I am sitting in my apartment eating Chile's version of Doritos, some cookies that are actually called "Kukis", and an incredibly burnt grilled cheese sandwich. an old episode of Friends is on the TV in the background with Spanish subtitles. seems like an appropriate time to update the blog.

my demonstration lesson for polyglot mitford went really well and I have started working for them. I currently have one class on Mondays and Thursdays from 5-6pm. Thursday was my first class. i was really nervous about it because it was one-on-one private tutoring and i didn't really know what to expect. it takes me about an hour to get there it was also a weird class because it was one of those "here's the syllabus, here's the class rules, etc..." classes. very weird. the guy i'm tutoring is cool though. he works as an HR rep for a pharmaceutical company. he's in his 30s and seems like he really wants to learn the material. he's really smart and picks up on stuff very quickly. makes it a breeze to teach. the second class (that i had yesterday) was way easier. i got to actually do a lesson on past tense and he learned the material very easily. i think this class will be fun and it makes me want to teach more. i will possibly be getting more hours soon. we'll see. hopefully working through two companies will help with that.

this past weekend i went to Cerro San Cristobal. it's this mountain in the center of Santiago that overlooks the whole city. there's a creepy statue of the virgin mary at the top that gets lit up at night. it's like, the most popular tourist attraction here. there are a lot of ways to get to the top. you could hike, drive, bike or take this thing called a Funicular. it's basically a little train that goes all the way up the hill. however, it makes a pit stop halfway up the hill at a Zoo. of course i did that.

I don't know if it's just Chilean zoos that are different from American ones or this zoo... but the cages the animals were being held in were very close to the public. if you wanted to, you could probably reach out and pet ostriches, giraffes and other things. this was especially cool because i could get a lot of really cool close up shots of the animals. but it kind of wasn't cool in certain situations like when these little 8 year old boys kept poking an Emu that was chillin near the front of the gate. overall though, it was a pretty sweet zoo. my pics are all on facebook if you're curious about which animals i saw.

after the zoo, i took the Funicular all the way to the top and saw all of Santiago during sunset which was pretty damn beautiful. i thought Santa Lucia was cool but it doesn't have crap on San Cristobal. i saw everything. i'm pretty sure i could point out my apartment if i really wanted to. it started to get cold though so alice and i took the funicular back down. it was really cool because on our way up and down, this dude was playing guitar and singing in Spanish for us. i don't think he was homeless either because the Funicular waited for him o finish his song before it took us down. we are definitely going back to san cristobal to walk down the mountain pathways. we just didn't have 4 hours to do that this time around.

yesterday we hit up another museo. we're trying to do one every sunday because most of them are free. this one was called the Museo De Arte Contemporaneo. it was basically one floor of paintings that were abstract and colorful. it took about 20 minutes to see everything. but still, not bad for free.

someone new will be moving into mi departmento on saturday. he's from New York City but his name is "Alessandro". it makes me wonder if he'll speak more Spanish or English while he's here. I really need to regularly speak Spanish while i'm here (or at least try to). Alice's room mates are good for that but i'd really like someone i live with to speak Spanish with me. my room mate Ari got a new tv for the living room. the old one was... well... old. this one is a flat screen but i don't think it's HD. it's like 24". i'm currently watching Chilean Futbol on it. i think there's a way to hook up my computer to it but i'm not positive. at any rate, i'm watching a lot more television in Spanish. or at least, it's on in the background. The Simpsons Spanish dubbing is hilarious here.

and yeah. not much else is going on. next weekend will probably be pretty casual because i heard that there are a lot of violent riots in Santiago on March 28th and i definitely want to stay indoors away from those. i forget why exactly but i think it's because it's the anniversary of someone's death. i'm not too worried because providencia is a pretty safe part of Santiago, but i think in Centro De Santiago there's way more rioting. so yeah. def gonna stay away from that.

until next time, hasta!