Exploring Valparaiso and Vina del Mar

    On Saturday, we went to Pablo Naruda's house in Valparaiso. He has three houses in Chile, all of which are now museums. This house was full of his collections and favorite armchairs where he would do most of his writing. His house was 4 stories high at the very top of one of the cerros in Valparaiso. The view from his bedroom overlooked the entire city and beach; I can imagine how inspiring this view could be for his poetry. The museum was packed with people, and they gave us listening devices to hear a self guided tour throughout the house, explaining about all the little random things he collected or how he liked to set his table.
    I'd been trying to meet up with my friend Emily in Vina del Mar all weekend, who is also studying abroad from DU. I couldn't figure out how to call her Chilean phone from my Argentine phone since we couldn't communicate on Facebook without wifi (what did we do before Smart Phones??), but finally found out I had to add a series of numbers in front of her number to dial a mobile, and we made a plan to meet to go sand surfing in Concon. So we figured out the bus system and finally met up! There are great big sand dunes in Concon, farther along the beach from Vina del Mar, and people rent out sleds and sandboards for 2 dollars an hour. The hike up carrying a board is tough, but the ride down was so much fun like trying to snowboard on sand. I'm a skier so it was a little harder. We had to rub wax on the boards every time to make them go faster. We crashed a lot in the sand and got the sand everywhere in our stuff. You could see the ocean and the view of the coastline from the top of the dunes. The entire coast used to be dunes, but are slowly getting built over with office buildings and homes.

     After the dunes Emily took us to her favorite empanada restaurant on the beach to watch the sunset. Chilean empanadas are fried, twice the size, and have so many more options. They have a lot of seafood and cheese empanadas, vegetable options, the typical beef empanadas that we eat in Argentina, and even dessert empanadas of apple or dulce de leche. I haven't been able to find dessert empanadas in Argentina, and the seafood was so delicious, I was completely satisfied. The day started out cloudy, and warmed up at the perfect time for our activities, but because of this we missed out on a good beach sunset.
    I brought Emily some Fernet Branca to show her what Argentinians drink, so she ordered a coke and tried it. I think she definitely tasted the mouth wash flavor that us in Argentina have become accustomed to and actually like now.
    Emily showed us where the Chileans go out at night in Valparaiso. Our hostel is right by the street with all the bars, so we could walk there and back, and felt pretty safe walking around at night. The main thing to worry about in Chile is all the pick pocketers, which is similar to Mendoza. Emily invited us to a party at a bar with her volunteer group who paints houses, so we got in for free to the boliche that we went to after. Valpo night life seems very similar to Mendoza night life, but they end the night a little earlier. They even have the same tradition of getting a hotdog at the end of the night, but they call them completos, which are a hot dog covered in tomato, avocado and mayonnaise.         
     Emily's friends were really fun to meet. She is in IFSA too, but with fewer students in the program, and sounds like her and her friends are a lot better about speaking Spanish all the time instead of English, but they also had some issues with choosing available classes because of the student strikes in Chile after the government decided not to make Chilean universities free anymore. They aren't taking classes with locals because of this, but sounds like their classes are a little harder. The Spanish accent is a little different too. Like we use "vos" for the second person, they combine the singular and plural versions of second person when speaking directly to somebody. This is hard to do because DU doesn't even teach us the plural second person conjugations because its only used in Spain. Emily taught me that, and then I felt really proud of myself for understanding the bus driver when he asked us where we were getting off.