Chile

Being in Chile for the past week has been great, we have spent most of the time in an apartment in Valparaiso. We have spent the days traveling around between Valparaiso and Vina del Mar. When we got here on the 22^nd of December we first went to where my cousin is living in a little city called Quilpue. It was great to see her. Then we called two friends up who were in Santiago. We called Pablo up who said we could spend Christmas with him. So we called up another friend named Jocelyn to tell her the news and she said let’s hang out. So we got a bus from Vina del Mar to Santiago to meet up with her for the afternoon and then meet up with Pablo some time at night. Well it turned out that Pablo’s Grandma got really sick and he was running back and forth to the hospital all day and told us regretfully that we would not be able to come for Christmas. So we were just kind of dropped off into the arms of Jocelyn for Christmas. Thankfully she is a very nice girl and had no problem with us coming over. Leighton and I felt kind of bad, because this was not in her plans at all and here we are just kind of like uh…. we have no where to go and she was merciful to us. So we were able to spend the Christmas in Santiago Chile this year. This is my first Christmas out of the house; it was kind of weird here in Chile. I definitely like an American Christmas a lot better for a couple of reasons. One, they don’t do anything on Christmas here. I mean they didn’t even say Merry Christmas to each other…Bah Humbug right? There was a tree but nothing under it. The way they celebrate is usually have a dinner on the "Buena Noche" Christmas Eve around 11 or so. When twelve o’clock comes around they say Merry Christmas and then go to bed. The 25^th is like a normal day for them. But Leighton and I still had a great time spending it with Jocelyn. I was able to see and talk to my family on the computer, which was awesome, because over all the time that I had been in Argentina that was the first time that I was able to talk to them over the Internet. After that we came to an apartment which the parents of Jocelyn own in Valparaiso. So we stayed in the Valparaiso and Vina del Mar area and just hung out, went to the local spots, basically just relaxed. Finally new years comes along and Jocelyn had planned to go her grandmother’s house which was great because she lives on a mountain that over looks the whole city and the pacific bay where Valparaiso is located. So we had a fantastic view of the fireworks show. They were pretty cool, because they were shooting them off from about nine locations. It was probably the biggest show I have ever seen. There was one thing that Leighton and I both agreed on though that could have been better, it was the sound, because you could not hear them blowing up, and that is very enjoyable. So we had a great New Year blah blah blah blah. New years day all we did was go to the bus station to check for our tickets for the next day, go to internet, and go back to the apartment. We came back to the apartment, ate, and sat around a while looking at photos, then Jocelyn was ready to go to bed. But before going to bed she tossed us her camera and asked us to film her something to remember her by. So Leighton and I had fun filling up her memory card with retarded little films that hopefully she got a kick out of. Leighton and I ended up staying up all night unintentionally because it was already late when we were getting to bed and we had to get up at five to get on the bus. So we left Chile the next day and were headed on to Brazil going through Argentina and Uruguay (Uruguay for the mate).