Ay Mexico...me sigues!

I woke up to find that Chile had finally decided to let the sun shine in. When it's clear and sunny here, the colors are like nothing I've ever seen before--I never thought green could look the way it does, or that the sky could actually be that neon-blue. I went to the Y before lunch, and found myself a very friendly Mexican. I still don't really know his name, but the beyond-middle-aged man from Monterrey started chatting with me and was ecstatic to find out how much I enjoy tacos árabes and salsa. He couldn't believe that I was norteamericana, either (not that he was exactly quick to mistake me for chilena, but at least I'm getting somewhere). So we bantered a bit, and then he decided to go around the gym introducing me to people and declaring my "estudiante de intercambio" status (I think he was under the impression that I was in dire need of friends...which I can't really complain about). It was slightly embarrassing, but by the time I left the gym I was beaming like a looney. He wanted to know which country I liked better after he made it very clear that he was mexicano by birth, and, being sure to diplomatically answer the question while in range of non-mexicano gym-goers, I admitted how much I miss his country to the north. All in all, it was a very productive first few hours of my day; and I now think I've at least partially won over two of the three trainers.

As for lunch, lentils make me happy. And apparently so do beets.

I then headed off to Valpo for my class about the history of the Supreme Court in Chile. After clumsily asking every third person how to get to my classroom, I found myself one of six students trapped in a spacious, but chilly, sala with a professor who seemed intent on teaching us everything on the first day. This, however, was rather unsuccessful, given his undying devotion to the strongest Chilean accent ever in the history of time, as well as his insistence on speaking without moving his mouth or using his tongue. I spent most of the hour-and-a-half looking at his impressively unmoving mouth, thinking about how he kind of reminded me of that guy from this summer's ABC tv contest hosted by Regis Philbin and with Brandy and that guy from Baywatch. Anyway, this guy on the show had this great ventriliquist act where he would make fun of dubbing by throwing his voice so it wasn't in synch with his puppets. Really quite impressive. My professor wasn't quite as engaging, though.

Seeing as how it was a ridiculously gorgeous day, I decided to walk home from Valpo along the coast. For the past couple weeks I've been trying to gauge how long this would take. I think I underestimated. Granted, I wandered down a private yacht road (yeah, they've got those here), and then had to turn back when the guard told me I couldn't go through, and I took a detour in a grocery store, but it was still a solid 2+ hours of me being in a walking boot. It was fairly marvelous, though. The full moon even decided to rise high above the palm trees and street lamps against the freakishly blue 5:00 sky. At one point I stumbled upon the Castillo Wulff, which Cris and Pauli told me was just some weird guy's house, but actually turns out to be a museum complete with a look-out perch high above the traffic. Near home, I walked through the Plaza Mexico, which I found out was dedicated after Tlatelolco when Latin American countries decided against nuclear weapons...or something--the plaque was old. Oh, Mexico. So now I'm pretty tired, but happy--it's been a good day.