San Cristobel and snowboarding the Andes!!

OoooooooK, finally, a little bit of free time, although I probably need to be socializing in Spanish. Don’t worry, that won’t keep me from communicating, although perhaps I should write in spanish and then plug that into Google Translate?

Anwway, Monday, we went to visit the hill San Cristobel, which overlooks Santiago and is topped by a large statue of the Virgin Mary, or the mother of Santiago. Apparently the Virgen Mary is extremely important here, moreso than for other Catholics, although I’m not sure why. This was explained to me in Spanish, so that’s about as much as I could pick up. I think it might have something to do with this small statue of the virgin which was carried to Santiago by one of the founding fathers. The statute was some kind of good luck charm, protecting him from danger in his travels. The statue is on display in town, but I’m sure I’ll have more information after I visit that particular attraction.

San Cristobel was abosolutely fabulous. The hill is behind the trendy Bellavista neighborhood, where my first hostel was located. The hill is actually a park, and contains all kinds of trails, the Santiago Zoo, and several other things (says the Fodor’s book). However, we merely passed by the zoo on the 1920s funicular (see photos) that took us all the way to the top of the hill. I was surprised to find an outdoor church upon the top of the hill (with the virgin overlooking the entire seating area and alter from the peak of the hill). The have mass there every Sunday, and as with many historic or significant churches or Catholic monuments, a worship area with candles and memorials for prayer. But really, the outdoor church upon the hill was what really interested me. I don’t think I’ll make it up there for mass, as I’m sure it’s a madhouse on Sunday (and I snowboarded today), but it would be amazing to see.

Monday night, the school held a wine tasting for the students. The only participants were the newbies, so just one of my housemates and 3 other classmates were in attendence. It was really interesting to learn about Chilean wines, and there was a Syrah that was abosolutely to die for. Now I don’t like any of my wines too sweet, but this one was pretty sweet but amazing. It smelled amazing, tasted amazing, the whole shebang. Another wine that I learned about was a Camerere (?) that is specific to Chile, I believe. Unfortunately blogging a week later results in not remembering some specifics. Sorry! But I’ll have to spend some more time in a wine store back home (or Spec’s, of course!) checking out the Chilean wine selection.

After the wine tasting, 4 of us decided to go out. Two, including myself, were hungry and wanting food first, since the selection of pickled carrot, cauliflower, and pickle (???) served with ham and cheese with our wine was less than filling. Two were not hungry, ready to continue drinking. So we were looking for a place that offered both. We ended up at Elfos bar in Providencia, only a few blocks away, which promised to have food, then had bar food priced ridiculously high. So dinner turned to liquid, not purposely. We started off with some ridiculously large beers (like at Logan’s!) and somehow forgot about dinner? I know, me forget about food is pretty ridiculous. But it happened. It was a fun night, hence the pictures posted after the wine tasting photos. I was late for class the next day, not because of any hangover, but because everyone living at the house left late. Marc (who doesn’t live in the house but was in my class) decided to give me hell about it, and I promptly returned the favor, since he was the one who kept pushing tequila (we had one…blech).

Tuesday was kind of slow. I bought a power converter. We watched a movie about Pinochet in espanol. It was entertaining, but I couldn’t pick up enough to know what was going on most of the time. On Wednesday, I really wanted to attend the scheduled event, jazz at one of the bars in Bellavista, but with a ski trip on our heels, I decided to turn in early.

On Thursday, we skipped class to go to the mountain!!! Ok, didn’t skip skip, it was organized through the school, and I’m supposed to have a private lesson sometime next week to make up for it. Since the four resorts in the Santiago area require driving up the mountain (ala Ruidosa), there are several companies that provide this service. The school has something worked out with one of them, who picked us up at La Casa Loca at 7:20 Thursday morning. After waiting at the stop point to meet other buses and a very long and conplicated drive up the mountain (due to the recent snow), we didn’t actually get moving on the mountain until at least ater 10. There were four of us total (me and 3 boys, of course), and for some reason Marc got picked by a different bus. Levin waited for Marc, while an antsy Steve and I took off for the first lift. At some point we separated, because I’m really slow. But this was fabulous, because I was able to take the day at my own pace and really work on my problems areas, such as getting off ski lifts and make left turns. All problematic for me. I realized how awesome my iPod would have been. Etc. Somehow Steve found the other boys, but I didn’t end up meeting up with them until 4:30 or so, when it was time to take the bus. Apparently we all missed each other at lunch. I knew where the food was, I was fine! But they stopped in with the locker people to see if I’d they’d seen me. Apparently Steve had fed the dog in the ski shop prior to my eating lunch, so the dog was following me around everywhere with my food! It was a big bulldog looking thing, def not as cute as our pups. Plus I think it may have had doggie pink eye. Anyways… overall it was an excellent day on the slopes. As much as I enjoy spending time with the boys and Kara during our trips, there was something completely satisfying abut spending a day out on the slopes by myself though.

Anyways, more to come. Since there’s 3 more days in between. Slowly but surely...