Monday, October 13, 2008

Rotary Weekend

The past three days have been fun-filled Rotary adventures.

Friday all the inbounds had dinner at a restuarant in Santiago.
Saturday we toured Santiago and at night we went to Vina del Mar.
Sunday we toured around Vina del Mar and Valparaiso.

So, Friday night we ate at "Buenos Muchachos" which was a rather fancy looking restuarant compared to what we were used to so we all looked under dressed. But we had some good times just hanging out with the other exchangers (speaking english) and dancing. We had to leave at 2am and the next morning we had to meet up at the bus at 9am. So, seeing as how by the time I got home at 3am and I had to wake up at 7:30am none of the exchangers got much sleep.

In Santiago we toured Pablo Neruda's House which is a famous Chilean who wrote a lot of important pieces of writing. He had the coolest house. Parts of it reminded me of the Hobbit House in Lord of the Rings because the ceiling were so short and it had circluar doorways. He also had two houses, we were told that the second one was for his mistress. It was super cool because from the kitchen there as a secret doorway to the stairs and a whole upper floor. Devious but awesome.

We then went to the La Moneda which is where the President lives (and by the way the President is a woman) It's basically the equivalent of the white house but this is located right in the middle of Santiago. Like try placing a building that big on like Queen Street in Toronto. After the Moneda we went up the hill "Santa Lucia" to eat lunch, we also had to climb halfway up to the lift cars so that it could take us up the rest of the way. This hill was the hill that the first Spanish conquerer climbed to claim Chile for Spain. On the top of the hill there is a big statue of the Virgin Mary.

Santiago behind me, it was a cloudy day but most of that is smog. It hadn't rained in awhile so the smog gets pretty bad as in you can't see some of the hills that should be easily visible.
On a lift car, Santiago behind me again.

After Santiago we went to Vina del Mar. By the time we got there it was night time. So we went out for dinner which turned out to be at a mall at a fast food place that just made 50 orders of everything. Quite the change compared to last night. We then went to a disco, but only for us students Mady and I had to talk to the D.J about getting rid of the gringo music and playing some reggaeton instead. Just because we are gringos doesn't mean we can't dance. We then went to our rooms in the hostel. Which was pretty nice for a hostel seeing as we all got our own bed.

The next morning we went to Valparaiso which is the city next to Vina, and we went up a cable car to the upper portion of the city seeing as how the cities are on a hill. It reminds me of San Fransisco. We walked around a bit. The Rotarians would lead us around and then be like oops wrong way we should have gone this way. Needless to say no one knew what we were doing. I love Valparaiso though its so cute. All the houses are colourful and adorable. This is Valparaiso behind me. Cloudy again.
This is a typical street with all the colours.
This is Vina del Mar in the background it's less colourful and more touristy with it's beaches where Valparaiso is a port so I find it more cultural.

The rest of the day was spent on the water in a boat, and we also had lunch somewhere else just north of Vina. Then we all had to leave, so we could go back to Santiago.

3 comments:

Erica said...

do you just randomly take weekendts to tour around with the rotarians and visit places with the other exchange students? that's random. haha.

Happy thanksgiving from Canadaaa :)

emmaelizabeth said...

holy moses.
is it still cold therE? you're wearing a sweater!!

i am very jealous of your exchanger gatherings. i have not met any of the youth exchangers and won't until december.. they are all off on their beach trip this week but suzanne and i had to stay in nakhon phanom..
bollocks.

<3 love you.

Taylor said...

Yeah I randomly take weekends off with Rotary. No, not really but they like us to get together, sometimes.

Yes, still mildly cold here, when its cloudy. If its sunny its quite warm!