Big City Livin'

Glad to say that my trip to Santiago has been so far a success. I'll say it was an exhusting travel, but for the last day and a half I've been experiencing this town for all it's worth. I began my journey on friday evening after my last class at a school called Tres Cruses. I took the bus to Vacuna (between Pisco and LaSerena). I had to take out some money and passed the time before my night bus left at 10pm. O took allot of photos, hung around the plaza and went into some shops. Oh I also had the world's best empenada. Called the Neopolitana, it's made with chicken, tomato, ricotta, oregano, and olive oil. Mmm.
Unfortunately the bus ride was not as satisfying as I spent the first two and a half hours trying to fall asleep amist the booming of 90's pop music vidoes, there is no genre I now detest more. And in Chilean fashon, there were only thirty second clips pliced together, one after the other. I woke around 5am when the bus pulled into the station in Santiago, it was really cold which all of you are used to. I was expecting a summer morning. I spent an hour under a gigantic plastic christmas tree that serves as the main icon of this station during the holiday season waiting for the metro to open. Of coarse I misunderstood Leo's (the man im staying with)directions, we were both waiting for the other at ajacent terminals, and ended up not finding him for another hour. When all was said and done I took a long nap when I got to his house.

The Final Countdown

Today Daniel, Andrea (an English teacher), and I went to the river near my house called Refugio de Angel (angel’s refuge). We paid two dollars to enter a camping area that is beside a large pool maybe twenty meters wide, fifty meters long, and over a meter and a half deep. Though there were more than twenty people there it felt as if we had the place to ourselves. I took pictures of Daniel and Andrea throwing around the Frisbee and of the long bridge we crossed to get to our secluded resting area under the shade of gigantic willows. We swam, sunbathed, and played crazy eights until 6pm. I was an extremely relaxing day away from the busyness of teaching and learning Spanish; I was able to just float around and think, something I haven’t done in a log time. My hunger was really the only thing that brought us out of our “refuge” and back to Pisco to get something to eat. But today at the river will long be one of my fondest memories of Chile.
These next few days will be my last in the schools, then its off to santiago for a few days and probably a short trip to Argentina to renew my visa (I'll be 6 days over when I leave, talk about poor planning on my part). Pray that all goes smoothly in my travels and of corse for saftey as I am going my myself. Life is an adventure right? I send all my love, God bless.