La Llegada!

I have arrived safetly in Santiago, Chile! Woo hoo!

So my parents bought me a beautiful new journal to write in while I'm traveling, but I had to promise it wouldn't interfere with the quality of the blog. Just so you know, I have it with me here right now so I don't forget any good details.

Anyway all of my travels went smoothly and reletively uneventfully. The thirteen hour plane ride to Buenos Aires was only half full of people and I had a whole row to myself to sleep. My four hour layover in BA was long, but I had some friends. I met my first two (we can only assume there will be many more to come ) australian travelers who were doing the normal wander around South America deal, and were on their way to Lima. Then, I ran into Deena: my lietenant governer from my high school days in key club who i just recently reconnected with at Cornell. Weird. She was visiting her brother in Santiago who has been teaching English for three months. I also spent about an hour trying to find a sandwhich without ham on it and realized I might need to reconsider my diet regulations while I am traveling. Chileans and Argentinians LOVE meat. yuck.

Well after all the traveling I was delighted to arrive to a sunny Santiago at 6pm. Turns out it would be sunny for a few more hours still. I'm definitely not in NY anymore.... The hostel I reserved has no sign on the door, but its painted purple, so I knew immidiately it was perfect. There is a roof with loung chairs, a room with free internet access, a room with a TV filled with colorful chairs, free breakfast, and a Charles Bukowski poster hanging up on the red wall behind me. Its fabulous. It was pretty quiet when I got there, but was not deterred. I needed to find some friends so I didn't wander around the city alone at night. My frist attempt was a Swiss dude named Benjamin. All the languages I could talk to him in *(french, english, spanish) were pretty weak, and he was generally pretty awkward. I decided to move on. On the roof I found an Australian dude lounging on a chair, drinking a beer, and listening to his ipod. Perfect. Turns out Ryan and I hit it off. He just graduated from Uni (as they say down under) and is taking a three month trip around the world. He has already done most of south america and a bit of europe, and chile is his last stop before coming to the US. Almost immidiately I got an invitation to a concert, and to go rock climbing the next day. As you can tell, we have similar interests. As soon as I secured my protection for the night, I went to take a shower and prepare to leave. I met Ryan's traveling partner adam, and another Auzzie they picked up, Trunc. The four of us were immidiately a gang. I offered my translating skills for their company. They were happy to comply.

We went out to a nice dinner in town after a lot of deliberation, and told traveling stories and talked about why Americans are stupid. By the end of the meal, it was as if we had been friends for years. We decided to go to the supermarket to buy beer in the cheapest form possible, and then head to the concert. We had heard through the grape vine that there was a show, and Trunc saw a stage being set up at the Plaza del Armas. When we got to the plaza, we quickly realized there was no concert, but we found other entertainment. There was a crowd of people gathered a round a grungy looking chilean telling jokes. As soon as we arrived, we became the butt of every joke. He told a serious of " gringos are idiots" jokes that I desperately tried to translate for my friends. The crowd laughed the hardest when I was unable to translate a word or phrase. Finally he ended the show by dragging my friends into the center of the circle and telling a joke "in english" that still required a bit of translating. He kept asking the crowd for money, but am pretty sure he owed us a piece: we made all the jokes funny.

Well after all that excitement, my friends and I decided to return home to our hostel (a short walk from where we were). Two blocks from our hostel, we stopped at a busy outdoor bar to listen to a guy play the drums. As we stopped, I caught a young, friendly chilean man trying to talk to Adam. I quickly intervened and introduced myself as traductora. He explained that we shouldn't be drinking beer on the street, it was illegal (something that Ryan had promised us it certainly wasn't). Explained that if you had a chair, it became perfectly legal, and invited us to sit down. Well we sat down for about 2 hours as I practiced my new translating skills. The young couple had three children who they had left behind with the woman's mother to go out drinking on a monday night. They were both very generous and friendly and happy to tell us how Chile had the best beer, best wine, best agriculture, and most beautiful women in all the world. By the end of the night we exchanged phone numbers and email addresses. Next time I'm in town, I'll certainly call them.

Today, I am going to take a trip to the embassy, a trip to the bus station, and take the finiculare (spelling?) up the cerro, or hill, that sits behind the hostel. Tonight I'll be on a bus down to Osorno where Sam will meet me in the morning and introduce me to my homestay family and my new job.