Salsa and Valpo

Hello again!

This weekend my friend Adam from Sweden (who I met in Bariloche, Argentina) came to visit and see part of Chile.

We went to a salsa club Friday night, where a big group of us danced salsa until 5 am. I was on fire, I’ve never danced that well in my life. So of course, to even it out, we’re walking out of the club at 5:15 AM and I all of a sudden feel my nose start to run and I look down and see blood gushing out, and it didn't stop for about 20 minutes. I think it was because I was dehydrated and got too much exercise with too little rest. Still, it was annoying to have a perfect night like that dampered by extreme blood loss, but what can one do?

The next day we went to Playa Reñaca, a beautiful beach just up the coast from us. That night we went to Cafe Journal and came out with pictures such as these:

Sunday I called home and Brazil for the first time since I got to Chile, and Adam went back to Argentina.

The next day I had a case of "the mondays" - I took a micro (a bus) from one side of Valparaiso to the other, but in the wrong direction and ended up at the end of the bus terminal an hour and a half from my house. I felt like the kid who falls asleep on the school bus and has to call his mom to come pick him up at the bus graveyard. I wasn't going to go out this monday night but it was the birthday of one of my friends so I VALEd LA PENA and went out and had a lot of fun.

Tuesday

The next day, tuesday, I had a very FLAITE trip to the cinema in Valpo. Flaite is one of my favorite chilean words - it means sketchy/gangster depending on the context. I was going to meet some friends at an artsy cinema/cafe but my phone died as soon as I got on the bus and when I got there, none of my friends showed up (it turned out later they had changed plans and left me a message, but i couldnt check it). The movie was interesting, but strange, but when I went outside to catch a cab, the owner said that no cabs pass the cafe after 11, and I would have to walk all the way down the sketchy street to the main square (about 8 blocks). I didn't like this idea - this was exactly the kind of situation we were told to avoid in orientation - but I had my trusty hoody with me so I put it up and started walking down. The funny thing that happened on the way down was that there was a woman walking to her door with groceries, and when she saw me coming with her hood up she practically ran to her door, fumbled with the keys and jumped inside, slamming the door as I walked by. I made it down fine, and got a colectivo home. The silver lining in this was that I actually saw a really cool artsy part of the city that I had heard about but I had never seen before. I think I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t been so paranoid that something bad was about to happen to me, maybe if I visited it during the day I would have a different experience. UPDATE: This is an example of foreshadowing.

Until next time,

Jeff