Santiago and fotos

Friday was el dia de Santiago- I left for Stgo in the evening, and visited Alvaro's sisters Melina and Etel there, and met a new friend who has an interesting contact with a woman who works with women here in Viña- I hope that something can come of the contact, be it volunteer experience or perhaps a job? We'll see. Either way, it was fun to rediscover Santiago and hang out with Alvaro's sisters. We hung out for a while in the Plaza de Armas which is one of my favorite people watching places, and watched some guy juggling and two clowns who were surprisingly funny. Today was a fomingo or dormingo (domingo= sunday, fome= boring, dormir= to sleep)- very few places are open on Sundays, and people usually use them to sleep late in the day and to "pasear"- go out to just "pass around". I slept in a bit, and met up with my Chilean "sister" from my last host family, Vale, which was great. It was nice to understand her Spanish completely, and she's in her first year at the University, and has funny stories. She also told me that Nacho, my brother, is now "todo un hombre"- a real man now- and that he has a low voice and a mustache- hahahaha. It was good to see her and catch up on the family gossip.

This afteroon I went to pasear with Alvaro's dad and little sister (Dad is also named Alvaro, Maia is his sister) to see pets in a pet store (Maia loves animals) and we walked along the ocean and hung out in an art gallery that was selling the paintings- Maia liked the ones of horses and a wolf- Alvaro the dad liked the landscapes. We also bought churros- a semi-sweet dough (like donuts) fried in a vat of oil in a skinny eggroll shape and sprinkled with powdered sugar and manjar (dulce de leche). mmm...a brilliant idea. It's been really cloudy, and it rained for the first time all YEAR (!) here last night, so it was slippery with all the oil. The ocean was pretty there, and the nice thing is that the coldest part of the country is inside the house, but outside it's always nice and not too cold.

OK, I'm going to try to upload some pictures of the room where I'm staying. There's an aquarium with a bunch of fish in the room, take note. Also take note of the tea (I'm constantly drinking it because it's cold), and my stuffed dog Marshmellow. The room is in the basement, and you have to go down a small staircase to get there, and there's no door- upstairs, the room that's immediately above it is where I'm storing my clothes. Note the stained glass window below the dinosaur poster- the whole house has doors with stained glass windows. Also note Kira and Chicky outside (in the rain)- Kira is in the corner, and Chicky is the blur running towards the window. Both, if you can't tell, are dogs. Rachel and I are also in one of the pictures, but it's not fair because Rachel was dressed for work and I had just woken up. I'll try to post more of the kitchen/living room later