Sunny Days in Santiago

Hello again,
Just had a great long weekend here in Santiago, the first time I've been here in a long while, so I finally got a chance to relax (a bit) and get my life back in order. This weekend Rachel Oppenheimer, a friend from Kenyon, came to visit Florette, so we all spent a lot of time together showing her around Santiago. It was really cool to see her, I met Rachel last year when we were playing ice hockey. It turns out she was actually diagnosed with cancer last year, but she now is doing well and is studying in New York City, which she seems to really enjoy. It was great to spend time with her and everyone else in Santiago. On Saturday, I slept in and then met up with Florette, Laura, Samantha, and the newly-arrived Rachel, to go on a walk around the old zone of Santiago. After stopping by Guy Sam's place to pick him up, we started our walk. The weather was absolutely perfect, and it was nice to just stroll around and enjoy the beauty of the old part of town. We stopped by the cathedral, which never gets any less impressive, sooo gorgeous. After we had our fill of the cathedral we decided to go to a cafe for a drink and some time in the sun. I had some delicious sangria, and we spent a long time just talking, catching up a bit and having a nice time outside. Then it was off to another cafe for a change of scenery, where we also got a snack, and some more sangria (of course). In Spain, it's really popular to do this kind of thing. People do something called "ir de vinos" a lot, starting in the evening and lasting until dinner (which they eat really late-lilke around 10pm or so). "Ir de vinos" basically consists of stopping in at various bars/cafes for a glass of wine with friends, staying at a bar for one drink (like 15 minutes) and then moving onto another one for a second. With the wine, tapas are served (the little snacks); it's pretty great. In any case, we were basically doing this, and following that cafe we moved to another one, this time back outside. We spent more time just talking and people watching; at a nearby cafe there was some kind of sports team, with someone dressed up as Waldo (from "Where's Waldo?"). It was pretty amusing, Waldo would walk around and sit at various tables, pretending to be hidden, while the sports players sang and were just being rediculous; highly amusing. By this time the sun was beginning to set, and it was getting pretty cold. We decided to head back to Laura's place to get some layers on, before heading back out to a modern dance performance we wanted to attend. We speed-walked back to her place, walking quickly as we were all really cold (the weather was deceptive; so warm during the day, but as soon as the sun goes down it's freezing!). We approached Laura's place...and found a note from Samantha on the door (she had left after the second cafe to go home and do some work and such). Turns out Sam had left her keys on the inside of the door, in the lock...and because of this Laura's keys wouldn't work. Sam had gone to look for us, and luckily turned up right as we were reading her note. It really sucked though, she ended up having to pay 45$ for someone to come out and somehow get her in (i'm not actually sure how they ended up doing that...maybe they copied the key). In any case, while Laura waited with Sam and tried to get everything sorted out, the rest of us went over to my place to pick up some jackets and such. Once we were all better outfitted for the cold, we swung by Laura's place and picked her up to head to the dance performance (Sam stayed behind to wait for the helper people). We weren't entirely sure of where the theater was, but we had asked a store owner and they gave us a road name. After locating the road, we came across a theater...but not the one we needed. Turns out the lady was confused and led us to the wrong theater, but we did manage to locate the real one on our map. It turns out the theater was on the other side of town, but not too far of a walk, and luckily we had left plenty of time to get there. So off we went, Guy Sam leading the way; we walked through the big park on the way, so that Rachel could see it, although I must say it was kind of creepy at night. After taking some wrong turns, we eventually found our way to the theater, a little place in a largely residential area. We bought our tickets and headed inside. It was a pretty cool place, very alternative/cool kind of vibe, with some intense artwork and a couple creepy sculptures serving as decoration. We seemed to be the only people there aside from the workers, but we were a good half hour earlier anyways. There were some comfy couches/seating, so we grabbed some of those and some beers, and settled in for a bit to wait. As we waited some people trickled in, amounting to about twenty people by the time it started. Eventually the lights dimmed, and two women emerged out of the darkened area of the place, taking down the rope that was blocking it off. And so began the weirdest performance I have ever seen. It was as if they were doing a mocking/stereotypical representation of performance art, I had to make a conscious effort not to burst out laughing. One of the women, short and squat, with severe, long black hair, did most of the talking, introducing the space, and beginning by talking about the role of the artist, etc. (this was all in Spanish, of course, and I was having trouble paying attention do to the ridiculousness of it all, so my descriptions of what actually was said will not be so great). As she spoke, a tall, skinny white women dressed in a skirt and white button-down walked around, looking at people, and just being bizarre. Soon we were all asked to sit, and were led to the seats towards the back of the place, now illuminated. The tall woman then proceeded to do a very, very strange dance/ihavenoidea. She would basically writhe around, make really awkward poses, walk funny, crawl around, and just be crazy. Meanwhile, there was a man off to the side playing various instruments, at this point some kind of xylophone. After this little jaunt, she decided it was time to take off her skirt, and she then proceeded to continue her bizarre dance in her underwear, an undershirt, plus some newly acquired boots and a fur hat. Then it was time to stand on a chair, as apparently her movements before just weren't awkward enough. The other woman was basically just talking in the background during all this, eventually screaming at one point, while the creepy music continued for a while. The whole thing just got more and more bizarre, the other women joining in on the bizarre dances, and the two of them having abstract conversations every once in a while. I have to say the highlight of the show wasn't until the end, though, when skinny girl sat down on the floor (now wearing some pants and a jacket she had decided to put on), and went on a little monologue. She basically was talking about how she eats something, and then really needs to poo, so she poos, but then really wants to eat the poo, and so she does, and then after that she needs to poo again, but this time she poos little blocks, which she then uses to construct a fortress, where she then feels happy and safe. So yes, very, very bizarre performance, I couldn't get out of there fast enough. I'm glad I went, though, as it was just so damn ridiculous, and we had a good time laughing about it afterwards. In any case, a little shell-shocked from that epic performance, we made our way back to the old zone, hopping the fence and walking back through the park. We were all very hungry by this point, so we picked out a restaurant with some good Gallego food, and ordered a bunch of plates to share. We wanted Rachel to get the full Santiago food experience, so we ordered a bunch of the traditional food, oh so delicious. After a really nice dinner, we headed out, all pretty tired by this point, so as it was late we decided to call it a night and went our separate ways.
The next morning, Sunday, Florette, Rachel, and Guy Sam headed over to La Coruna, a coastal town about an hour away from Santiago. Although I would like to go there, I made the responsible decision to stay behind and get some work done. What I ended up doing was spending hours messing with my music, clearing enough disk space so that I could download twilight (which I did, yayyyyy twilight! the girls and I are going to have a movie night sometime this week...). I did, however, get some work done, and it was nice to have some time at home, to have some chill time. That night, I met up with those three by the cathedral, to go on a long walk up a hill/mountain, where we planned to stargaze and chill for a while. I ended up being a bit late, as my Polish roommate needed me to look over an English application for his fiancee, but I hurried over and Guy Sam led us over to the hill. I didn't quite realize what I was getting myself in for, it was a really long walk, and we went really high up. It was also completely dark, and we were walking through the forest for much of it, which kind of freaked me out a bit. It was all worth it though for the amazing view at the top; it was so gorgeous to see all of the city, with all the lights, and the cathedral illuminated in the distance. We sat and talked for a while, passing around a battle of wine we had brought for the occasion. Soon, however, we got really, really cold, as the height, plus the wind, plus the overall cold night just wasn't a good combination. We stuck it out for a good while, looking at the stars and relaxing a bit, and then we made the trek back down. Amazingly, we all managed to make it back down in the limited light without mishap, and I got home and snuggled into my not-so-warm-but-better-than-a-mountain bed.
Today it was back to class. I've actually got a whole lot of work now and in the coming couple weeks, which i'm kind of stressed about. I've also been getting emails from Kenyon, as it's time to figure out housing and classes for next year, ack! So yeah...it was bound to happen some time...guess I'm going to have to cut back a bit on the bar hopping ;). On that note, off I go to bed, love you all,
Brit