chile relleno

yesterday, i left my hostel and continued on with my couchsurfing host, aldemar, and his lovely lady, lorena. they are both colombian but met here in chile. the took me on a walk around town in the blazing sun and then to a big enclosed fish market which has a sort of restaurant inside. i had requested some standard chilean food so we sat down and ordered three things: pastel de choclo (typical chilean dish--a bit like a sheppards pie i suppose but with a cornmeal pudding on top instead of potatoes), pastel de something (a stewy pudding type thing filled with crab and topped with parmesan and lemon juice; sounds heinous but tastes good), and chupe de loco (a thick stew as well but with chunks of funky-flavored loco fish which resembles snail or octopus and is no friend of mine). i have listed them in the order of preference so please take note.

after eating we were too full to do any more consumption, so we took a walk to see some funky hoods. if i used words like "charming" and "delightful", that's how i'd describe the area of lastarria. people selling their art and wares on the sidewalk, tables lining the street and filled with people enjoying the sun and tastes of the barrio, just f'ing precious. we decided to break for something refreshing, and their friends visiting from valparaiso met up with us. chile seems to have heaps of fresh juices going on. i like this. we all ordered a glass of maracuja juice (which i have just now concluded in passion fruit) and sat at tables along the sidewalk talking about how spanish words in different countries mean completely different things (e.g., coger which means "to take, grasp, catch" in one place, and to "f*ck" in another. dangerous territory, i say. i don't plan on trying to remember which is which and will omit this word from my vocab. (this happened in italy once when i was traveling around with my friend jess. i was trying to soak up some extremely random words to aid in conversation and came to absorb both pazzo and cazzo; one means "crazy" where the other means "d*ck", or something to that effect. needless to say, i definitely used the wrong one when attempting to casually address a silly man on the street, and we ended up running away before i got us into even more trouble.) after a heavily english-free day, my mind was beginning to turn on itself and get confused by even the simplest phrases. immersion is surely the way to go, though mentally exhausting. i give myself two weeks to start convincing people i am not a gringa, so stay tuned for findings on this.

after our juice date, we returned to the house to chill and do some internetting (i checked the score of the super bowl but it was just after kick-off and showed a lead for the colts which, i now know, was not indicative of the outcome--woot woot, lil weezy!) the sun is out til about 9:00 here which is a bit disorienting as i am used to the little bit of gloomy winter cali light disappearing somewhere around 4:30 pm. we ventured back out for a walk around 11:00--i wanted to check out the boho/sceney bellavista neighborhood so we head that way, discovering some stellar graffiti/wall art en route. (i have some pictures, but those will be going up on facebook instead since google's photo-blog-inclusion-system is truly lacking. yeah, you heard me.) many places in bellavista were closed because it was sunday, but we ended up in "the patio" which was a beautifully laid out courtyard of open-air bars and eateries. seemed to have a fair share of tourists which i typically am soured by (am i even allowed to say that? who do i think i am?) but in this instance it worked for me. we ended up at a table at a colombian bar, ordered some pisco sours and a plate of colombian snacks, and enjoyed the live music from the guitarra man inside. after that, we walked back and called it a night.

all in all, chile is off to a nice start. since i paid a mandatory entry fee of $130, i am factoring that into my daily costs and making an increased effort to budget, so there's no telling how long my funds will last me. but right now i'm just going with it and trying to balance the frugality with the festivities. today i am meeting another guy from couchsurfing who wants to show me some more santiago, and then later on convening with aldemar and lorena again for some evening camaraderie with the colombian imports.

oh and one last thing: this daily blogging is not gonna last. so don't you start expecting things and then give me mierda when i fall off. i'm telling it straight right now.

hasta luego.