It's already 2012?!?!

2011 has come and gone, and its been 23 years of my life and this was my first Christmas without my family. :o(


My first real trigger of sadness (of not being home for Christmas) was when I was at Tottus (Wal-Mart type store). True to USA form, it was right after Halloween and there was Christmas music playing as well as Christmas trees and ornaments up for sale. I don't normally get emotional, but there I was in line to pay and tears started coming down...it was kind of ridiculous. However, in general, the extreme commercialism of the states was not as present, making it easier to not be so homesick around the holiday season. Luckily it is summer here so I didn't get overwhelmingly nostalgic walking around. The true sadness hit when I Skyped the family on Christmas day and they were all together, eating delicious Korean food and teasing me! Definitely missed Christmas with the parents and sisters! It was fun though putting together a small Christmas package for them. I thought I had sent it with enough time, about 3 weeks, but it did not get there in time for Christmas day...disappointing. Oh well, I also missed playing violin/piano duets with Christine. I love being at home with the whole family and mommy feeding me delicious food. Everything is warm inside with hot chocolate and warm yams, keeping nice and toasty from the cold outside. 


Instead, here it is hot everywhere and you are hoping that it is cooler inside. It is quite odd having Christmas in summer. If it weren't for trees decorated in stores and apartments, I would not have known it was even Christmas time. The majority of advertisements had snow all over them, which is peculiar since there is rarely snow here, even in the winter! Christmas music was playing in some stores and supermarkets, which for the most part is in English---or the same songs that we have back at home, but translated into Spanish. 


In Chile, it is more common to celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve. So I had Christmas dinner with Cristian's family- his mom, aunt, uncle, grandma, and cousins. We went over there, and had dinner at around 11 o'clock, another normal thing for Chileans...to eat super late. It was a very Chilean dinner, and very delicious dinner of turkey, "corn salad" (corn with mayo), "potato salad" (potatoes with mayo), tomato salsa, etc. Every salad in Chile, unless it is a bed of lettuce with one tomato, is basically cut up with mayo. After dinner, they all exchanged presents. It was really cute, they were all extremely enthused about their socks, underwear, shampoo, perfume, and shirts. It was really sweet, Cristian's mom, aunt, and uncle all gave me unexpected presents, and I have used all of them (nightgown, bracelet, and perfume)!

Christmas day, Regina and Ashley came over to have Chrismas dinner that Cristian and I cooked- very American-esque---chicken, grilled veggies, mashed potatoes, rice, and salad. There aren't that many of us gringas left. Most are back in the states and some are off traveling, so we just had a small get together. New Years Eve also was not a big hulabaloo. The thing to do here is go to Valparaiso for "one of the biggest parties of the year" to watch all of the fireworks. Hostels were extremely expensive for that night and buses were packed... I didn't feel like spending the money, and the thought of being awake until 9 a.m., just didn't excite me too much. Instead I just watched the fireworks on my room, since we are one of the few people to have roof access. Since the door was open, basically anyone in our apartment who was in Santiago that night, came up to the roof to also watch the fireworks. However, having a key is apparently not synonymous with being able to use the key. We got charged with a 40.000 pesos fine ($80) for being up on the roof. Not the best way to kick of the new year---spending the money on nothing, but it was a good tranquil start! Peaceful Christmas and New Years, quite different from what I am used to, but this adventure is full of those moments and I was and am lucky enough to have had great people around to share these moments with. Well happy belated holidays to you all!!!! 

A Chelsea/Christmas Tree with Pudge, Gary, and my Christmas card

Tour #1: Young-Jin

So my cousin, Elizabeth has been here the past 9 days and I am exhausted!!!
Sometimes we walked around more in one day, than I would normally do in one week. That is a little bit exaggerated, but I did wake up sore a few times! I really do need to exercise. However in one of our city tour walks, I did stumble across a really cute outdoor gymnasium. It is really close to my old hostal and I heard stories about this gym, but never discovered it for myself. I am going to motivate myself to run there, exercise, and then honestly, walk home. 


We spent 4 days in Santiago getting to know the city, all over Centro Santiago and a bit in Providencia and Santiago. One of those walks was accidental as we walked down Cerro San Cristobal, and found ourselves on the border of Providencia and Santiago...never did that before! She got to try a good amount of Chilean drinks, food, etc. as well all the classic Chilean tourist spots. I need to avoid those places for a bit, since I will be going there again when my parents come!!!!


On Sunday, we went to Caijon de Maipo, which is about an hour and half outside of Santiago next to some mountains and a river, which kind of looks like chocolate milk. We had a little picnic and went white water rafting with Cristian and my friend Renato. I went white water rafting once in Colorado, but this was more intense and way more fun. The tour guide taught us how to fall onto the bottom of the raft, change the balance of the boat with our weight, and how to bring people back into the raft if they fell out...or in our case, jumped out on purpose to swim around in the calmer areas. 

It was nice to be out of the city, relaxing and enjoying the outdoors. However, it was not the last. We spent the next three days in Valparaiso and Vina del Mar. It was the first hostal experience for Young-Jin and Renato and we met some Argentinians and a girl from Germany. We also randomly ran into one of Renato's friends, Nestor and hung out with him for a bit on our trip. He was super awesome (by the way I say super a lot now in English and in Spanish) and his English was amazing (he is an English teacher). But, if I met him in the states, I would have thought he was from England. 


With all of Valparaiso's hills, I was surprising more tired after a day of walking in Santiago! We walked around a bunch, spent a day relaxing at Vina's beaches (where even though I put on sunblock and was only there for 2 hours, I still got a mean burn on my back, legs, and butt!), and we also saw one of Pablo Neruda's houses, La Sebastiana. It was a really cool house, with more amazing views with each floor. I plan on going to La Chascona, another one of his houses in Santiago with the parents.

 View from La Sebastiana

La Sebastiana

I didn't really see anything new of Chile, but it was interesting being a tour guide and having a fresh pair of eyes see everything for the first time. Hope you had a wonderful time Young-Jin!!! Thanks for making it down here so we could enjoy ourselves in CHILE! Now I have 10 days to rest and then my parents are coming, where we are heading down to Chiloe and I get to do another hot city tour of Santiago. You guys are in for an exhausting jam-packed week of adventuring. Can't wait and hope you are ready!!!

Blogs that I have been meaning to write and are still coming: 

1. Argentina

2. Homage to Gringas

3. Holidays