Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Long time no blog



Blog, I feel like we've grown apart. It's been ages since I've seen you for who you really are. But tonight, let's change that. Let's get back to the way things were.

Yes folks, it's been a while since I've written something on this communication portal. And for you all on the upper half on the American continent, it may be sad. But for me, it's more a coming of culture process (like coming of age, but with culture). I have been spending less and less time trying to find connections back to New Mexico. And it's been getting surprisingly enjoyable and easy to integrate in culture here.

One of the main reasons for the change, I believe, is being able to make connections with my friends here. It's easy to have friends, but now we are developing more meaningful relationships and all that gobeldyguk.

I also started rehearsing for my tribal belly dance show that happened this past weekend (Nov. 6 for future readers). That was a really rewarding experience for me because I got to meet 6 or so really nice women who I saw on at least a weekly basis. And although Zach was a little bummed I had rehearsals every Saturday, which inhibited our travelings, it was only for a couple weeks. And now our weekends are free as the seagulls that wake me up every morning.

I think that we are going to go camping this Thursday in a national reserve in a town called Los Angeles. Now is a good time to travel because pretty much all our friends are out of town somewhere. Most of them went up north to the Atacama Desert, but Zach and I actually have to attend our classes for the next week, so we are just doing a weekend trip.

A lot of the other foreign students here don't need to return with actual grades so they can kind of come and go as they please. So in some ways it has been a bummer not to have the same freedom as them. They have gone to Argentina, all sorts of cities and pueblos, and camping galore. But on the other hand, we have been able to make some great friendships with Chileans being here weekend after weekend.

We also had a very special visitor last week: MY MOMMY!!! It was so much fun have my mom here. She arrived on October 30th. And on the 31st, we went to a small town called Talca. It was one of the towns that most effected by the earthquake. There were whole street blocks where all the stores were closed due to reconstruction.

But alas, it was my birthday, so we bought some good wine and had a delicious picnic in the plaza. We ate chicken, artichoke and garlic paste, cheese, hearts of palm, anchovies and bread. It was possibly the best picnic I've ever had. And the next day we went to a vineyard about 30 minutes away form Talca called Él viñedo de San Rafeal. We went out there without calling in advance because we were told by our hostal that it would be easy to do a tour. After walking for about two miles to get to the vineyard. We were told that we in fact could not do a tour without a reservation. But being the thinking lady I am, I asked them if we could at least go buy some wine. And of course, by all means, that was acceptable.

So we got to the store to buy wine and the women at the desk felt bad that we had walked all that way just to buy two bottles of wine and walk back. So she pulled some strings with her friend in the restaurant, and got us an impromptu reservation. And this restaurant, I should add, was located on a lake. We arrived at this extremely classy restaurant and sat on some comfy couches and drank white wine with toast and tempanada. Next we had salads, warm bread, salmon and rice, and of course, more wine!

So it was kind of like a wine fairy tale come true. The no reservationers were treated like royalty. We bought two bottles of wine and were on our way.

My mom left the following friday on Nov. 5. And that was that. We enjoyed her presence so much. It felt really good to be able to show somebody around, and to show our lifestyle here. It took away a bit of that estranged foreigner feeling.

Well that's all for now folks. I am going to go eat some Asian ribs Zach is making for dinner.

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