Saturday, July 21, 2007

So far...

...totally awesome.

We spent the first day at this great big park with a ferrocaril, which is a scary rollar-coaster-like elevator-trolley that you use to go up insanely tall hills and an ancient telofonico (gondola) that rattled and rocked around a lot. I finished the looong day with a couple pisco sours in this awesome Irish pub. Chile was playing Argentina in the World Cup semifinal, and though they lost, sharing the experience with a bunch of drunk men in business suits pounding on the table and screaming curses at the screen was pretty cool.

Yesterday, we did the tourist thing again at the Presidential Palace changing of the guards, La Plaza de Armas with an amazing cathedral and the central post office, and a sweet fish market/restaurant with greasy whole-friedly delicious fish. Good thing I'm not too vegitarian anymore...

For the evening, we explored el supermercado for some dinner, including this strange soft cheese like cream cheese and tofu mixed together. Then dancing, in this dark, smokey, sketch club that was fun for all of its creepiness.


We started today with a tour of Chile's oldest vineyard. Pretty cool to be sampling wine at 10 am! They make this special wine, Gris (gray), which is a dark grape prepared like a white wine. It's not as thick as red wine, and a bit less acidic than white. Delicious, but only sold in Chile and Peru. After lunch at this sweet arabic restaurant, we visited one of Pablo Neruda's three houses. More on this later, because it deserves a post of its own. We just finished up another 4 hour orientation session, which is significantly less fun than the tourist thing... but now a crowd of us are going out for empanadas, which should make it all better.

I miss you all and promise less "daily agenda" in future posts- I'm just too excited by everything we're doing to skimp details just yet.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

you sound much less nervous. hooray for drinking "pisco sours" in Irish pubs with chilean businessmen. I do that allll the time.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like you are savoring your experiences. I am so glad that you are enjoying emersion in the Chilean culture. !Goce de la vida!

Jeff said...

Hey glad to hear that things are going so well and your having such a good time. hope everything goes well in chile and your having a nice winter.

girlalex said...

It all sounds fabulous! I never got to do wine tasting on my study abroad travels, though sampling the local pubs (Irish via Chile? Interesting mix!) and watching 'football' is always awesome!

Anonymous said...

Hey, please don't skimp on the details; it's almost like we're there! and yay for wine tasting and having winter. (It seems ridiculous that you have winter when it's about 90 degrees here)...it was good talking to you yesterday!