this entry is going to resemble some sort of listita (little list - my favourite spanish word...however, in following with my writing style - it wont be very chico (little) )
april 8 - I decided to venture back to Patronato and show Breanna and her friend Stef around. We didn't do any shopping but just looked around. It was a nice day but super hot there. There are tons of things there so you can definitely spend a while there.
On thursday april 9 - breanna came over to my place for some drinks and we walked over to her friends apartment which is just a 5 min walk or so from mine. we stayed there for a little while and then went out to a bar where we met my friend adam. the bar was in bellavista. it's called opium and it was pretty small but really cool. i love going out with my friend adam because he is fearless on the dance floor. he just looks like a crazy over active robot and its 3 parts awesome 2 parts weird. but i love it. after being at opium for a few hours we decided to check out the tried and true bar we sometimes visit called bar constitucion. buuut there was a line and so we had to wait...and then we realized it was already around 3 oclock so we just went home. Because Adam lives so close to Breanna, we just went back to their street. I stayed over at Breanna's place so I didnt have to pay more to get myself the rest of the way home. It's must cheaper to just walk home the next morning - and when you're a teacher in Chile, cheap is always a good thing.
april 10 - yes, good friday. imagine an empty city, a girl wearing smoky clothes from the night before when she went out to a bar. it is 10 am - i wake up in breannas apartment, i have not showered, i have no brushed my teeth - i dont look awful...but i dont smell clean haha. i decide now is the best time to talk the 20-30 minute walk home. as i walk along the street back home, i realize that this day is good friday, it's a holiday, no one is out in the street and the city is quiet. what a perfect day to walk home in bar clothes (i was wearing jeans, a tank top and a little cardigan...nothing too bar-ish). i take one of the side streets back home because its even quieter than the main street and it makes for a pretty little walk. However on this particular morning, it makes for an interesting walk home. I am more than halfway home, a man is approaching me on a bicycle and suddenly stops. he asks (in spanish) if I have a minute to talk. I say "si" he asks if I am a Chileana (Chilean girl), I laugh and say no. He asks what language I speak, I say English. This commences the interesting English conversation.
"I am a professional fashion photographer in Santiago...I know I don't look very professional this morning (I think...pff neither do I pal)."
"Oh cool, I love photography!" I respond as to not jump to conclusions but also to seem politely uninterested. I'm thinking at this point that either this dude can see potential in my unmade/unshowered self..or he just has a tool box of really inventive and original pick up lines.
"You are very beautiful and I have been looking for a new model for a while now but I have not found anyone with such a unique look as yourself."
I give this man more time to explain his business and his vision...for two reasons. I'm not sure if I believe him and I'm not rude enough to just walk away haha.
If this man is indeed being creepy - I'm not getting the creepy vibe...which for a second makes me wonder if this is actual true.
He says he does not have a business card with him...he then asks for my email address. THIS is the moment I feel like this is definitely not real. I write down an email address (in case this IS real) that is not connected to my full name (incase this is not real)...
We talk for almost 10 minutes I think... I leave knowing the only information he has of me is my email address and my age. He does not know anything else about me...which I also think is strange for someone scouting out a potential new model. I walk away, call my friend breanna of the hilarious news and she is ecstatic! "what if it IS real?!?!" she says. I am not convinced.
I go home, shower, tell my roommate Felipe - that knows what Chilean men are like and to my surprise he tells me that it could actually be real. He says that a lot of his friends think I could be a model...and that they think I resemble Scarlet Johansen (this is the 3rd time in Chile so far that I have heard this - even my spanish teacher told me...in spanish by the way...that she thought i looked a lot like Scarlet Johansen). Felipe has friends in the production/advertising industry and offers that if I am interested, he can see about getting me some type of job. This to me - is hilarious. I think I am attractive yes...but a model? I dunno.
Either way...It is 11:30 am by now...and I am elated haha.
Later that day, Jamie comes over. We make pizza (ok fine...we throw a pre made pizza in the oven) and guacamole. we watch the movie "Righteous Kill". I fall asleep during the movie...but feel like I enjoyed the parts I was awake for haha.
note: received no word from my new photographer friend
saturday april 11 - the feast
Jamie invited me to a big BBQ with our new friends. One of the guys he went to high school with (his name is Peter) is actually living in Santiago right now just a short walk away from Jamie's apt with his fiance and one of their other friends. We've visited them a few times and they are really nice people. We went with Aleszu (Peter's roommate) to this very huge food market called La Vega. Its both a beautiful and crazy place. Beautiful because it has fresh food for miles basically. Crazy because there are people everywhere and all the different smells that mix together....arent always heavenly. We bought chicken, seafood, hamburger meat and tons and tons of veggies. They have an outdoor grill at their apartment building and so we prepared the food there and had a feast. it was BEAUTIFUL! I've started eating much less meat than I usually do, and so this day was fantastically delicious.
After the BBQ, we just drank in their apartment and my friend Breanna came over for a little while. We listened to music, chatted and they had this cool book their called the Proust Questionnaire.
Proust is a French writer that began answering the same questionnaire that was in a book belonging to his friend. This questionnaire is about one's personality and it appears in Vanity Fair magazine each month. You can also buy the book that shows people of history and their responses to the questionnaire as well as many blank pages for other people to answer on. 
So I filled out a page, as did my friend Jamie. I couldnt think of answers for all of the questions but maybe when I visit them again, I will complete it. Here is a link to the Vanity Fair Proust questionnaire: http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/archive/proust_questionnaire?printable=true¤tPage=all
april 12th - happy easter
This was the first Easter that I did absolutely nothing. I spent all day in my room pretty much just watching movies and being lazy. By the time it was 5 pm or so I realized I hadnt eaten any chocolate on Easter. i felt this was a shame...so I went up to the store and bought a couple bars haha. That my friends, was my Easter in Chile. I considered the feast on the previous day to be my Easter dinner.
april 13
Paul and I teach the same student - but on different days. He has mondays and wednesdays and i have tuesdays and thursdays. We meet in the mornings to discuss the class before - what was done, problems the student had and so on. its really nice to have something constant like that...a little morning meeting complete with tea or coffee. Unfortunately, that morning, i drank too much coffee. It made me dehydrated...and well...you dont need to know the details. I was supposed to go to Patronato with Femi later that day and so when I could pull myself together and snap out of my dehydratedness - we were on our way! Femi is very fun (but very dangerous to shop with). She's so fun because she loves it and could spend all day doing it, dangerous, because she spends and spends which makes me want to spend. However - I bought two things. A $12 pair of jeans and a $4 pair of lazy pants. HELLO good buys! (for you canadians - thats a zellers add reference). I had to teach later that evening so I couldn't stay out for too long but I had a blast none the less.
april 14 - intensive class commences
on tuesday i started teaching with this team of teachers. there was a student who needed one week of intensive classes. how intense? 9 hours a day! yeah. so he had 3 hour sessions with 3 teachers per day. this went on for one week. the coolest part about it was that because he was there for 9 hours, the teacher that taught during lunch time - also got to go out for lunch with him. Which I was able to do 2 times during the week :) the best part about that...was that the school paid for the lunch...on a budget of course but it was still great!
april 17th
i had to work on getting my visa processed and so i went to the "extranjeria office" downtown. the line was SO long and there wasnt much layout and order to this particular building. But eventually, after almost two hours, I got the paperwork I was waiting to receive which meant I had a temporary work permit that allowed me to stay an extra 2 months in the country. This is was the first step to obtaining my actual work visa. Seriously...there must be about 10 steps.
I had to go back to my school to show them the papers and while I was at the school, I met one of the teachers I hadn't seen before. Her name is Airlie. We went out for coffee after and then hung out at her place. She also lives about a 10-15 minute walk from my apartment.
april 18 - walk walk walk
I decided to meet up with Wendy and Leslie and go for a walk. I told them about a place I heard you could find hula hoops. I was looking to buy a hula hoop for exercise. some of my friends have joined gyms and things like that...i dont have money or motivation for that. sooo i thought a hula hoop would be a good little investment haha. We walked all the way from the Santa Lucia metro down to Estacion Central. I know this doesnt mean much to you...but when I told people this...they thought I had made a mistake in the metro station names. I must have meant somewhere closer. NOPE! Santa Lucia to Estaction Central. It was pretty far.
here's a map:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=Santa+Lucia+Metro,+Santiago&daddr=Estaci%C3%B3n+Central+-+Chile&hl=en&geocode=%3BFTyTAf4dvYfJ-yl5AYVk-MRiljE387q6URp2oA&mra=pe&mrcr=0&dirflg=w&sll=-33.447062,-70.661834&sspn=0.035235,0.055275&ie=UTF8&ll=-33.449991,-70.661402&spn=0.017617,0.027637&z=15
We had a great walk...but sadly, did not find a hula hoop. yes, the hunt continues. We met up with breanna at an ice cream place (which has ice cream that tastes like.....amazingness) and chatted for a while and later that night Leslie and Wendy came over to my place for a little pre dance party dance party. We went out to Bar Constitucion later that night and danced till the bar closed at 5 30am. It made for a fantastic day!
april 19th - mas caminando (more walking)
I called Jamie to see what he was up to for the day. Nothing he said. And my plans were the same. I was thinking we could go for a little walk but instead we went for a 'little' walk to Bellavista and then walked around Bellavista a few times. On our way there we walked along the smelly river. Its called the Mapocho River and its kind of an eye sore...and a nose sore (aka..it stinks!). We walked over a nice...and tall bridge and took some pics from the top.
This is me
After getting to Bellavista and walking around for a while there, we decided to eat at some crappy pizza place. Please, if you ever come to Chile - do not visit a telepizza 'restaurant'. I did not get sick...which was a plus...but it was not enjoyable either. After the day of walking, I went over to Wendy's apartment for a Sushi making night. Our Italian friend Ameriga taught us how to make sushi and so we thought we would try on our own. Wendy invited some friends over and we gave it a whirl. Here are some pictures from the sushi making process:
and so we realized that while we were making it, the rice was not exactly...going to work. It had been cooling in the fridge for far too long and had lost most of its stickiness = no bueno (no good). So we made due with what we had...and in the end we had good tasting...but embarrassing looking sushi.
we ended up having a very fun and interesting night of sushi making. Next time, we will be more careful with the cooling process lol.
april 20
this was the day of my last class with my intensive student. I had him for the 3 hour class that fell on lunch time and so we went out to a nice indian restuarant for lunch. The food was great and for most of the class we just had a conversation. It was a really nice way of getting paid for three hours haha.
april 22
femi and i got together and went for a little walk. we got lunch from a sushi restuarant near me (its probably the best sushi ive had here...and for the cheapest price. it's around 2,200-2,500 pesos or $4.50 - $5.20 for 8 pieces of beautifulness). the sushi in santiago is really good because they have access to fresh fish being right on the coast. After our sushi lunch, we walked around Providencia a bit and looked in some art supply stores for fun and then on our way back from our walk, we saw some people selling pirated DVDs on the street. The sidewalks of the main streets of Santiago are seriously like a mall. You can buy shirts, earrings, necklaces, pants, DVDs, toys, food, socks and I've even seen underwear being sold on the sidewalks. Femi and I chose 3 dvds for 5,000 pesos (about 10 bucks). These movies are all downloaded and burned onto DVDs and so the quality is usually very good and they are all in English. This was my first street buy...but it definitely wont be the last.
thats all for now. stay tuned
love and miss as always.
x
Life is being lived here in Chile. I'm really enjoying myself. Of course I would like to have more money and more people here. I enjoy sharing my stories with you and hearing about your stories, but this place would be much different if i could share it with the familiar faces I love. 
Happy Birthday Rebecca!
We played some really fun nerdy drinking games and headed out at around 1 30. We couldnt find a good bar and by the time we spent a little while in one bar...we were ready to call it a night. 
still going...
and stopping to take in the view. just beautiful!
group 'we made it' pic. Leslie and I were super proud...the other two..well climbing mountains is old news for them...
we drank a little piscola (can't remember if i described piscola before but pisco is a hard liquor here and the cola part is...well, coke haha. its a super popular chilean drink) and went out to paint the town red...sorta. 
we met up with my friend breanna and some of her roomies and then made our way down to a bar in a cool barrio (neighbourhood) called bellavista (pronounced baya-veesta). the bar was super fun and really cool. i felt like there were a ton of guys there in comparison to girls but it definitely was not a gay bar. there were not a lot of foreigners there and so the girls i went with were hot commodities. we danced with some of the guys there that seemed more harmless than others haha. it was fun. we left the bar at 4 30 which is actually early to ditch a bar in santiago. most people stay out until 5 30 or 6...and sometimes even later. my friend femi slept over at my place because it's pretty expensive for her to travel back to her place by taxi (which is located in las condes...the neighbourhood my host family lives in). 
We played charades (in spanish of course so i needed a translator for some of the words haha) and danced and stuff. it was really fun. Katie's boyfriend (the guy with the white and grey/green shirt) is a photographer but he also loves to cook so we had some great food at the party as well! and their whole apartment is decorated with his photos that he has taken over the years. it was a fun place and i enjoyed the company.
