last thursday i went to see a DJ. Alice's friend Julia recommended him. I had never heard of him but apparently he's from canada. his name is Deadmau5 (pronounced "dead mouse") and he wears this giant mouse mask when he plays. that was enough of a selling point for me so i said i'd go. we ended up taking the metro to the last stop and form there taking a bus to this really desolate area outside of Santiago. out there in the desolation was a giant club sort of thing. the whole venue was underground so it was kind of like being in a... well club i guess. there were 2 other DJs that went on before Deadmau5 (no idea who they were). the first one went on at 10:00pm, the next at 12:00am and the last one at 2:00am. Now, by this point everyone (myself included) was pretty exhausted. we had just sat through roughly 4 hours of house music. super repetitive and not exciting or anything. so i didn't have a lot of energy. but as soon as Deadmau5 came on, i was all about it. he opened with a techno remix of the Legend of Zelda, Daft Punk's "Harder Better Faster Stronger" and Fatboy Slim's "Star 69". Not only that, he played "Ghosts 'n Stuff" which is the one song i wanted to hear that night that i have recently become familiar with (hear it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7ArUgxtlJs). everyone was exhausted so we didn't stay for long (about a half hour or 45 minutes of Deadmau5's set) but it was worth it. we got a cab back to Santiago and crashed around 3:30am. it was a good night.
last friday was the dieciocho, which is like the Chilean 4th of July. Much like the 4th of July, there are lots of Asados (Barbeques) all over the city and almost everyone is sporting a flag. Alice and I chose to explore 2 parks that day that were having festivals in celebration. The first park we went to was Ines Suarez. it was in Providencia and quite large. i'm actually surprised we haven't been there yet. there was all kinds of crazy crap there. lost of crafts were being sold. there was an area that had farm animals like horses, pigs, sheep and cows. also, there was a stage in the middle of the park where various people would perform circuslike activities such as juggling while balancing on something and stuff. there were even some clowns there. i even saw a giant caged ball where some motorcycles were parked inside. my guess is that people would ride around it later in the day but we only stayed there for an hour or two so i cannot confirm this. it was a cool spot and we are definitely going back there when it's just a park.
the second park we visited was Parque O'Higgins. this park is probably the most massive in all of Santiago. we are talking like Central Park in NYC size. it's kind of amazing that Alice and I haven't been there yet. at any rate, the mass of this park meant a more massive crazy festival. instead of being a big wide open space like Ines Suarez, this park was mapped out as several paths that were 100% completely lined with shops, games to play and oh yeah... FOOD. i forgot to mention that i think one of the traditions of the dieciocho has to be eating corpulent amounts of food. that night i had an empanada, a sopaipilla (which is like a flat pumpkin bread snack thing), some meat on a stick and a churro filled with Manjar. needless to say, i was pretty much done with food after that. the games they had were really crazy. one of them was a ring toss but instead of having the ring fall on a pole, they were falling on bottles of wine. if you succeeded in doing so, you won some wine! it's amazing that people in Chile just give away alcohol like it's no big deal and yet in the U.S.A. if you had a game like that going on you would probably get arrested very quickly. there were also 2 or 3 areas in O'Higgins that had a giant cafeteria with a dance floor. these areas were used for a typical type of dancing in Chile known as "Cueca" (i think that's how it's spelt). so the band plays typical Chilean music and the people danced in this style. this dance also involves dressing in traditionally styled clothing from Chile. this cultural phenomenon been popping up more and more in my day-to-day interactions lately. as far as why, i'm not really sure. at any rate, we got home at a reasonable hour and konked out for the second night in a row.the next day there was this marching of the soldiers thing going on but alice and i were too tired to even attempt this between the concert and the 10 or 11 miles we walked in those parks. so we just chilled for a good portion of the rest of the weekend.
some other stuff that's been going on lately? i'm currently doing 4 classes with Polyglot during the day and 3 classes privately at night. it's pretty sweet. it's FINALLY getting warmer here. winter felt like a dark period of boring nothingness but it's finally gone and i am happy to send it packing on its way. now i can wear warm clothes and eat food that's in season like avocado, strawberries and stuff. i tried eating a papaya a few weeks ago with mixed results. those things are hard to finagle. maybe they just aren't in season or something but they're really tough.
i'm getting incredibly vamped up for my mom and dad to come here a week from tomorrow (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). all i can say is that they better be ready because i have a lot of stuff planned for their stay which is of course pending on weather and our energy level. if we survive all of the stuff i have planned we then travel to Peru to see MachuPichu which i am VERRRY excited for. and after that? i see Prodigy on October 27th :). needless to say, October is an exciting month for me. so yeah. not much left to do but get through this last week of September and then the fun begins! i am sooooooo ready.
until next time, que te vaya bien!
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