notable stuff

It's been quite awhile since my last post - oops - oh well - sorry to those of you who are addicted to my blog - i.e. my mom, and probably no one else.

I'm just going to start writing about different things I've thought about occasionally that I've meant to write about:

-Yesterday, there were some people hauling crates of beer into the main building of the university. Isn't that funny? It's Semana Novata, which is the name for the week of freshmen/mechone activities. At most schools in Chile, there's lots of partying, hazing, etc. that happens during this week. As I walk around downtown in both Viña and Valpo., there are various university students on corners with their faces and bodies painted and maybe flour or something stuck on them, and some kind of shaving cream or other white mixture in their hair, asking for money. When I went to the bathroom yesterday, it was all wet and stinky in there, from girls getting cleaned up.

-Also yesterday, I found the religious/pastoral services office of Casa Central, and they were super-nice. I got a brochure-thing in my agenda that said something about religious communities, and I was trying to figure out more info. I kept going to the wrong places for one reason or another to find info., even though their location was pretty clearly printed on the back of the brochure. Anyway, I'm used to being involved in a religious/spiritual group of some sort on-campus, so I wanted to find out what these groups were about. There's a group of students that meets in this office on Thurs. evenings, and later on they'll split up and meet in people's houses and such - I'm looking forward to getting to know the people involved in the group. I talked to an older man named Arturo that meets with school officials, I guess - the funcionarios. But, he was super-nice and we chatted for awhile about various things - about who I am, stuff about Chile, the U.S., Europe, etc. Then, I met a girl named Eveline, I believe, who goes to the group, and she was super-nice as well - wants to practice her English and stuff, too, so we might do that some time.

-I went to Isla Negra on Saturday. This is a town, not on an island despite it's name (basically it has to do with Pablo Neruda's eccentricity and influence), about a 2-hour's drive from here. The main attraction is that the main house-museum of Pablo Neruda, pretty much the poet laureate (if I have my terms right) of Chile, is located there. Rebecca's (one of my closest gringa friends here) Chilean mom Genoveva took us. She's wanting to start a tourist company, so she enjoys taking groups of people to tourist attractions. I think we split up between the 4 of us (Rebecca, Sonja, me, and Rebecca's friend Beti from Ecuador who was staying at their house for awhile) the price of gas and some small fee to Geni (G pronounced as h). Anyway, we stopped a couple times along the way to take pictures and stuff, which was nice, and made our way to Neruda's house to take a tour. While we were waiting, a man promoting the restaurant connected to it recited one of Neruda's poems for us. Pablo Neruda is just too cool of a person. I got a poster and some postcards from the gift shop. I was really tempted to spend a lot on this copper light fixture at one of the artisan shops that we looked at as well - it was made of a couple masks and some other copper pieces, and was rigged so you could put a light bulb in it - I liked it a lot. Oh well, maybe I can find some interesting pieces at antique stores and have Dad or one of my art major friends at school put it together in an interesting for me. Anyway - I went to the beach for the first time since I've been over here as well. It was nice - the water was super-cold though. There were some men going in - one got thrown in and so got completely wet. There were even some people pretty far out - they must have been numb from head to toe. Anyway - we rolled up our pants to our knees and walked out far enough to get the bottom of them wet, took some pics., looked around at the rocks and stuff, and made a sand castle. It was good fun.

-The other day in my language/culture class, we talked about ligers - isn't that great? We have a fun group in there.

-So far, I've been to Club Cielo and Café Journal for my late nights - fun stuff. I look forward to making my way to some salsotecas, though.

-My classes are still up in the air. We're having trouble with the history department. Right now, I'm definitely taking my culture and language class, hinduism and christianity, and social geography - and I'll end up either in modern chilean history or history of the church in chile and lat. am.

-I'm almost better with my nagging illness. I'm through with my meds., but I just can't seem to get rid of this cough - I keep getting cough attacks.

-I met my other Chilean sister, cousin, and aunt the other day at the grandparents' house. They're all really nice, especially my sister Carolina.

-There's lots of other stuff, but this is what you get for now, because I've got to head out.