¡Super Fantastico!

Me and the Andes!!
















How to explain how great it was to go snowboarding this weekend ... well as you can see by these pictures the view was absolutely amazing. It was the first time I'd ever snowboarded above timberline and having all that open space was a completely different experience.
















I left with a group of four other extranjeras to Santiago thursday night. We stayed in a hostal for about $9 each and in the morning we had a pretty nice sized breakfast with hot nescafé (pretend Chilean coffee). We made it to the ski shop, SkiTotal, and managed to rent all of our equipment and hop on the charter for the hour and a half ride up to the mountain. The ride up the mountain was an experience in itself ... It was literally a road wide enough for one-way traffic as it tightly wound us back and forth.

Finally getting to the mountain was a relief ... getting out of the van was a relief : )
I was lucky enough to buy a lift ticket off someone who had an extra for only 10.000 pesos which is about $20 usd. We spent about 15 seconds checking out the map and then decided to just go for it. I was amazed with how fast it all came back to me, I hadn't been snowboarding for more than two years and right away I was carving down the mountain!
















It was interesting trying to figure out how the slopes were set up and navigating from one to the other. The mountain has three summits and you can basically go from one to the next if you wanted to, the only problem is as you come down you have to take lifts back up to get you to the summits closer to the lodge ... confusing, even after being there all day.

















After a quick lunch of avocado and turkey sandwiches I headed up with another friend from the program who I knew was a much better snowboarder than I am ... anyways, we headed up for the second summit which is at about 10,750 feet - yikes! - and getting there was definitely tough. My least favorite part of the day was trying to ride the "t-bar" ... basically a bar that comes down vertically from where a chair lift would be ... with a small round disk at the bottom that goes between your legs. This is no big deal for skiiers because they can put there legs as close together as they'd like ... not the case when your feet are strapped in 14 inches apart! Needless to say, I fell the first few times I had to get on one ... and then as I'm approaching the second summit on the t-bar I catch the edge of my board, fall onto my knees - still holding the t-bar for dear life of course - and have to continue the rest of the way (200 feet) on my knees.

Yes, I'm still sore.

After two run downs the face of the second summit and two relatively painful trips up the t-bar I decided it was time to head down. It was a combination of altitude and exhaustion that made the trip down my slowest of the day but as I edged my way towards the lodge I realized that visibility was getting worse and worse. I ran into two girls from my program who were brand new to snowboarding, watched them for a bit and encouraged them to make their way back asap because visibility was worsening, and by that point all I could do was follow others who looked like they knew they were headed in the right direction. There was barely 15 ft. of visibility, and after I finally found the lift that I knew would take me to the lodge I still wasn't sure because I couldn't see the lodge! It wasn't until I got off the lift and heard the music that I knew the lodge was somewhere in the haze.

Turns out one of the girls that I saw on my way down between the time I talked to her and her finding her way down broke her wrist! She's doing ok and was able to make it down but she won't be able to go back this season.

Everyone made it in safely and we all held our breath as we descended the mountain ... making it back safely to Santiago was a relief : )

I got home around 10:00pm and had no trouble at all falling asleep, with the promise of waking up as sore as I've ever been I wanted to sleep as long as possible!

Birthday & Beach pictures : )

Con suerte

Another week gone by! A special one with my birthday having been Tuesday. Patty threw a pizza party for me at the apartment, with plenty of chocolate cake and new friends. The whole day was great especially considering I finished Harry Potter after finally getting it in the mail the evening before : ) I definitely could not have been doing anything better that day then finishing the book! It was kind of strange to have my first birthday ever at school ... I only had one class so it wasn't tough and the only hard part was focusing while I wanted to read HP soo bad! Also, I've never had a birthday when it has been too cold to wear a sun dress and flip flops.

It was great to be able to talk to alot of family and friends on my birthday also, it isn't necessarily hard to find a way to call but it just isn't as cheap as I'd prefer (I'd prefer it be free)

I'm putting up a few pictures from the birthday extravaganza and I wish I could get the red-eye out but I can't manage to get any photo editing programs working on the computers here at school.... Scratch that, I'm going to post pictures tomorrow .... my camera just died. Eeeeh.

I am definitely going skiing this weekend! Yay! I'm going to reserve the hostal today and from what I've heard it's better and cheaper to leave here thursday evening and go skiing friday. I think waiting until other groups made it up is going to really help in not getting lost or spending too much money.

Plans are underway for the trip up north in September. I'm planning it with a friend, Kam, from Brown Univ. and who is an amazing photographer/planner extraordinaire! The tentative plan is to fly up to the border of Chile and Peru ... spending a day taking a train into Peru (for $1.50, crazy right?) and spending a few days exploring before making our way down the coast to the town of San Pedro de Atacama which is famous for as being one of the dryest deserts in the world, along with sandboarding, national parks, flamingos, salt flats, and the valley of the moon. All we need to find now are the best prices on plane tickets. I'm sure we'll figure it out.

Nieva

I'm going to try and go snowboarding soon! This picture I stole from a friends album after they spent the weekend skiing the Andes. Friends of mine here have made it to the mountains successfully, and it isn't horribly expensive it's just the process of figuring out if I have enough gear and time.

Possibly this weekend : )

Friday I met with my partner for the language exchange which was really great. We spoke in Spanish for an hour ... basically standard questions about school, family, and traveling. It was great to feel like I could (more or less) communicate for so long without english. We had planned to meet Saturday afternoon to talk in English - he plans to go to the U.S. and has never had an english class - but he called to try and reschedule it. Not a huge loss for me I suppose.

Friday night I went out with a group of friends to a discoteca in Valparaìso called El Huevo (The Egg?) which was a fun place. We decided to go early as to avoid waiting outside to get in. Huevo turned out to have 3 floors with 5 or 6 different spaces for dancing, a roof top terrace, and different types of music in each space. Our motivation for going had been the friday dance class which was Salsa. Eliza found out from a Chileno that there were impromptu Salsa lessons at Huevo and that we should check it out. It turned out to be really great and we started out on a floor which was sort of a mix of music, at the beginning a lot of U.S. early 90's music ... read: Spice Girls, Britney, etc. The salsa was fun but by that time we had been there so long it was time to get back home and into my mildly warm bed : )

I'm trying to fight off a bit of a head cold right now ... I found the Chilean equivalent of Dayquil/Nyquil which will keep me sleeping better and functioning throughout the day.
Can't wait for my pizza party tomorrow night, or the prospect of HP FINALLY coming in the mail. It would be a nice treat on my bday but I would prefer it just come asap.

Hope all is well there, thanks for reading.

Filling in

Another few days have passed ... unfortunately I don't have anything particularly important to share. Classes have been going well, that is when they happen and when the professors show up. As of now I haven't been to two classes yet so I'm not sure if my schedule will stay how it us but for now I'm taking Spanish, Ecology of Chile, Economic Development, History of Thought, and Sociology of the Organization. Hopefully most of those classes will transfer successfully ... crossing fingers.

Next tuesday is my birthday and Patty has planned a little pizza party for me : ) I'm just holding out for a chocolate cake! It will be really fun to have a few friends over to our little apartment and celebrate. I suppose being 20 isn't all too exciting but you only get one day a year to celebrate.

Still no Harry Potter, which is probably for the best ... this way I don't need to come up with clever excuses to stay home and read non-stop (yet that is).

Today I went to dance class which was a lot of fun. The same two teachers from our orientation teach a class twice a week at the Casa Central (University Center) for free. The class was full, about 10 or so gringas and the rest were Chilenos. It's great having these classes, we're learning merengue and salsa : ) They also offer free yoga and pilates which I'm going to try and check out this next week! The cold weather and exessive amounts of foods = need to work out!

Ok I'm meeting up with my partner for language exchange now - Humberto! Hopefully I can manage a conversation and we'll both get to practice.

Few pictures ... I didn't actually take any of them though!


Lots of puppies on the streets, not typically on benches though ... and more friends (being silly)

Still winter

This weekend we had a group tour of Valpo. It was more or less what most of us had already seen but it was worth going on. The best part of the day was getting on a boat and cruising around the bay. We saw a few penguins and big sea lions! Unfortunately my photography skills were no match for the quick penguins ... but a few pictures of the bay and street art hopefully will suffice. Also I stuck a picture of two great friends I've made in the program - Eliza, who is a student at GW and strangely enough we have mutual friends & Jess who is from New Mexico and goes to school in Colorado.

¡Disfruta! Enjoy!

Accident at La Campana

Today Chile celebrates Día de los Niños which is more or less the equivalent of Mother's day or Father's Day but for children. Patty explained that it is purely for commerce but so are the other holidays so it wasn't particularly surprising.

For some, especially fellow 'extranjeros' or foreign exchange students, today wasn't for celebrating. Yesterday a fellow extranjero died hiking through the National Park La Campana in Chile. She was studying abroad from Seattle University with the ISA program. I had not met her but friends of mine had, our group had also been at the same National Park two weeks ago. It's really tragic and of course could have happened anywhere and to anyone but it does feel a bit more real knowing it was a girl who came for all the same things that my fellow classmates and I came for.

I've got pictures from the weekend to post ... but for now I'm just putting up a link to an article about this story:

http://www.komotv.com/news/8913087.html