Back in Vina...briefly

Well, I made it back from Concepcion (2nd largest Chilean city, south of here)!
I spent a week there visiting Dan. It's a very different city from what I've grown used to in Vina and Valparaiso. Conce was a bit more "typical-city" like for lack of a better explanation. For one thing, it's by the Bio Bio river instead of the ocean and it's flat. Wonder of wonders my calves weren't burning after an hour long walk, very different from the extreme ups and downs in Vina. I have to say of all the cities I've visited so far Valparaiso and Castro are the most 'south american' in the sense that we north americans think of it.

Dan lives in a pension in Conce with 15 other chilean students. I think I met half of them since some are pretty reclusive. We were served a fabulous lunch everyday with a little 'once' each evening by the lovely (albeit totally crazy) Maria. There was also a lot of soccer watching/discussing going on, most of which was over my head since I'm not really following the games much (I don't have TV here and forget about understanding those games over the radio!)

The University there is HUGE in comparison to mine! It reminds me much more of back home in Montana, complete with a clock tower and everything. It occurs to me that I haven't put up any pictures of my school, Adolfo Ibanez, but it is very small and takes up about one block with a few extra buildings scattered around about a 3 block radius.

Tomorrow bright and early I'm heading off to Mendoza, Argentina to meet up with Ian (finally)! I've only been home from Conce for three days, just long enough to go to school :) I'm a little bit nervous about Mendoza because the buses have to drive over a large mountain pass and apparently it's not all that uncommon for the pass to be closed for a week or so at a time due to snow....so they tell me I should be able to get there tomorrow just fine but keep your fingers crossed for my return trip on Monday! If I do get stranded I think the first option is a super long (like 48hour) bus ride around the pass or worst case scenario I'd have to buy a plane ticket to get back. Yikes. However, I'm super excited to see Ian and help him celebrate his high school graduation on the 31st! I've been reading up on Mendoza and I think there will be plenty of things to keep us happily busy for a few days.

That's the really quick, kind of vague update, sorry! But I've got to go pack :)
I have pictures from Santiago, Valparaiso/Vina (thanks to Dan for letting me steal these), Concepcion and soon from Mendoza so there will be a rather large upload to Photobucket next week when I get home.

Hope the summer is off to a swingin start for everybody back in the States, I'll be seeing you all before too long!
Paz-
Clare

wait, what? It's May?!

Whoa, when did that happen? I looked at my watch today and had the heart stopping realization that it is May 18th. I have about two months (give or take, I still don't have a ticket home yet) left in Chile. Alejandro and Veronica are even planning my going away party, scary! It seems like just yesterday I was wandering through the streets of Vina not understanding a word or having any idea what was happening. Oh wait, maybe that was yesterday.
In all seriousness, my time is flying by before my eyes. I'm starting to feel at home in Vina del Mar though, I know where my favorite ice cream shop is, where the hole in the wall market is with the best deals, I've made a lot of friends both fellow exchangers and Chileans and I can finally understand my colectivo drivers! All this, and now I have to go home. It is wonderful to know though that no matter where I find myself I can make it feel comfortable and I know that it will be great to see my friends and family back in Minnesota and Montana again.

As for my last two months in Chile, there are of course some big plans! I recently went to Santiago for a long weekend as mentioned in the last post. It was a lot of fun, we ended up taking the metro all over the city to see as much as possible in the short time. We also did a lovely little hike, the very same one featured in the ever popular "Sol y Viento" (you Montana kids know what I'm talking about)

This coming week we have school off on Wednesday. It's the anniversary of a big navel battle (La Batalla Navel de Iquique, thank you Spanish Class) which Chile actually lost...not sure how that translates into a free day from school but I'll take it! So, in order to take full advantage of this free day I'm heading down to Concepcion to visit Dan. Concepcion is considerably farther south than Vina so it will be fun to see yet another part of Chile, it's amazing how much and how quickly this country changes from north to south!

Long term plans are to head up to Peru and Bolivia in July after school is done and before I head home. I'm super excited for that, but also to see all of you once again too! Life is pretty much a win-win situation right now.

Besos-
Clare

Santiago is not Cordoba

My new motto for Chile is this:
Always have a Plan B.

I went to the bus station this morning to hop onto my 18-22 hour bus ride (they're pretty darn vague about that dontcha think?) to Cordoba and when I got there to my surprise...it was cancelled. What the crap is the first thing that came to mind. The bus station was packed and people were pretty pissed needless to say. May 1 is Labor Day here in South America so that accounted for some of the crowd and some of the confusion with the buses and the scheduling I guess. Anyway, they told me I could still go to Santiago if I wanted to. That is about two hours away...and definitely is not Cordoba. It's like somebody from Grand Marais who's bus to Chicago gets cancelled and Greyhound telling them "We can still get you to Duluth though!" Yeah, so not the same thing.
So on to Plan B! Which is going to Santiago, but not until tomorrow. I've got some friends there to visit and I'm looking forward to getting to know the capitol of my new country a little bit better as well.

Today was a beautiful day in Vina, but even still I was feeling bummed that I couldn't visit Ian. Then I started being bummed about missing out on other things back home. Adam and Carl's graduations for example. Then it struck me, it's Ian's high school graduation this year too! And I bet he's also bummed about missing it! So now Ian and I are planning on meeting up in Mendoza over the weekend of May 31 and having ourselves a Graduation Extravaganza, Sudamerica style. If there's anything you want Ian to get/know/if you have any ideas whatsoever for me, shoot me an email asap! The most reliable email is dancin_clare@hotmail.com

Chao!
Clare