wire mummys

Saturday night I was out with this girl Kristin and we were going to a bar to meet up with some other people ... so we hopped on a somewhat sketch bus, and all the sudden the road was blocked off like pretty far from everything (actually, in front of la Moneda, which is where the president works, but it was far from where we were going)

So we got off like 4 metro stops before we were supposed to, which is like a 25 minute walk at one in the morning. Anyways, as we're walking there's a HUGE crowd of people and we're like what is this for?? There's this large structure on wheels and people are pushing it. So we join in and also start pushing it until we're yelled at - then look up at what it is. It's like this huuuuge thing that looks like a mummy and is covered with a cloth.


Then I see a CRANE .. This thing was some sort of art / theatre show, they were practicing it Sat. and performed it Sunday. Here's what happened - lots of weird trance music, someone gets attached to a crane, goes up on this large bed like structure and pulls off the sheet. It's this girl made out of metal wire and he attached something to her. The crane grabs her and like brings her to life by pulling her off the bed. This thing is huge. Like ... a crane is necessary to pick it up, so you know it is big. Probably like 30 feet long. The crane lifts her and drags her around a little in the air and brings her to life I guess. Then everyone claps and leaves ... we left too since everyone else did but I'm really not sure what the purpose of this was. Also, we were "backstage" because we weren't supposed to be there and we tried to join in on the parade procession. When we got kicked out we just walked behind, where we weren't supposed to.


Some guy on the street said was some theatre group from Spain that does this once a year. Apparently it is called Festival Stgo. a Mil. I dunno. It was weird and bizarre. Here are pictures.

dame mas gasolina

I just got back from Siete Tazas, which is a series of seven really pretty waterfalls that look like this:

Really cool. To get there we took a train from Santiago to Talca, 3 hours south of Santiago, then a bus to Molina, some dinky town an hour east of Talca. Here is where things got fun - the 2 1/2 hour bus ride from Molina to Siete Tazas on a bus that looked like this:


Anyways, that's all fine and good, looks aren't everything, right? Who needs paint or a working engine or anything like that? I mean it IS a Benz ... Maybe we should have shopped around at the bus stop in Molina, instead of going with the first people who came up to us. Because before we got on this lady who worked for another company told us that our company crashed one of their buses the day before, and that her company, which costs the same, was much safer. And they had really nice buses, made post-WWII.

So we board the bus and go to the back where our luxury seats awaited us (at least we didn't have to stand, like a few of the Chileans on the bus). Suddenly, a pungent smell hit me - GASOLINE - flammable, highly toxic gasoline. Luckily, the floor of our bus had a nice layer of gasoline on it - the entire bus. Part of it was being soaked up using an advanced cleaning method consisting of newspapers.

Surprisingly no one decided to light a match, or rub some wool together or something like that, which would have easily killed all of us on board, especially with the joke of an "emergency exit" they called an escape hatch (it was welded shut). All I suffered was some dead brain cells, and the drunk Chilean dude who gave us a beer and the mildly-hallucinogenic dreams made it all worth it.

There's nothing like the constant fear of going up in flames to make things a little interesting...

TRAVEL LOG #1, featuring Franklin & really awful videography.

we are brothers of god

I don't know what it is, but weird people like to talk to me I guess. I was walking home from this restaurant like five minutes from my house the other day, right before the sun set, probably like 9 p.m. It was still light out. This guy wearing a suit asks me where the metro is (always with the metro directions, it seems).

I actually know this time so I tell him and he proceeds to get on his hands and knees and grabs my hand and kisses it. He asks me if I'm Chilean and I say I'm from the U.S. and he says I speak very good Spanish and thank you. He won't really let go of my hand so I just kind of stand there. Meanwhile, a bunch of people walk past us, no help from them. I keep saying no problem no problem, cya. He doesn't really let go and then he asks me how you say "corazon" in English. I tell him it's "heart." He puts his fist to his heart and says "you are a man with many heart." I tell him thanks and he says "I have many heart too." Then he pulls my hand to his mouth and kisses my hand and then puts his hand out to my mouth and I think maybe if I just get this over with I can leave.

So I kissed his hand and then he says "somos hermanos de dios" which means "we are brothers of God." and then he says thanks one more time and goes to the metro.

i won an argument in spanish

They party hard here in Chile. People don't get trashed really like they do in the U.S., but they don't go out until about 1 am and a lot of people stay out until the sun comes up, eat breakfast, then go to sleep. Some places' happy hours are from noon until 1 in the morning.

Anyways, I met the one other girl from Maryland Friday, and we decided to do a shot of tequila to celebrate our shared homeland.

Being drunk but coherent, I asked for 2 of their cheapest shots of tequila - the bartender tells me it's 4,000 pesos. I pull out a 10,000 note and give it to him, watch him put it in the cash register, and pull out a 1,000 peso note. Here's what the conversation went like:

him: you still owe me 3,000 pesos
me: I gave you 10,000, you owe me 6,000 pesos and 2 shots of tequila
him: no, you gave me this 1,000
me: I'm not stupid, I saw you put it in the cash register (except i don't know how to say cash register so i just point to it)
him: you owe me 3,000 pesos
me: forget it. i get it, i'm american and you can do whatever you want. keep my pesos and keep my shots, i don't even care anymore

Then I stormed off outside back to our group ... a couple minutes later a manager comes up to me and apologizes. He tells me that they're bringing out my shots and here was my money back. I'm awesome.

the tears of gypsy

So my bags came finally yesterday, wrapped in like 20 layers of saran wrap. It was kinda like that practical joke leeza and brian and kind of me played on brett that one time. They split up guys and girls yesterday and we slept at different hotels. The girls stayed at a hotel that cost $80 a night, ours was $175.50 a night. You do the math. BOYS RULE. anyways, the hotel had this thing where you had to put your key card in a slot in the room or else your power went out. This morning the lights turned off while I was showering like 5 times.

I moved in with my host family today, they live in a really nice apartment in a really nice area of town, Providencia. I am like 10 steps away from a metro stop and I have a big tv and the internet and a double bed. It's a mom and her 22 year old son and a grandma. They're very nice.

So here's the good part of my story. I went walking around Santiago for a while and this lady calls out "joven" which means young one. She asks me where the nearest metro is and I didn't really know so I said I didn't know I'm not from around here. She says me either, I am a Mexican. I tell her I'm from the US and she grabs my hand and starts kind of talking to me so I thought hey a good chance to practice spanish.

Then she tells me shes a Mexican gypsy visiting her family down here and she takes me over to this curb and sits down with me and starts to read my palm and tells me my future.

She says my parents miss me and my mom is going to have a baby and it's going to be a C-Section. I'm not getting good grades this semester and my love life is good but I'm shy. Then she tells me one of my neighbors is going to die but it won't be that big of a deal. I thought that was kind of weird. Then she pulls out this plant which I don't think was a drug but then she pulls out some money and blows on it and said she can make my wishes come true if I use money also.

This is about when I want to leave ... I pull out a 1000 peso ($2ish dollars) bill and try to do it but she says it works better with American money. She makes it very clear that she doesn't want money, she just needs to hold on to it for me so that my 3 wishes can come true, but she definitely doesn't need my money for food or a home or for drugs. I pull out a $1 bill, she says that it only works with money worth more. I pull out a 2000 pesos note and say that's all I'm going to use. She says I have to take out my wallet ... also sometime in here her little 1 1/2ish year old which I neglected to mention before but has been wandering around aimlessly for 5 minutes comes over and pulls down her shirt and starts breast feeding. Also I tell her I don't have a wallet but she can see it in my pocket and I say I don't want to take it out. I'm not sure what her plan was but she said she's going to make sure I die alone and sad and that my parents are dead before I get home and maybe my friends too unless I give her more money. I got up and left her with the 2000 pesos and walked across the street and didn't ever look back

She kept making that sound you make when you are doing the you're-a-goner gesture with your finger on your neck. Sorry if I've accidentally murdered you

my bags are in peru

The plane to Chile was really cool with touch screens and lots of movies but i fell asleep halfway through The Rocker with Dwight from the Office because I was tired. We landed in Santiago at 3 am and luckily my bags didn´t come from Lima even though when I was in Lima I asked 6 different people if I needed to re check my bags and they said it was checked all the way through to Santiago but they lied to me I guess. So I had to wait an hour and a half at the airport while I filled out forms and stuff but no one really speaks English in this entire country but I think I figured everything out. Then I told them to send my bags to the orientation hotel but that hotel is full until tomorrow so I went to this other hotel which was very secure and I had an individual room with a king bed and an extra bed and a fridge and a TV and a bathroom but it was another hour ride from the airport so I didn´t get there til 5 in the morning and it cost $60.

Then check out was 10 in the morning so I slept for really like 3 hours and paid $60 which doesn´t seem that fair to me but whatever. Then I took a taxi this morning to the orientation hotel because the airline told me my bags should be there by 7 am and even though the hotel I was at was in a nice area with lots of things to do took the taxi for 30 minutes to the other hotel which is in a very nice area but with nothing but car dealerships around. They didn´t have my bags and I called the airline and they said they have ¨no new information¨ so I´m not really sure what that means.

I refuse to repay a taxi to take me back to things so I´ve been walking for 2 hours back the way I came. My backpack is very heavy and I wish I packed an extra change of clothes or something instead of a nerf football which isn´t really helping me right now.

I ate my first meal in Chile at an exxon cafe on the run because i was starving and it was the first thing I saw. I had a hot dog. Also the director of this program seems to not speak English because I called him to ask for help or to ask what I should do and he didn´t speak english.

I asked this guy how much the bus cost and you needed a card to get on it so he paid for me then offered to let me sleep at his house and gave me his address and number and said he had a pretty daughter my age. Using some advanced arithmetic I calculated that the chance of me being raped outweighed the free food and sleeping. I found some hostelish place in a house for like $20 so that´s fine I guess. I spent the middle of the day sleeping and reading and then I went out but now everything is closed except for this internet cafe and a place where I ate and bars.

That reminds me of something cool that happened to me earlier, I was really thirsty so I bought a bottle of water and I opened it in the taxi and it exploded all over the place because it was gasificada. The driver wasn´t happy. Luckily I bought another gasificada water later on because I didn´t think to look at the label. That stuff is disgusting.

Goodbye, America

I slept for like an hour and a half last night ... we left for Dulles at 2:45 in the morning and my plane left at about 5:30. Luckily I was in and out of sleep for the entire 5 hour flight to Panama City and I had an emergency exit seat with no one next to me. I had a bunch of leg room.

Panama city looked pretty cool from the plane, tons of aging skyscrapers and cool water. I saw the canal from the plane, lots of barges. On the flight from Panama City to Lima I sat next to a lawyer from Lima, talked to him about indie music and Peru and Costa Rica. Lima is completely brown. It's all brown and mountains and desert-like. I've been in the airport for 5 hours and I have 2 more to go. I'm worried about losing my luggage but who knows, they said it'd be alright. I land at 2:45 a.m. Cool man