and so it begins

It is upon us! A time when entire countries become vastly less productive in order to watch a group of their compatriots battle against another country. That's right, the MUNDIAL (World Cup)!!

I'll admit openly that I have never really understood the need to watch sports. They are boring and just an excuse to yell for hours. (I have been forced to go to enough football games in my life, that I feel I have the right to make these bold statements.) But here in Chile, I am all about the experience. About a month ago I went to my first fútbol (soccer) game in Chile and I was hooked! It was such a new experience. Never before had I been to a sporting event with flares, barbed wire, and the national guard. I decided right then and there that I might have been judging sports a little too hard. Maybe there is something to it after all.

There are two teams in Chile, el Colo Colo and La Universidad de Chile. I am a proud hincha (fan) of La U. see?

The most exciting part of the fútbol, for me, is the chanting. All of the fans know the same, intricate cheers and they all sing them together the entire game. It's beautiful. The cheers can get rather racist and sexist as they yell things at the other team or the other team's fans, but if you just ignore that small percentage of the cheers (89%), you will find that the rest of the cheers are really uplifting and the fans even cheer themselves on. With spirit like that, who needs cheerleaders?

As you can see, people actually do care about soccer in some countries. And here in Chile, they have been gearing up for the world cup for weeks. It has been all anyone talks about. The first game for Chile was yesterday at 7:30 in the morning. I have a class at 8:30 in the morning, so I figured I would just have to miss it. Ooohoho no. Evidently, fútbol comes first. It's like going to a catholic school on holy days. You may not be catholic, but you sure like those saints when the half days come around. Yeah, here everyone, even those that don't care about fútbol, fought to get the class either cancelled or moved back. And it worked. But it wasn't only that class. The library was closed, and all of the other classes that morning were moved back. Even the elementary schools and high schools were closed until around 10am.'Esteemed patrons: We inform you that Wednesday, June 16th, the library will open it's doors at 10am.'

Seeing the preparations for the game, I knew it was going to be big. A couple of my friends from the class that was moved back until 1:30pm invited me over to stay up the entire night and watch the game in the morning and of course I was down. We managed to stay up until around 4, but then the sleepiness set in and we passed out for a few hours.

I awoke at 7:40 to the sounds of the fútbol game on the television in the next room. I quickly ran in and settled in to watch the game. We blew up balloons and drank coffee while we watched. I'll save the blow by blow for another post...meanwhile...look it up: Chile vs. Honduras and we won 1-0. Woot Woot!! This was the first time that Chile had won a game in a mundial for about 70 years! Even though we were dead tired, my friend, Max, and I decided to go to Plaza Italia where all of the celebrating goes down.

The police were redirecting traffic because there were so many people in the Plaza throwing confetti, drinking, spraying foam, and cheering. "¡¡¡C-H-I (CHI) L-E (LE), CHI CHI CHI, LE LE LE, VIVA CHILE!!!"So much happiness all gathered in one place. And so much nationalism. There were a ridiculous number of Chilean flags everywhere and I'm pretty sure I was the only one not wearing a lick of red. There was even a point when a little boy was being thrown in the air on the chilean flag by a large group of men......no worries, i'm sure all safety precautions were taken.

By this time we were starving, so we ducked into a diner that was showing the Spain vs. Switzerland game. Let me remind you: this was at 10 in the morning. So I feel like it is normal that I was a little bit surprised that EVERYONE was drinking beer. I felt like a wuss ordering water. hah. But I managed to sneak a pic of some guys at a booth next to us complete with beers and festive hats.perfection.

Anywho...we ate huge sandwiches like this one: and then we started to see people running away from the plaza. Evidently the police had decided that it was time to open up the streets again and they were using whatever force was necessary. Oops...i had almost forgotten we were in Latin America. Thanks for the reminder. So we decided that it was as good a time as ever to leave and we walked calmly to the car. Meanwhile, people around us were running with their children dressed from head to toe in red and blue from the cops who were now spraying people with guanacos (big trucks that spray water at people...they are called this because they spit like a llama aka guanaco). I didn't find out until later that 81 people were arrested. It really got out of hand.

That was only the first game. Now there are two more and I imagine that those will be even more intense because they are against harder teams and they are at normal times of the day. Guess we'll just have to find out...(1313)

there's no place like santiago *click, click, click*

So to refresh the memory, I am in Sucre, I just found out that I have to wait another day for a bus to go to Argentina, I have very little money, and I have just met a woman that will let me stay with her for free.

We walked to the market because she needed to buy some corn and cheese to make humitas (kinda like tamales only drier and just with cheese inside). I got to see real market bargaining in action. Now, I am normally all for bargaining. But this got to be a little bit ridiculous. She was buying from an indigenous woman sitting on the street with all of her corn strewn around her. And she was almost yelling at the woman to give her a better deal as she went through EVERY single piece of corn to make sure it was big enough. We were buying 50...needless to say, we were there for awhile. But we finally made it back to the home of her parents.
(this is a random picture of me on an eiffel tower-like thing that was in a park in sucre)

I was feeling really sick, so after peeling lima beans with her dad and having some tea, I slept the rest of the day away. I woke up that night and sat with the woman who invited me to stay (i've completely forgotten her name...oops. let's call her Maria.) and her mother. Let me just give you an idea of what this looked like. The grandma was laying in bed obviously in pain from her cancer, María was talking about her grandma's great pain and about how the doctor should have been there hours ago, the grandpa was sitting playing guitar and singing to himself by the window, and I was sitting uncomfortably watching images of the earthquake's destruction in Chile on the news. It was kind of strange. And then the grandpa brought me a wall calendar of sucre to remember my trip by which was really cute. Only he didn't speak to me at all. He literally, WHILE I WAS IN THE ROOM, asked Maria and his wife if they wanted the calendar...if they had anyone that they wanted to give it to at all. When he found out that they had no use for it he then continued to ask them to tell me that he was giving it to me as a gift. And he handed me the calendar. It was a nice gesture...but i can understand spanish...and had just been speaking to him earlier that day. huh.

Luckily, Maria told me that her kids were going to come by and pick me up so that we could go out that night. Little did I know this night was going to turn even more awkward, but I started to get the feeling when her kids showed up and one of them was literally my dad's age. SUUUUUPER AWKWARD. Ok, to be fair, he was actually only in his thirties and the daughter was 29, but still. And then it got weirder when we went out and got in a tiny sports car...in bolivia. Going from seeing tons of indigenous people everywhere, to sitting in a sports car? weird. I'm not going to lie and tell you the night ended up being a lot better than i had thought. Picture a young traveling poor girl wearing a llama fur sweater sitting at a table with working age professionals in leather jackets and even one guy in a suit. I can't stress enough how weird this was. However, we ended up going to two different bars and the most popular discoteca in sucre, so culturally, it was an experience.

The next morning I woke up in a huge house that was decorated really nicely. It even had a garden with all kinds of fruit trees. I spent the day writing in my journal and talking to a different grandpa in the beautiful garden (he actually talked to me). I tried an igo which is a fruit that looks like a little eggplant, but tastes...sweet. It was really good. I reveled in the fact that i had, most likely, just happened to come in contact with one of the richest families in Sucre. The dad is a doctor, one of the sons graduated and is a banker, another daughter is studying to be a doctor, and I haven't even mentioned all of the cars they had in addition to their sports car--an old-fashioned volkswagen bug, an suv, and one other I can't remember. It was interesting to see the other side of things and I was really grateful that they let me stay with them. I just couldn't believe that, even when escaping from Chile to Bolivia, I managed to end up on the wealthy side of town when all I really wanted to see was how the normal, everyday person lives. Oh well.

That day I left for Mendoza and at the border early the next morning. Upon crossing into Argentina, I was worried that I would be made to throw away my coca leaves, but the customs guy lifted the flap of my bag as he was asking me where I was from and put the flap back down. And that was argentina's customs. Really strict.

When I arrived in Mendoza later that day, I was unsure of what I wanted to do. I didn't want to ask my dad to send more money, but the bus tickets had also cost more than I had bargained for and I only had 40 argentinian pesos left (about $12). I had been saving my money and since the previous day had only eaten a bag of animal crackers and water from a bottle which I was only able to refill when I was willing to pay to use the restroom. I figured out that I could order bus tickets online using my dad's credit card and then even be able to spend a bit of time seeing the city. Just having arrived in Argentina, I was still unused to the prices, but I was definitely not expecting it to so closely resemble Chile. I spent about 2 hours walking around downtown looking for a place to stay, but was unable to find anything for less than 40 pesos aka everything i owned. I decided to buy a ticket back to Chile for that night and after frantically using every form of contact that I have with my parents (email, facebook, my sister's fb, best friends that could possibly call my parents from the US' fb), I finally got ahold of them. I hurriedly put the information in online to buy the ticket as it was getting dark outside...but it didn't work. I literally entered it about 10 times and it didn't work. I went to the bus terminal and asked for help, but evidently they don't run the website and couldn't help me. I went to every company that had buses going to Santiago, but none of them would take a card without having the physical card.

So now it is almost midnight, I am sitting outside of the terminal in a city that I barely know, and I have enough money to buy food OR a place to stay for the night. One, not both. And to top it all off, despite all of my hard work and budgeting and not eating, I was still going to have to ask my dad to send more money. fml. This was probably the lowest point of my entire trip.

To make a long story short, I stopped feeling sorry for myself on the bench outside of the terminal and decided that no matter how hungry I was, the terminal was not a good place to spend the night. I ended up going to a hostel that I had found earlier that day and was happy to find the nicest hostel I had stayed in on my trip along with free homemade wine and a nice, fat, talkative man who offered me potato chips. (Come to find out later that these were the potato chips of a group of Europeans that had gone out on the town. They came in and found me eating their chips...whoops.) This was actually the first real hostel that I had stayed at my entire trip where i had to share a room with 6 other people, but I didn't mind it. It was actually nice because I was able to hang out with other travelers my age and I met a lot of cool people.

The breakfast at this place was amazing--homemade bread out of a bread machine with butter and strawberry jam and as much coffee or tea as I wanted (or potentially wine...which was always available in a big barrel on the counter). It, along with hearing about other people's traveling adventures at the breakfast table, rejuvenated and made me ready to explore Mendoza, stress-free.

I was really happy that I was going to be able to enjoy Mendoza a bit, because the day before I had walked past so many cute cafés and restaurants, but had no money at the time. Mendoza was nice. It had a lot of plazas in the center which helped me to orient myself and, as always, they were full of people with artesania (hand-made jewelry, etc.). Another interesting tid-bit that I learned is that the McDonalds in Mendoza sell little bottles of wine with meals. No lie! I hate McDonalds, but I've got to give it to them...changing their products to fit each country is a good idea. (In Chile the McDonalds sandwiches have avocado on them.) But despite how much I liked Mendoza, to me, it was just a stop on my way back to Santiago. Nothing more. I hung out with some people that I met at the hostel, but at the same time, I was just ready to be back in my own room. Not to mention the fact that school had already started back in Santiago.

Before catching my bus, I met up with one of my good Chilean friends, Seba, who had just arrived in Mendoza, and we shared our ridiculous stories of our travels. It had been over a month since we had seen each other so it was nice to catch up. He told me that he could tell that my spanish had gotten better which is like the best compliment i could ever receive (i mean, i'd better improve after 2 weeks on my own in a spanish speaking country).

And then I got on the tiny bus to drive through the Andes Mountains and back into Santiago.
It was one of the most beautiful bus rides I've ever had and we only had minor glitches (a woman had to be written up because she was bringing in ridiculous amounts of hair products. obviously to sell them.) and then I was home. I arrived to find my room filled with cracks from the earthquake, but I was happy nevertheless.