hogar dulce hogar

Well I am finally back in my own bed typing this (sweating profusely, ironically, just like my first night in BA). I haven't slept for over 40 hours, so I'm pretty tired. Last night was a little hectic getting everything all packed up last minute and saying multiple tearful goodbyes. I had to pay over for my heavy suitcase, which sucked. Then, we got stuck on the 10.5 hour flight to Dallas with literally 100 Argentine 8th graders doing some big "Disney exclusivo" trip (they all had matching backpacks. and like one chaperone). They were super noisy and annoying, and they all screamed during takeoff like it was a roller coaster or something. So weird. They also clapped when we landed. The flight attendants were American, but we kept accidentally answering "si" and "gracias" and saying "permiso" or "perdon." Those common little phrases are just so ingrained into our heads now it's going to be hard to switch back over to English. When the Subway employee was talking to me at the airport I got kind of confused for a second, because he was also Spanish-speaking and I didn't know what language he was saying. So sad that this is the end of my Spanish career (classes / studying wise). Going through customs in Texas then they let about 200 Army members skip all the civilians, so it took forever. I was panicking the whole time in line, and literally sprinted through the airport to the airtram and to my connecting flight, but my friend Kristin and I ended up missing it. We got there with five minutes to spare but it had left early. Then we didn't get on the next one standby. Finally we left at 10:20 (instead of 7:40), but it was super frustrating to be so close to home and have to just sit there. My parents were waiting when we got into O'Hare, and I finally got to have the dramatic airport scene I've been dreaming of, haha. As soon as we got in the van and got on the highway it felt like I'd never left, and never been in Argentina. At home the boys had made me a "welcome home" sign, which was sweet. Alex grew like 5 inches and sounds so old now. I don't think Sprecher really remembered me, which was a bit sad, but I was obviously very excited to see him as well. My dad and brothers LOVED the alfajor I brought for them to try. I ate an entire container of raspberries plus some strawberries for lunch. It was absolutely gorgeous outside, so we spent the afternoon in the hammock and throwing the ball to the dog. Then we had hamburgers (and salad!!) outside for dinner (not quite an asado, but very delicious). Then my good friends Erin and Hannah stopped by and we took a nice walk. It was just as hard to start explaining my trip as I'd feared, but so good to catch up and be with familiar faces. Just a really beautiful summer day to come home to and relax (and unpack my life).

It's so weird to be back in my room. My desk calendar still says February 15 (the day I left). My stuff's in the bathroom drawer. Nothing much really changed (besides the season, my brother, and the fact that we have a new flat-screen TV). One last word about living in the huge city of Buenos Aires. A lot of this could have had to do with my particular family structure, but at times it really felt more similar to a little town in the U.P. than to a suburb like Mequon. The children marry and find apartments within blocks of each other. The kids go to the school of their parents. You use the same family run laundromat, butcher, and paper store on your block. These people know you by name. You can walk there, so you're always greeting people on the sidewalk, not stuck in your car. I guess I had just never thought of a city being like this, and I was pleasantly surprised.

So, I guess this is it. I hope you've enjoyed the blog...even as many words as I write can't do the experience justice. Hardest, best, most exciting, most growth-provoking time of my life. And now I'll have a record of even the most minute details and daily occurrences haha. I hope I've inspired everyone to visit Argentina!! Chauuuu boludos!

Chau!

I absolutely cannot believe I'm leaving for the airport in less than an hour. Yesterday was Argentina's Independence Day. Fran and I went to their country club place again to drink mate and hang out for awhile. Then the family had a nice going-away "tea" for me around 6:30. I rushed from that to a restaurant where all the soccer girls were meeting for a goodbye dinner. We were supposed to get there at 9:30. I got there at 10:05 and was only the third of 8. Argentina. Anyway, the dinner was very fun, and we got a quick drink after that before heading home. Today I've just been trying to shove my whole life into my suitcases. I'll just say that my mother will be appalled when I open them...Tonight I fly out from winter in one continent, to summer in another. Crazy. Goodbyes are so hard, especially in another language because you can't really say anything you want to and I for one have trouble speaking Spanish while crying. I've been thinking of how last winter I had a little spiel I'd say when people asked "So why'd you pick Argentina?" Now everyone will ask "HOW WAS ARGENTINA?!?!" And that cannot be answered in a 2 minute spiel. Nor a 2 hour one. Five months of the most action-packed and interesting life I've lived. I went white-water rafting, skiing in the Andes, zip-lining, and mountain climbing. I had tedious and lazy days when I did absolutely nothing. I got to know an entire culture. Not just the tourist attractions, but the politics, the education, the family structure, driving habits, holidays, fashion, food, greetings, exercise, romantic gestures, I could go on and on. I feel like I know what it is to be Argentine. Maybe more than I know what it is to be American. I will have to write a closing summary of the experience when I get home, when I've had 12 hours to reflect on the airplane haha. But last night I finally got around to writing in my real journal (with my novels on here I'm just never motivated to actually put a pen to paper as well)...here's an excerpt:

"How is it that tomorrow I leave Argentina? Impossible. Tonight is my last night in my little bed. Never again will I hear the keys locking the door and hitting the silver tray. The sticky bathroom door opening. Fran's wooden blinds cranking down. The squeaky swinging door to the laundry room right by my head when I lie in bed. Claudia's pill reminders on her cellphone. The screech of the sliding door when we let Cleo inside. The garbage trucks at 2 AM. All of a sudden it is these little things that are hitting me. This is my home now. This crappy pillow actually feels good. The creak of the bed. My rows and rows of shallow closet doors. Another girl will move into MY room in a week. Use my chipped San Martin de los Andes coffee cup for cornflakes. And the red cracker tin. The tiny spoons. The faded dinosaur cups. Hear Futbol de Primera droning in the background. I will always remember walking on a glacier, taking my finals, getting robbed. But it is these small, everyday details I'm worried I'll forget. The smells, the sounds, what the bathroom looked like. How interesting is the psychology of place. How quickly minds forget. I want to memorize Fran and Claudia's faces, their laughs. What a weird sensation to be leaving people who've become loved ones and honestly not knowing if you'll ever see them again. I'm just in shock, neither sad nor happy to go at this point. Just shocked that yesterday I was sweatily entering these tiny white halls for the first time, dragging my huge bags behind me and absolutely TERRIFIED of what was to come, and tomorrow I leave, it's all over. Just like that. And an eternity passed in between."

Bueno, CHAU ARGENTINA...GRACIAS POR TODO!

en serio?

Well, Saturday our remaining two soccer games were canceled because of the gripe epidemic. Fears about swine flue just exploded here while we were in Chile. They have now shut down all of the city's schools and universities. A lot of boliches and dance clubs are also closing. Other students in my program who still had exams to take are scrambling to write replacement final papers since they obviously can't stay till August, when the Argentine students will have to take their finals before their next semester starts. Fran, for example, had already started studying for some of his finals, but now has to spend his 4 week winter vacation worrying about them, so that sucks for him. It was also too bad about soccer, because now I won't get to say good-bye to some of the Argentine girls. Saturday night I went out to dinner with some girls and then we briefly stopped by someone's birthday party...pretty "tranqui" night for my last Saturday in BA, but the flu really did close quite a lot of places down, and the soccer girls couldn't really get their acts together to go dancing like we'd planned anyway.

Sunday afternoon the same girls and I went to San Telmo to do the touristy outdoor market thing one more time. It was a nice day, and we just wandered around and had lunch at a cafe. After that I left by myself to go to a nearby neighborhood, Parque Patricio, to meet up with my Argentine friend Fer, from soccer. It's kind of hard to explain the Argentine soccer league point system, but yesterday was basically the championship, and she's a big fan of one of the teams who was playing, Huracan, and lives close to their stadium. Anyway, we went to just a normal cafe thing, full of families and couples, to watch the game on TV, since it isn't broadcast to houses. We'd been sitting there about forty minutes, just talking and having a beer, when two men with guns came in and robbed all of the patrons/the cash register. It was all over very quickly, but it was the scariest situation of my life. At first I didn't realize what was going on. There was some commotion over by the door, but I thought people were having a disagreement about the game, given how intense fans get here. Then all of a sudden I looked up at the bar, close to where we were sitting, and there was a guy with a gun. Apparently he was telling everyone to put their valuables on the table, because Fer was taking everything out of her pockets. I immediately put my money, my keys, and my cellphone on the table. Luckily I didn't have a purse or anything else because I had already been mugged (thank you, father, for the lesson between robberies and muggings) in Chile. There were several children in the restaurant who started crying, and a woman was having a panic attack, hyperventilating and flailing around in the corner. One guy by us stood up, but the guy pointed the gun at him, made him get on the floor, and said "te juro, voy a matarte" (I swear I'll kill you). That was the one thing I actually understood of what anyone was saying. Let me tell you, in panic mode, your Spanish just leaves you. I didn't know what to do, and at first I was just saying out loud, in English, to Fer, "what do I do. Oh my God. what's going on." But luckily she realized what was happening first and told me to shut up and look down. The guy came over and grabbed all of our cash and my phone. He left my keys and my monedas, and Fer actually scooped them up before we left, since they're so valuable haha. I also had a present I had just bought for my mom on the table, but I accidentally left it there in the hurry to get out. Basically, they took everything, left really quickly, and then everyone started panicking and screaming. So Fer and I just got up and left, obviously without paying for the beer, and walked to her house in the other direction about 6 blocks as fast as we could. Fer felt so bad about taking me to a bar in a bad neighborhood, etc. etc. but it was a perfectly respectable place, in the middle of the day. They just timed it so no one would be on the streets during such a big game I guess. I couldn't even tell her I was fine though. I was hyperventilating and all I could say was "okay, okay, okay" over and over again. When we got to her house we calmed down a little and my Spanish came back, then her sister lent me money and I called a taxi. The taxi passed the place on the way to my house and there were a bunch of police cars and an ambulance there...probably for the woman in shock, because no shots were fired or anything.

When I got home, Claudia and Fran weren't there, and my parents weren't answering on Skype, but luckily I was able to reach Danny and talk to him for a bit. I was freaking out because my emergency phone number card was in my purse in Chile, and without my cellphone I couldn't call anyone here. I found Fran's cellphone number in the kitchen, but I don't know how to call cellphones from their land line. I ended up going down to the apartment below us where Fran's best friend Fede lives. I just started crying and couldn't really even explain what happened, but his family was super nice and he called Fran for me. He and Claudia were at the grandma's house down the street, so they told me to come over there. I did, but the entire extended family was there and it was just awkward so I went back home again. But then I realized I still didn't have any phone numbers, and I was just in shock I guess and didn't want to be alone. I eventually found my friend Katie's house phone, and she and Hanna dropped their movie plans and came over to sit in the lobby with me till Claudia got home. They ended up getting me pizza and chocolate, and then Claudia let them come up, so we just hung out for a couple of hours. It was so nice of them, because otherwise I'm sure I couldn't have gotten my mind off of it. I would have liked to go to the movie with them but I was literally terrified of going out on the street.

Anyway, I'm feeling much better today, but it's just crazy that two bad things could happen to me like that in one week. Just really bad luck, and it makes you want to hide out in your bed. Today it was raining, and I haven't left the apartment except for to get lunch at the bakery on our block, but hopefully I can go out tomorrow to do something at least. Although at this point with no money and no cellphone, there's really not much to do/it's hard to make plans with people. I literally had 200 Argentine pesos sitting in my room to survive on when I got back from Chile. And then I got robbed and became broke yet again. I'm borrowing money and it's going to be fine, but seriously. I'm just incredibly paranoid now, and every person I pass could have a gun. The other day a woman was killed after taking out money from an ATM on the main street right by me. It's just crazy. You run across someone on paco or other drugs or something, and they could kill you for 10 pesos, they're so addicted (this is what I wrote my 10 page paper on, ironically). I know bad things happen everywhere, but it makes me want to go home. And I'm going home Friday, so I suppose this was the time for this kind of thing to happen.

Well, hopefully I will have a completely uneventful rest of the week and be back in blissfully boring old Mequon by the weekend! Chau!

Chile Days 4 & 5: Western Union to the rescue

Thursday morning we woke up and ate the nice included breakfast at the hostel, fresh fruit, tea, and bread. We then walked to the Western Union in the commercial center to pick up the money Hanna's parents wired us. We were super paranoid, but we decided we had to keep doing what we would have been doing had we not been robbed. So we walked up and saw the city's above-ground cemetery (similar to the one here in BA, but smaller). Next to that is an old prison that has been transformed into a park/cultural center of sorts. It was very interesting, especially all the paintings and graffiti the prisoners had done on the walls and in the cells. Then we went to the famous Chilean poet Pablo Neruda's house, which was been preserved and turned into a museum about his life and poems. It was a very cool, 4 story house filled with weird objects, little nautical windows, and a beautiful view of the harbor. After that we decided to treat ourselves to a seafood lunch, because Valpo is obviously known for its fish, being on the ocean. We walked into what looked to be kind of a tourist trap, but it turned out to be wonderful, if expensive. We sat outside on this fancy balcony up high overlooking the water. First we had this blueberry pisco sour drink that the waiter recommended. There was also bread with avocado butter. Then we got an appetizer of ceviche, which apparently is famous in Chile. It was salmon, shrimp, and two other kinds of white fish semi-raw/smoked and marinated in a lemon, cilantro, pepper, butter sauce. Finally we got red tuna steak with vegetables and ravioli blackened with squid ink, filled with salmon, and covered in a calamari sauce as our entrees. Fanciest meal I've ever had. We had wanted to go to Vina Mar, a beach town right next to Valpo, but we ended up running out of time. That afternoon we took the bus back to Santiago, went back to our original hostel, and then met up with our friend Kara and her Chilean boyfriend for dinner. We went to a parilla place, but we were so stuffed from lunch we just got dessert. Then we just went back and went to bed. They only had space in the dorm rooms, and it was just us and a 40 yr. old man, which was kind of weird, but it was much warmer than our private room before because it had all internal walls, so I could actually wear my pajamas haha.

Friday morning we went back to our fruit/yogurt place for breakfast, then took the subway to La Moneda (the equivalent of the White House or Casa Rosada). They weren't giving tours till later, however, so we just saw it from the outside. After that we went to a Chilean history museum, but soon got bored with the effort of exhibits in Spanish and the fact that colonial life there was basically the same as colonial life in the U.S. For lunch we found this bizarre, whimsical little cafe with its menu in the form of a letter in an envelope. We sat upstairs in this loft, and we had to climb a ladder up. There were mirrors all over the ceiling, and you could sit among pillows up on this little platform or in armchairs. There was this book in which you could draw, write philosophical things, etc. Mostly it was filled with lovers' declarations...very Latin American. We had delicious pizza and salad, and I tried this fancy black mango loose tea.

We managed to make it out of Chile that night, even though we had to lie on the health forms about some of our gripe (swine flue) symptoms and pass by a heat sensor haha. Overall, it was a really great trip, and really interesting to compare Santiago and Buenos Aires. Chileans and Argentines DO NOT get along, but the two places were relatively pretty similar to me. Some notable differences: in Argentina, you hoard monedas like they're gold. In Chile, you get millions of them, they're super heavy, and they're worth hundreds of pesos each. In Chile they say "hallo" instead of "hola," and "yah" instead of "si." It is also much harder to understand them, but that is probably just because we're used to the Argentine accent now. People in Chile didn't automatically assume we were from the U.S. We got Brazil a couple of times. Although we did stand out more, because in general the people are darker skinned/more indigenous looking. We had really good waiters/customer service in restaurants in Chile that we don't get in Argentina. However, outside of restaurants, people were very pushy, in your face, and always explicitly asking for a tip after helping you. Like for taking a picture, or finding you a taxi. It was much colder in Chile. The subway in Santiago was much cleaner/newer/faster/better laid out than the one in BA. Although it was weird that there were different fares for different hours of the day. The dress is more casual in Santiago, and the women are heavier. We felt normal/thin again because we weren't constantly seeing anorexic girls in boots. Santiago had a lot of newer, modern infrastructure that BA doesn't have. It had a suburban feel at times, and we saw a lot of bigger cars/trucks, probably because of the close mountainous terrain. The highways had big signs and billboards, which seemed more American. They also had Applebee's and KFC. In our opinion, the food in Chile was worse, and there is a heavy influence on greasy, fast-food type options in general. BA has many more one-way streets. Argentina has better soccer. I don't know, it's unfair to compare two places after spending such unequal amounts of time in them, but overall I'm happy with my choice of BA. So there's my trip in (much more than) a nutshell.

Chile Day 3: Valparaiso (Police)

Wednesday morning we woke up, took freezing showers, and took a coach bus the hour trip to Valparaiso, a beautiful port town on the Pacific Ocean. It was pretty easy taking the subway to the bus station and buying tickets. We decided to just show up without hostel reservations, but luckily we immediately found a big, airy low-key backpacking hostel with open dorms in the city center. This young French guy was working the desk, and when we told him where we were from, he told us he has a good friend from Oshkosh, WI who did a high school exchange in Valpo, decided to stay, and is now working at a hostel up the street. So weird. The rest of the day we just wandered around the steep steep streets of the city among the multi-colored houses and secret staircases. We had empanadas and ice cream for lunch in the commercial district down at sea level, among all the fish stalls and vegetable stands. We also explored the historic district, a UNESCO world heritage site, and saw the Plaza de Justicia. We took another funicular elevator up to a look-out site. I thought the city was absolutely charming, but some people are turned off by how dirty and run-down it is. There is graffiti everywhere, more stray dogs than you've ever seen in your life, creepy men just standing around, and the smell of fish. The houses, which from afar appear Grecian or Italian in their steep ascent up the circular hillsides around the bay, from up close are quite run down, and their inhabitants obviously poor. Valparaiso is a pretty big tourist destination, but it is low-season (winter), and we were often alone in the streets. Which leads me to the big event, which is that we got robbed at about 5 in the afternoon. We were climbing a steep road, not talking in English or anything, because it was pretty tiring. We were walking close behind a completely non-threatening looking guy about our age. When we got to the top, he paused, as if to decide which way to turn, because there was a road to the left and a staircase to the right. We also stopped momentarily, and all of a sudden he just spun around and grabbed my purse, which was on my shoulder. It was probably the most shocking thing that's ever happened to me. Hanna was too surprised to do anything, but I managed to keep a grip on the handles and started screaming at the top of my lungs and shouting "stop." Don't really know why that's the word I thought of...Anyway, we struggled for a good 7 seconds or so, but he was stronger and was pulling me down the staircase. I almost fell, and after running with him down about 10 stairs I just let go and he took off down all the stairs and around the corner at the bottom of the hill. There was no one in the immediate vicinity, but luckily a postman heard me screaming, came over, and called the police for us. I was crying and getting somewhat hysterical, and neither of us could get more than a word out in Spanish, but the guy was super nice and just waited there. Luckily our passports were in the hostel, and our cameras were in our pockets. However, both Hanna and I had our wallets (containing every dime of our money, credit and debit cards, and drivers' licenses) in the purse. I also lost other insignificant things like my nice water bottle, my little journal, Purell (ha), my camera case, etc. Anyway, finally we see two police men (or who we assumed to be police...they were wearing basically army fatigues..the police and the army in Latin America seem to be much more strongly linked) just ambling up the street. We walk down towards them, two hysterical foreigners, and they just kind of look at us, waiting for us to say something. We manage to get out something about what happened, and then they say "oh yes, that is what we were dispatched to." They then start talking on the walkie-talkie, not asking for details or anything or being comforting at all. Then they flag a taxi, not a police car mind you, and one of the police men shoves himself into the backseat with us. They want to take us to our hostel so we can get our passports, but we can't remember the weird name of the hostel at the moment, and the card/map was in my purse, so we end up telling them the wrong corner and having to walk a bit to find it with one of the policemen. All this time he is hitting on us, asking if we have boyfriends in the U.S., etc. We get our passports, then they take us in another taxi to the station to file a report. We must have been the only thing happening all day, because all the police (25 yr. old men, the majority) are crowded around watching us and being just totally unprofessional, joking around with each other. My Heart Will Go On was playing in the background and we're sitting in this little room and it was just surreal. Then they messed up the report, saying it was Hanna who had the purse, not me, even though we kept trying to clarify it. Anyway, now we have very official (although incorrect) copies of police reports in Spanish, with the official Chilean seal and everything. When we were done it was already completely dark outside, and they're like, "can you find your way home from here?". We have just been robbed, have no map, and are two foreign girls alone. Um, no, we will not find our way back. So we waited around about an extra half hour for this armored police van to come pick us up and drive us to the hostel. In another stroke of luck, the one computer at the hostel had Skype, so we were able to call our parents about having no money. We couldn't eat dinner but we met these two very interesting Dutch girls at the hostel who gave us wine and chips, and we ended up talking to them for like 3 hours. The owner had lent us this really nice map, and asked if we could be sure to return it to him because he only had a couple. It was in my purse. So we had to explain that. Also, the rest of our time in Valpo we kept seeing the same police around (they are very into mobile units..vans parked in squares and officers walking around...just not during robberies, of course), so that was awkward.

Chile Day 2: Skiing in the Andes!

We woke up early Tuesday and took the subway to this rental/transportation/gear place called SkiTotal (on the helpful recommendation of my friend Whitney who studied abroad in Chile). There we rented all of our stuff, including pants, jackets, etc. because we had absolutely nothing. It worked out great, except for I accidentally got one medium and on XL glove. We rode up to the resort El Colorado in a van, and the roads were incredibly steep and scary. It took about an hour and a half, and it was snowing pretty heavily at the top. As soon as I saw the runs I knew it was going to be wayyy different than skiing in the U.P./Sunburst. I have never been out to Colorado or anything and have only really skied a couple times in my life. The runs were straight down, no curving and no trees. I have never really mastered stopping/turning on naturally winding and slow runs, so the first part of the day was a bit rough for me. Actually it was terrifying and I felt like I was going to fly off the side of the mountain (see pictures ha). Hanna snowboarded, and she is quite good, but she coached me down the first couple of times thank god. I only ended up doing 2 green runs the whole day, but they were super long and so different than what I'd ever skied I figured it was okay. We rode the chairlift and also a T-bar lift, which was different. There were these ski school groups of intense little 7 yr. olds skiing circles around me and cutting in line, so that was fun. Later in the day they closed some of the higher runs because it was snowing so hard, and eventually it turned to near white-out conditions even on our runs. You couldn't tell the difference between the sky and the snow or see any holes or bumps, plus wearing goggles was a bit disembodying. Also it was easy to accidentally ski into deep snow or over into another run because there were no natural barriers. The ride home was also terrifying. It took almost 2 and a half hours, and involved passing through snow, hail, and rain, all on icy roads. There was just this long train of vehicles with their flashers on winding down this steep, guardrail-less tiny road. After we returned all of our gear we stumbled into this little strip mall restaurant called Fuente Chileno, only because we saw it had heaters. It ended up being amazing. We got these hamburger-like things with avocado and homemade mayo that tasted like sour cream. We also shared fries and a shrimp/cheese empanada, and I tried an artesenal beer. The skiing was a great experience, and the scenery was stunning, but the actual going down the runs was stressful and not as fun. I like having trees. Although we did basically have the mountain entirely to ourselves, and one of my biggest worries skiing at home is running into little kids falling and swerving all over the place.

Chile Day 1: Santiago

Well, I don't even know how to start to explain my Chile trip. It was both extremely fun and extremely stressful. Some pretty ridiculous things happened (more on that later). I loved the country, but was so happy to go back to Argentina. Monday morning I had to get up at 3:30 to catch our early flight. There was some turbulence, but flying in to Santiago over the Andes was amazing. We got scammed taking a taxi from the airport to the hostel, but it was our fault because we stupidly arrived without knowing the exchange rate. Turns out a dollar is 530 Chilean pesos. I knew it was something big like that, but we basically took out an unknown amount of money at an airport ATM, were accosted by a million taxistas all claiming to be official, got lied to about the rate, and then paid an obscene amount of money, all the while knowing we were probably being scammed but really having no other transportation option. Our hostel was in the Plaza de Armas, the main historic plaza of Santiago, which was pretty cool. After we checked in we walked around there, saw the Cathedral, and went to the two main look-out hills, Cerro Santa Lucia and Cerro San Cristobal. We had absolutely beautiful, sunny clear weather, which is apparently very rare there. On the other days it was hard to see the mountains because of all the smog. Anyway, the hills were full of these luscious green gardens, palm trees, and flowers, which was odd because it was winter. There were old castle-like structures of different architectural styles on each hill. On Santa Lucia we found a vendor selling mote con huesillos, which is this delicious cold peach tea with pieces of dried peach and barley in the bottom. It looks a bit disgusting, but we loved it. To get up San Cristobal we had to take a "funicular" or this old elevator thing that takes you up these super steep tracks to the top. At the top there was a huge outdoor church where Pope John Paul II apparently said Mass, and there is also a humongous statue of Mary. The view from there was absolutely beautiful. After that we walked in some parks by the river, saw the bohemian Bellavista neighborhood, and had more money confusion at lunch. It is really strange and hard to get used to lunch costing like 6 thousand pesos. After lunch we discovered this frozen yogurt place where you pick from all the frozen fruits and they mix it in with sugar and a block of yogurt. Monday was actually a feriado in Chile for two saints' days, San Pedro y Pablo, so there wasn't all that much activity in the city. At night we went out to try to find some dinner around the plaza, but it was pretty sketchy and creepy, and all we could find were rows and rows of brightly colored, greasy fast-food type places. There are no cafes on every corner like in BA. We ate some nasty pizza in this little place where they were basically closing down as we ate, and we had to crawl out this little door in the metal outer garage-door like thing they put on at night to get out. We got locked in a panaderia trying to buy the next morning's breakfast too. That night there was no hot water, and the power went out when we were in the bathroom taking out our contacts. Not fun. It was also FREEZING in our hostel, and I slept in my jeans, scarf, and fleece. The buildings here just trap the cold, and it ends up being way worse than outside, without any heat of course. Our room also had three outside walls, up on the windy 6th floor, so that was also probably part of the problem. The plan for Tuesday was to ski, so we stayed up researching the various resort options, checking snow conditions, calculating prices of renting everything, etc., and went to bed early.