A series of eventful days

Before I say anything, check this out:

So when we last left, I was on my way to check out a museum in Centro De Santiago. It included poetry, sculptures and paintings. The latter of the three was what interested Alice, her friend Julia and I. We checked out artwork by Frida Kahlo and her husband Diego Rivera. Frida suffered a pretty hard life and as a result, her artwork is incredibly violent and has a lot of self portraits of herself being stabbed and what not. it was kind of disturbing but also kind of cool. her husband Diego's artwork was not as violent and was generally more appealing. i couldn't get any pics of the artwork, but i got one shot of the inside of the museum. it was a super cheap and fun way to kill a few hours.

after that, we decided to be really cool and walk around Centro. we got a little lost but ended up walking down a really nice street with lots of trees and fountains. something that centro is definitely lacking. so that was kind of refreshing. there was also a lot of really cool looking grafitti. something that centro is definitely NOT lacking. there's grafitti everywhere. it rules. not to mention, there were a lot of really cool old buildings like a gigantic church and stuff.

Friday morning I moved into my new apartment! it's pretty nice. it's pretty furnished and the kitchen functions pretty normally, i'd say. the bathroom is a little small and their choice of tablecloth is slightly questionable but overall, i like it. I currently live with 2 other people (a couple). one is a 27 year old Chilean guy and one is a 32 year old Estonian girl. then there's me and a spare room that someone will live in eventually. apparently a German girl is coming to live in that room in a few days but she won't be staying long. I figured out a way to play all my music on shuffle in the dining room while I cook food and that has RULED. i had a moment of euphoria when "get it shawty" came on my shuffler. i just had a moment of clarity that was like "even though i don't have a really solid job right now, i have an apartment and i can just dance". so i did. i danced like crazy to "get it shawty" and it was great.

unfortunately, i have yet to cook a delicious meal. shopping in the grocery store for food was interesting. unbeknownst to me, but knownst to the rest of the world, i was in the lame-o discount grocery store that had lame versions of the food that was in the BETTER grocery store a few blocks down the street. so i currently only have food from that place. but ah well. it's still not too shabby. you know what's weird though? jars of things are like, nonexistant down here. ketchup, mayo, mustard, spaghetti sauce etc.. are all in GIANT packets! like... pretend you have a packet of mayonaise at burger king but it's big enough to hold an entire jar's worth of mayonaise. it's so weird. i'm still getting used to it. so i made spaghetti my first night there and it ended up being not that great because i had the discount sauce (which just sounds awful out of context). whatever though. it wasn't terrible. it was just okay.

Also Friday I dropped off two resumes. One was at the Fischer English Institute and one was at Instituto Chileno Norteamericano. Fischer seems desperate for teachers and not really all that together with their interviewing. at least, that was the impression i got from them. Norteamericano is a big big school that's pretty well known and teaches all ages. the only thing is that they require you to work weekends. I'm not so sure about that but i figured i'd try to apply there any ways. I also followed up with Burford and they said that they may have some private tutoring set up for me on Wednesday and Thursday (actual work! kind of cool!). so i plan on calling them today to see what's up with that.

That night i went back to centro and met up with my friend Eric from the hostel. the really cute dog was there. there were a bunch of people over his place having a barbeque which included some French girls and some dudes from Finland. they made steak and corn and all kinds of other stuff. one of these delicacies was straight up just a slice of toast with cream cheese on it and a single slice of pineapple. it was like a delicious version of a poor man's Hawaiian pizza. I highly suggest you try it. I had already eaten my spaghetti so I was kind of full but I had some of the steak (delicious) and the toast (also delicious). once Eric was done eating dinner (at 11:30pm!!!) we decided to go out because it was Friday and why not, y'know?

after an unneccessarily long cab ride, we met up with some people Eric knew in Bellavista. after trying to go to several different clubs, a lot of people left the group because they were tired or something (lame). but Eric, his friend Sarah and I ended up at a reggaeton (reggaetone?) discoteca. once again i was unimpressed with the DJ there as reggaeton is one of the easiest styles of music to mix together next to dancehall and house. it was fun for the first hour or so but it was one of those situations where there were so many dirty, sweaty, smoking people around me that i just felt like i needed a shower immediately. so we left. i got home at around 3am. it was a pretty eventful night and i was satisfied with it.

Saturday i ended up going to the hospital. i had heard about this weird spider in Chile that causes your skin to fall off and i thought i had a rash that was the beginning stages of this spider bite. but of course i was completely wrong. the doctor was just like "there's no way that's a spider bite". so i basically wasted time and money doing that and from now on, will not seek medical attention unless my skin is actually falling off or something. it was a life lesson and it's done. that's all. just felt like it was worth mentioning.

that night Alice and I watched some Scrubs and Spaced while chilling at her hostel. for the record, we actually do plan on exploring this city and country but we're waiting until we have more time and ALSO more money to do so. but it will happen. Sunday was a really relaxing day where i organized my music collection and put all my music on my Zune and just generally managed computer stuff. I also made hot dogs. they were taking forever to boil so i had this brilliant idea to put the lid back onto the boiling pot and within 2 minutes, the hot dogs erupted open. it ended up working but it wasn't as delicious as it could have been. oh well. 0 for 2 but we'll see how it goes in the future.

yesterday i e-mailed my resume to a school i had never heard of before. they're called "Polyglot" (i know. attractive name, right?). i know nothing about them but it's another resume out there. I also tried to go back to English First to get an interview. This was the school i had to cancel twice for in order to interview for Duoc. English First was basically like "no matter what the situation was, we've already hired everyone we need. sorry". it really sucks that i missed out completely on my #2 school... but i'm still waiting to hear from my #1... Sam Marsalli. I e-mailed them today and called them saying I'm still interested. they said they haven't started the interview or hiring process yet so they told me I was still in good shape. i'm crossing my fingers so much for that job. i really hope i get it.

also... some exciting news yesterday... Alice found an apartment! it's right in the middle of Providencia. there's shops everywhere. she has an amazing view of the Andes. her room is pretty big with lots of closet space. her bathroom is huge. i'm actually a little jealous. but mainly because my bathroom and bed are both smaller than the ones she got hooked up with. but whatever. overall, i think she got an apartment that suits her really well and i got one that suits myself really well. her's is right in the middle of the city and mine is far away enough so that it's quiet but it's close enough to the action where i don't feel secluded. if we ever need a break from the settings we're in, we can just visit each other and get a different feel for the environment of Providencia. i'm really happy for her.

the rest of that night consisted of going out to eat with two people from Alice's program and playing a game of rummy that ended up being kind of close. for dinner i had an italiano wrap that was a little questionable. i've gotten into the habit of ordering stuff and not knowing what it is on the menu but just eating it any ways. i really like diving into the unknown here in terms of food. i also feel it's necessary to point out that yesterday i actually said the phrase "how do you say jalapeno in Spanish?". i know. i'm so smart. everyone had a good laugh. the late dinners here really tend to make the evening go by quickly. i'm still getting used to it (clearly from the jalapeno question i'm getting used to a lot of things).

Despite not being in the states, i've tried to keep up with movies and television i want to keep up with. i found a movie theater that will be playing Watchmen on Thursday and I plan on seeing it then. I just hope the theater has subtitles and isn't dubbed. that would suck a lot of ass. I also just downloaded the new Futurama movie that came out so i'll watch that. and I've been downloading and watching Lost every week since i left. 24, heroes, office and 30 rock are pretty meh. but Lost is one of those shows i definitely need to see each week. and once south park premiers, i may need to watch that as well.

and that's about all for now! i will end this blog post with a few pictures of the Andes on a (sort of) clear day from my apartment. hasta!