cucaracha, viña, y fútbol.

Finally. the day that I've been waiting for arrived today. FUTBOL. I finally got to play fútbol with chilenos! Yes, I finally exercised after a few months, but more importantly, i participated in one of the most beloved things in Chile... or Latin America for that matter. Thank God!! It's been a relief to finally be able to run around, I was feeling a bit cooped up these past few weeks. Me and another friend, Christine, were the only girls playing, but they guys were really good about passing to us. Very unlike the U.S. har har. The guys were from the church that we've been going to the past 2 Sundays. Muy amables. Hmmm. What else... Today we also went to a winery called Concha y Toro, located just a tiny bit afuera (outside) of Santiago. It was a beautiful place with a nice little tour and wine tasting. We got free wine glasses as a regalo. How nice. On another note, ILP is starting to wind down as this is the last week of classes.

Part of the ILProgram involved having to go on a viaje (trip) to some place outside of Santiago. We so happened to chose the worst day to go... it was raining like mad. (Once again, thank you Steven Wang for the Gortex jacket). It was quite an adventure I must say. We woke up uber early (like 6 in the morning) took the metro to the bus terminal. I experienced my first creepster, heebee, etc. I made the mistake of saying good morning to this elderly man. He ended up sitting next me and staring at me the entire 35 minutes of the metro ride. Thank the Lord he didn't follow me off. After the creepy ride, I approached my group at the boletería (ticketbooth) and meet our 16-year old Chilean guide named Axel. Yes. Named after Axel Rose. He was a cousin of the host brother of Becky, one of the EAPers. Buena Onda. We rode the bus for 1.5 hours and stopped in Cartegena only to find the streets empty, stores closed, and rain pounding. We still got off. Our first priority was to figure out how to get back to Santiago. We walked quickly, but got soaked even quicker. There were several times where we had to run under a roofed patio type of thing and chill with the perros callejeros( street dogs) for a bit. One followed us for a while. Cute patchy pup. We quickly took pictures of the miserable place, saw mendigos (beggers/homeless guys), got soaked some more, and finally found an open restaurante. Shabby, but at least it protected us from the rain. We had some nice encounters with cucarachas on the table, walls, and even one in Becky's food. Yum. Not wanting to know if we had "suprises" in our food, we chowed down quickly. We interviewed the waitress (part of the project), and booked it to find a collectivo, which is sort of a taxi but it has a route and you pay less. We flagged one down, but we had 5 people and there was only the 3 person backseat unoccupied. We quickly decided to just stuff people in. Mind you, our group consisted of some pretty tall and big people. ranging from 6ft something to 5'7". I was for sure the smallest person in the group. We played "stuff the sopping wet EAP children in the cab". Becky, Axel, and Kelley first stuffed themselves in. I awkwardly sat on Becky's lap, my neck crooked. Richard dove in head first. His feet were bent at a 90 degree angle, resting on Kelley's lap while his head was bobbing with effort not to rest his face on someone's lap. It had been a while since I laughed so hard in such an awkward position. We arrived in San Antonio 15 minute later, in front of a fish market. It was still raining, except now there were people on the street. San Antonio was much bigger of a city. We did interviews, ran into a shop (bought a DRY jacket), bought an umbrella (paragua) from a street vender, found ourselves a taxi that would take us to Pomaire. Luckily we didn't have to stuff 5 people in the back. But unluckily, I had to be the 4th person in the back.. meaning laying across people's laps.. for 45 minutes. I was pretty happy when I got out of the cab. It was sucky, but it was cheap and we had no other option. The pueblito of ceramics and crafts, Pomaire, was our destination. I'll let the pictures do the talking. It was a cute place for sure.

So. I'm tired of writing so I hope yalls can figure out what I've been up to via pictures. If not, ask me something and I'll answer it. =)

Upon arriving in Cartegena

perrito!

colorful!

the only restaurant open

our friend. whose friend got eaten by my friend.
empanda... one with a buggy bug inside.
"instacoffee"
San Antonio fishmarket
pescado
POMAIREfamous for their black clay ceramic stuff.
pigs= goodluck
nativity scene
windchimes!

more piggysmassive massive empanada

on the way back.

CONCHA Y TORO

Que lindo no?

"diablo"

grace and graciella (that's me)

FÚTBOL!!!
Ah. The beauty of playing in a semi-indoor hardfloored gym belonging to a church, in jeans and unbroken in wanna-be-converse, with a thick layer of fog and "esmog" mingling together in the air as sweaty jugadores fight for the ball, Chilean men, young and semi-older busting out their terrific street-baller foot moves, exaggerated and not so exaggerated injuries, super animated reactions, rushing the striker, sporting the latin-american jerseys, speaking the futbol language that I have not yet deciphered.
Seriously made me so happy.