A Crazy Santiaguino Weekend

Last weekend was fantastic. Thursday I went out to Journal and hung out with Evan and actually met a couple people from the Naval Academy that know Connors (weird coincidence).

On Friday I woke up late and left for Santiago around 4:30, then went out to dinner with PJ and his friends. I was actually going to Santiago to meet up with a girl from there I had met in Valpo hace mucho tiempo (the one from the night before we left to go to Buenos Aires). I called her, as we had agreed upon before, but she had changed her mind and decided that she was really tired and was no longer going to salir salir a carretear. She wanted to meet up with me on Saturday (but I had only been planning to stay one day). So I decided to just go out with PJ and his friends from his program on Friday night. I ended up meeting Suzy, a cute 25-year old chilena, at a club called Kamasu (with PJ as my wingman!!). We danced and chatted all night, then I managed to not get mugged on my way back to PJ’s house alone at 530.

Saturday I woke up at noon, went to dunkin donuts, then went to a cool museum in the La Moneda neighborhood of Santiago. (UPDATE: I actually saw a little ad for this in the inflight magazine to Mendoza!) They had really strange/comical exhibits. For instance, there were a few videos made by a Japanese guy – one of which was videos of himself running into stuff (phone booths, walls, cars, animals). His best was the video of him where a friend threw things at the back of his head and he had to try to guess what they were by the way they felt hitting the back of his head. It started off with small objects like pillows and tennis balls and soft lobs, then gradually went up to things like vacuum cleaners, buckets, and chairs being thrown as hard as possible.

In the middle of the museum there was a giant exhibition of all of the flags of the UN; the only difference was they were made with human hair (I didn’t realize this until I got up really close and read the description). Likewise, it looked really cool from far away, and gross from up close.

After that I headed over to the Plaza de Armas to play chess. This was an incredible cultural experience. I was freezing and starving because I hadn’t eaten anything since my dunkin donuts breakfast around 1 PM, but I didn’t even care because it was one of those rare times in life where you actually appreciate what you are experiencing at the time. There were the two main Latin American cultural themes being broadcast in the square – in one corner, the radio coverage of Colo Colo (Santiago’s main soccer team) playing for the championship, and on the other side, some guy shouting radical religious rubbish (yeahhhh alliteration!!!) into a microphone.

To make it even better, the girl I had met me the night before called me during the third) tiebreaker game. She was responding to the text I sent her, and we agreed to meet up later on. I lost the first game because I had a pawn, bishop, and king left, while he had the same with one extra pawn, and we ended up trading everything and he got his pawn to the end to get a queen. The second game was even until I cut off his pawn support from the back and started an all out attack from the right, cornering his king, and checkmating him. The third game might have been the best chess game I have ever played strategy-wise. We were both full out on attack, and we were both a few moves from checkmate when I got my queen all the way across the board into the corner near his king, and it was over a few moves after that.

After that I met Suzy for dinner, then we went out to Dublin Pub in the Bellavista de la Florida neighborhood of Santiago (which turned out to be a very good decision). We were just hanging out, having a few drinks and talking when they came over and asked us to fill out an evaluation of the service of the place. Of course, I didn’t take it seriously, I wrote fine reviews of the place but I wrote that I was 28, married, and put 8675309 as my work phone number. They said there was a prize for it but I just kind of laughed about it and forgot about it. About 2 hours later, the waitress came over and handed me an envelope and said I had won.

Still I was skeptical about it, I thought it would be a very cheap prize, but when I opened it, it said I had won 4 days and 3 nights in an exclusive resort in Con-Con (45 min north of Vina). I was kind of in shock, until I read the fine print (where it said I could only use it Monday-Thursday, and not during July). It was already late June, and I am leaving the country in July. However, I figured I could try to convince them to let me use it when I could.

The pub turned into a disco that night and we danced until it closed. We hung out for a while after that, and I ended up going back to PJ’s house at 8:30 AM. My phone died, so I had to walk to the nearest pay phone to call him. When I entered his apartment, his mom was walking around making breakfast. The look on her face when I walked in was hilarious. I slept for a few hours, then went back to dunkin donuts, then back on the bus to Vina.

The girl I was going to meet originally messaged me when I got home, saying that I never called her Saturday (which was true), but I already had plans! Overall, fantastic weekend.