday was lots of sight seeing: La Moneda, a strange graffiti park that Kara and I stumbled across and a church with a morgue in the basement. Friday night, Ilana and I and a couple other girls had planned to go to a movie in the park across from our apartment. But when I got home, my host mom asked me to go to a birthday party of someone in the family (the exact relationship got lost in translation.) When I explained my plans to her, she told me I could spend time with my friends at any point, but I would go with her that night. So we went. The whole family was there and asking me about California and where I was planning on traveling to. At points, it almost dissolved into a large game of charades. But as a gift, they gave me a coffee table book of pictures of Chile, so I could see all the places I wanted to go! Then, they served ate hot dogs that were covered in avocado and mayonnaise accompanied by pisco sours, cervezas and wine. Then, as I was trying not to fall asleep on the couch while looking at coffee table books, the family sang happy birthday in English.
I think it was my host cousin’s birthday. I’m still a little confused.
The next morning I headed downstairs and chatted with the doorman (who has a very Chilean name that I cannot remember) until Ilana called me and told me she had slept through her alarm. So I went outside and caught the bus and the metro and met up with 14 other people at the bus station where we climbed aboard to Viña del Mar. Leslie and I bravely led the way to our hostel and got lost…a couple of times. Finally we found it and the owner of the hostel, Ninfa, whose the cool grandma I want to be, and Luna, her cat, welcomed us with open arms. We put our stuff in rooms and headed down to a crafts fair and talked to the vendors for a bit.
Rather than waiting for people to get henna tattoos, Kara and I headed out to Reñaca, which has the craziest beach party scene I have ever seen, but also a gorgeous view of the ocean. Other people eventually joined us and we grabbed empandas and headed back to Viña, accidentally ran into Dawn and Julia and went salsa dancing at a pool hall. We were the youngest people there and the dancing was still going on at five in the morning.
Next morning, headed out to Valpariso. Visited Neruda’s house. He was insane and liked pink and bathrooms with no privacy. We wandered down some hillsides before taking the acensor to the bottom. Then we headed out to Cóncon, which is some of the most beautiful coastline I have ever seen. We had a very long dinner there and then head back to the hostel and threw a party, yay us!
We headed back pretty early on Monday because there was much work to be done. But the dogs in my host family seem to be warming up to me now. It’s probably because I give them food to make them shut up. It’s also hot; maybe they don’t have much energy. Anyways, over dinner, my host mom began to tell me about all the places I should travel to and started to explain what Stanford things I should skip so I can go other more interesting places, while my host dad tested my vocabulary of shellfish. So, I would say, that was a pretty good weekend.
This week, I need to find about Torres del Paine and a pool. Life is happy.