Of oceans and amigos

Last night Graciela and I met up with plans to finally check out Huevo, a highly-frequented, multi-level dance club in Valpo. But instead, we ended up meeting her intercambio de idiomas partner, Hugo (the university sets up foreigners with Chileans to do language practice). We met his hilarious friend Carlos who lives in a sweet apartment/loft place off of Libertad where we hung out for a few hours. I got really excited when Hugo started talking about bagels and spicey Thai food. I've decided to dedicate my semester here to gastronomic tourism, seeing as how I may not be able to be quite the explorer I'd previously imagined. So there are plans to head to Quilpue, which is apparently the sandwich capital of the end of the earth (where you can get a ginormous pile of goodness at 4am on any given corner), the completo stand in Valpo where you can get three heaving hot dogs smothered in sauces, avocado, and tomatoes (hold the tomatoes, mind you), a Mexican place with famous tacos, the Thai restaurant which has a spicey barometer reading next to every item on the menu, and the various empanaderías that dot this country.

After some quality food chatter, we headed to Budnyk, a bar in Viña near the water. Apparently our new Chilean friends knew the owners, so we got Happy Hour prices for whatever we ordered, which was pretty much exclusively strong, though tastey, fruity things. There was even some quality dancing and laughing at a funny, slightly uncoordinated (though I shouldn't be talking) gringo. Somehow it was almost 4am by the time I got home, but it was a really fun night, and really exciting to have spent it with friendly Chileans. It's becoming slightly less surprising to come home at ridiculous hours and learn that my host mom is not there--her carretes apparently last longer than mine. Silly Latin women and their social lives.

Today after lunch Graciela and I headed to Reñaca, the beach town north of Viña, and met up with Amanda and some other people from the program. It was a beautiful day, which made the slightly uncomfortable and unstable walk through the sand totally worth it--there's nothing like basking in the Chilean sun in front of the eerily blue crashing waves sprinkled with surfers in the middle of winter. As the light started to sink between the buildings, the shoreline got this odd haze that just sort of hung itself above the sand making the sunset kind of gauzy and the enormous rocks in the distance look a bit softer. Amanda got some of the world's tiniest empanadas, and we watched about twenty men carry their very own soccer goals onto the sand, pull on their respective jerseys, and play soccer among the rolling beach as the sun dipped closer to the horizon. And all the while we got to marvel at the litany of dogs that were roaming around the shore--some accompanied by families, some not, even one that decided to go body surfing in closest line of breakers. Colorado needs an ocean.