Get on Your Bikes and Ride!

Last Friday, my Chilean buddy Simon was nice enough to take Megan, Rachel, and I on a bike tour of the Viña del Mar and Reñaca area! You should know that Simon bikes a lot, and not just street riding, but tricks and other such fancy things. Therefore, I was sure to tell him 16 times that I don’t have the muscles to bike through the hills of Viña (I still can’t figure out how one would say “I am not in shape enough to bike the hills of Viña”) because, let’s be honest, I don’t know that I will ever be in shape enough to bike the hills of Viña. He was also nice enough to loan Rachel and I bikes, and upon seeing my bike, which was covered in rust, I almost backed out. But then I saw that it had a bell, and I hopped right on. The story is best told through the following photos:

Gringas out for a bike ride! Megan on the left, Rachel in the middle, and yours truly on the right

A Brief Geography Lesson

I’m sure that you, as a knowledgeable world citizen, know what the country of Chile looks like. If not, however, it’s something like this:

Is It Raining Out There? It's Raining In Here, Too.

Taking a break from all of my retroactive blog posts, I would actually like to talk about something that is happening right here, right now—shocking, I know, but try to contain your gasps, I can practically hear them in Chile. It is, once again, pouring here. When Mother Nature decides that she wants it to rain in Valparaíso and Viña del Mar, she means that she wants it to pour. And not just for a couple of hours, but for the entire day, and possibly the day after that, and half the day after that. Let’s just say that when I heard my alarm go off at 6:30 this morning for my 8:15 class, and I saw the rain coming down outside, the only thing that got me out of bed was the fact that this class had not met for the past two weeks—it was tough.

I know, Luke Bryan, rain makes corn and corn makes whiskey, and it's a good thing and all...

The Quirks of the Chilean Household

Living with a Chilean host family is absolutely one of the best parts of this experience, and with a Chilean host family, comes a Chilean house with all of its quirks and wonders. I am lucky to live in a house in the Recreo neighborhood, which bridges Viña del Mar and Valparaíso. It’s almost like a little town within the city, and the streets are filled with brightly colored houses and lots of friendly faces—I say friendly because that’s how they appear to me, but the facial expressions could also be something akin to “aw look at that lost gringa”. Either way, the smiles are nice. My host mom has told me that even if she was rolling in money, she would still choose to live in Recreo because it is extremely diverse and friendly—sounds like Austin, eh? I may be biased, but I think that I have one of the most fantastic living situations a girl could ask for. Recreo is a bit far from the center of Viña del Mar, and thus a bit farther from most of the other students in my program, but closer to school, so the compromise works out nicely.

That's about right--and that's about the same facial expression that I have every day I am here

Orient Yourself in Beautiful Olmue

Rachel and I took a cab back to the airport to meet our IFSA group with the loveliest of drivers who taught us about Chilean relationships--you really never know when you're going to learn some valuable cultural information. Once we got all of our luggage out of the cab, we watched as it was loaded onto a cart by a friendly, older Chilean airport worker. A note on airport safety--never let your luggage be loaded onto a cart and taken by anyone, even friendly, older Chilean gentlemen, because it’s very easy for anyone to dress up like a Chilean airport employee and wander off with your luggage. Luckily, this particular old man was legitimate, but spoke so quickly and with an accent so strong that there was no way we could understand him. However, by this time we had mastered the “smile and nod” technique and after twenty minutes of arguing, met up with our group.