Jo Jo Jo

Although Jeff and I had a hell of a time getting down to Central Chile (more on that later), we finally made it and we had a lovely Christmas in the Viña/Valpo area.  We stayed at a B&B called  Casa Kultour in Valparaíso for X-mas eve and X-mas night which ended up being a great choice.  The owner was super friendly and helpful and our little room was perfect.  How could we not have been happy in a place called cerro alegre (happy hill)?

On Christmas day, we woke up around 10 for a nice breakfast at the hostel and made a few Christmas phone calls.  Thanks to the time difference, that meant a 6 am wake-up call for my dad (oops).  My nephews lucked out though, since they'd been up since 5 waiting for him to get his lazy butt out of bed so they could open presents.  I got to watch them run around like crazy and unwrap some of their gifts via skype which was rad. Yay for Christmas spirit and way too much sugar.

Jeff and I headed out around noon and spent the majority of the day walking all around and exploring the two neighboring cities.  We had wonderful, sunny weather all day and then, when we started to head back to the hostel, it got super windy.  We made it back to our room just before it started to rain and crawled under the covers with a couple of mugs of cola de mono and some mint chocolate Christmas cookies.  After about nine months in Iquique, we were thankful for the rain and it was especially nice to have some wintery weather on Christmas (even though it's summer here).

We got nice and cozy and watched Love Actually (my favorite Christmas movie).  Jeff was reluctant because it's kind of a chick flick but he actually ended up liking it too (sorry for outing you on the internet).  We passed out pretty early from a combination of the cocktails and a full day of walking around in the sun. 

I knew it would be strange spending my first Christmas away from family but it turned out to be a really good one.  Although I was definitely still a little homesick and my low-key day was a far cry from the madness of a Briscoe Christmas, I am super grateful that Jeff and I got to spend our first Christmas together here in Chile. 

21.12.12

All of this recent talk about self-driving cars has got me thinking, why on earth has no one invented self-packing suitcases yet?  Driving a car is really not an inconvenience.  Moving is a nightmare.  Since I left home at 17, I have gone through the process of moving all of my earthly possessions an innumerable amount of times.

Ok, maybe not so innumerable.  I have done the official count (using almost of my fingers and some of my toes) and the grand total is fourteen.  FOURTEEN times!  I've moved fourteen times in the past seven years.  Tonight, for the fifteenth time, I find myself slipping into the old routine.  It goes something like this:

Step One: Wait until the last possible moment.
Step Two: Drink an ungodly amount of caffeine
Step Three: Find any smaller and seemingly more manageable task to distract yourself from the actual task at hand
Step Four:  Organize and pack every item possible before your heavy eyelids refuse to tolerate any more resistance and you are forced to submit to sleep
Step Five: Push all remaining clutter off of the organizational epicenter (aka, bed)*
Step Six: Crawl in
Step Seven: Pass out

*If exhaustion is too strong and you are unable to clear off the bed, just push the junk over and make a little space for yourself to sleep in.  Finish packing in the morning.

Although, like most, I consider the process of moving a special kind of hell, there's also something undeniably therapeutic about it.  While rifling through old keepsakes, we are reminded of so many good times and good people.  Moving also gives us an opportunity to take a good hard look at the objects we are lugging around and determine whether or not their essential in our lives.  If not, we (hopefully) chuck them out, simplifying our lives (and making room for new junk).

The last night in any apartment always feels a little surreal and tonight is no exception.  Tomorrow evening, Jeff and I will head down to Santiago on an extremely long bus ride through the Atacama desert.  We will spend about a week and half bouncing back between Valparaíso, Viña del Mar and Santiago.  On the third of January, Jeff will sadly head back to the USA and I will...well, as usual, I don't know what I will do.

I've become accustomed to dealing with a certain amount of uncertainty in my life as of late and, although it is a bit overwhelming at times, I'm trying to roll with the punches.  I'm still waiting to hear from the academy about my possible contract up in the mine.  In the meantime, I'm keeping my options open and considering either coming back to Iquique to teach Summer school kids' classes or heading South to explore (and possibly find work there).  As usual, I'll keep ya'll posted as plans progress.

As for now, I'm just glad to say that we all officially made it through another apocalypse.  This may be the end of another chapter, but it's certainly not the end of the word.

Como un Piedra Rodante

Since my last blog entry, I have traveled over 2,000 miles (3218.88 kilometres) up and down the cost of Chile, exploring the northern parts of the country and searching for a place to call home.

The Thursday after our IDELT program was finished, three friends and I began the trip that I have talked about in so many blog posts before (yes, the one that seemingly changed routes pretty much every day). Our plan at the time of departure was to hit up La Serena for a few days, spend some time in Viña/Valpo and then come back to Santiago to grab our stuff and move back to one of those two spots. We took an overnight bus to La Serena (which is about a six hour trip) and got there on Friday. We arrived pretty early in the morning and wandered around the dirty streets near the bus station, in the fog, trying to find our hostel (not the best first impression but what can you do?) The place we ended up staying was called Aji Verde Hostel and we absolutely loved it; awesome staff, buena onda and a bedroom named "Puta Madre". What more could you ask for in a hostel?

As we explored La Serena more, we found that there was a lot to love there (neat architecture, pretty beaches, big central market and a cool little surf school where I had my first surf lesson). However, there were also things that we didn't care for. Overall, it was hard for me to put a finger on what it was, but something was definitely amiss. Though I could imagine myself living there, I hadn't fallen in love with it in quite the same way that I had imagined/hoped that I would. Ruby and Kate were seemingly even more disenchanted with the place than I was so we reverted back to one of our earlier plans (God knows which version at this point) and bought a last minute ticket to Arica. We parted ways with Alex on Monday and started off on the next leg of our trip.



After over twenty hours in a bus, we finally reached Arica. Maybe it had to the do with the fact that we were greeted with sunshine instead of fog, or that we had the good sense to hop into a taxi instead of ambling aimlessly around the streets for so long, but our first impression of Arica was significantly better than La Serena. We spent the day exploring and we really liked what we found. The hostel we stayed in was great and we actually started talking to them about a possible work/stay exchange in the event that we did end up moving to Arica. We swam in the ocean both days and on the second day, we climbed the morro and got a good view of the city. After our two nights there, we decided that we could be happy living there but we still kept our minds open to Iquique which we had also bought a ticket for.


We got to Iquique (five hours south of Arica) on Thursday afternoon and left Friday morning for Santiago. Although we spent such a short time there, it was just enough for us to fall head over heals in love. As we were planning our fact-finding mission to the North, the three of us had a number of discussions about what we needed in a place where we were going to live. There were lots of ideas thrown out: a good intermediate wave to surf, cultural activities to attend, people our age, proximity to other countries for easy traveling etc etc.

It's easy to generate these kinds of lists and I'm not trying to say that they aren't a useful and important part of the process. However, at the end of the day, I knew that the determining factor in whether or not I would be drawn to a specific locale, wouldn't be any kind of hard statistic with regard to the percentage of my list's criteria that it met. I knew, that at the core of my decision, would be a feeling; the "this is it" feeling. I wish there was a more logical, or even poetic way to describe it but what I've found seems to the be the most succinct. The last time I had this feeling I was seventeen and very confused about my search for the perfect college. I had all the facts in front of me but there didn't seem to be a overwhelming pull to one place or another. When I got to Chico, I just knew. That was it.

That instinct brought me to the place that I called home for the next five and a half years. It brought me to life-changing opportunities, beautiful friends and amazing memories. Once again, this feeling has pulled me north, this time to Iquique. Who am I to question it?

Capítulo Dos

Why hello there everybody. As you may have noticed, blog entries are getting fewer and further between. However, I AM still tryyyiinnnggg to keep you all updated with what's going on with me in Chile. Tomorrow (well, I guess TODAY since it's almost one in the morning) is my last official day of my IDELT certification course. After that, begins capítulo dos of my Chilean adventure; finding a job and a place where I want to live here. My plans have changed a little since my last entry and my friends and I are cutting our trip to the North down to just La Serena and the surrounding areas. We will be taking off (hopefully sometime before noon) on Thursday. Our trip to the Valpo/Viña area will be moved to the end of our trip (probably somewhere around the 12th, 13th and 14th) and then back to Santiago for a few days to pack/clean up my friend's house before her lease is up and (if we like it, of course) get ourselves situated to move to La Serena. We're also toying with the idea of going to Bariloche to visit and renew our 90 day tourist visas but we'll see how that ends up working out. We're all a little anxious to get things situated in our new home (wherever that might be) and figure out the housing and job situations before we make any serious travel plans. A lot is still up in the air but I'm really excited for the challenge and adventure. In the meantime, time to celebrate graduation. Parrrr-tayyyy!

A Day to Recover- 6 de Febrero

Today is a day of rest and recuperation after two days of sightseeing, sun soaking and cerveza sipping in Valparaíso and Viña del Mar. Things didn't go quite as planned and my roommate and I ended up leaving Santiago considerably later than we'd hoped for. We didn't make it to Valparaíso until about five pm on Saturday but luckily it gets dark pretty late here. We got a little lost because we didn't have the best map (yes, it was the map's fault...not ours). The wind was crazy strong and it was blowing up all kinds of dirt and rubble into our eyes as we wandered around trying to find our barrings. Finally, windswept and covered in dirt, we found Hostel Licanantay, where we had already reserved two beds. We cleaned ourselves up and headed out for dinner and some bar hopping. Our hostel was surrounded by restaurants, bars and discotecas which was very convenient.

After the bars closed at five am, we headed back to the hostel and hung out with a bunch of new friends that we met there. The next morning, we took a little mini-tour of Valparaíso with some of them since they were more familiar with the area. It is a cool town with lots of neat street art but it is also pretty dirty. After that, we rode in one of the ascensadores (small outdoor elevators that go up and down the hills) which completed our to-do list for Valparaíso, so we hopped on a bus to Viña.

When we got there, we walked along the beach and checked out a little bit of the downtown area but we didn't have much time to explore beyond that. Our plan was to go to the station, buy the latest return ticket possible and then go back out into Viña until it was time to leave. It didn't work out because when we got to the bus station, all the later trips to Santiago were booked and our only option was to buy a last minute ticket for a bus that was leaving right away. We were a little bummed but super relieved because for a while it was looking like we wouldn't be able to find a way home at all. Luckily the guy working one of the ticket booths was super helpful. Six other companies had already told us that there were no more tickets to Santiago for the day before we talked to him. When we came up to his booth (probably looking a little panicked), he locked up the ticket booth where he was working and took us out to the terminal where we paid the driver for a last minute ticket right there on the bus (and no, we didn't get ripped off. It was actually cheaper than our ticket there). Thank God everything worked out but I wish we had had more time in Viña. It is so beautiful. I'm already thinking about moving there after my program in Santiago wraps up in March. Obviously, I'd like to spend more than two hours there before making my final decision though. We're already thinking about going back next weekend :)

Los Terremotos y El Daño que los Puedan Causar- 3 de Febrero

This morning I woke up with my first Chilean hangover. The culprit, as you may have guessed, is pictured above. We call it El Terremoto, and much like natural terremotos (earth quakes), it is quite capable of shaking things up a bit. Luckily, we managed to survive the damage with only an (albeit, overpriced) taxi bill and a rough next morning. Los Terremotos are made with a sweet white wine (and yes, that is a liter and a half of it you see in the photo) mixed with pineapple ice cream and sometimes rum or cognac. Deliciously dangerous. If you're brave (or stupid) enough, you can follow your terremoto with una réplica (an aftershock), which is just the same thing but "only" half a liter. You can bet that after two liters of alcohol, the earth will be a-quakin'.

Despite my better judgement to sleep off the hangover, I actually pulled myself out of bed at about 7:30 this morning to go get a sim card for my Chilean cell phone. As luck would have it, the department store that I needed didn't open until eleven so I guess I should have just taken advantage of that extra hour of sleep. Pues, asi es la vida.

After my last Spanish class, I went and got sushi at a restaurant by my school que se llama "SushiGREEN". It was muy delicioso and I have been craving sushi for about a week so it really hit the spot. Afterwards, the three of us went on another school field trip with Marisol to Concha y Toro, a vineyard about an hour out of Santiago. There weren't enough people to signed up to justify renting a car so we took 2 metros and a bus instead. This was my first experience riding the bus. On the way there it was fine, but on the way back it was a little rougher since we didn't have seats and had to balance ourselves standing up in the very narrow aisle. It felt a little like we were tourists on display at a zoo, with a guy playing guitar and singing in the background who announced us as we got on the bus, " ¡LOS EXTRAJEROS!"

We paid $8 for a tour of the winery which included two glasses of wine glass. We also got to keep a souvenir Concha y Toro glass which I was excited about because I don't have any at my house here and it feels weird drinking wine from a coffee cup. Overall, I was really glad that I went. I got some great pictures and my SLR survived her first venture into Chile and returned home unscathed.

Now I'm planning my weekend trip to Valparaíso/Viña del Mar. The hostel is booked and now it's time to pack. We take off at ten tomorrow morning! iChau bellos!