the coriolis effect

Flora's Santiago do's and don'ts

Don't
1) underestimate Santiago winter
2) get on the 611 at rush hour
3) take a class from one R. Canovas at UCatolica
4) let Marco at Sernatur refer you to his buddy George at LR on Sta Magdalena- unless you make your own plans simultaneously
5) take pisco on an empty stomach


Do
1) eat at El Huerto, Como Agua Para Chocolate and Peperones in Santiago, Cafe Tierra in San Pedro, El Living in Punta Arenas
2) stay at Hospedaje El Mirador (Castro) and Hotel Madryn (Ancud) in Chiloe, Maria's Casa in La Serena, and (with parental support) Hotel Orly in Santiago and the Hosteria Mirador del Payne in Torres del Paine
3) dance the night away at Maestra Vida in Bellavista
4) Go to Buenos Aires! (seriously- LanChile's last minute offers. Its 6 times more expensive the other way round)
5) Get lost in a volcanic crater. but bring water
6) Horseback ride down sanddunes
7) when you're cold wet, and exhausted...go to the termas
8) see an actual lucuma. we never did find out what they looked like.

Reasons I miss Chile
1) Raspberry juice
2) Inexpensive movies, intercity bus tickets, metro rides
3) Manjar and Lucuma
4) Artesania
5) the people of Chiloe
6) no George W. Bush (and, by extension, everything down to not having to take my shoes off at the airport. But, by the way, my Dad's nail clippers which made it in his carry-on through security checkpoints in TWO US airports were whisked away by a guard at the PUERTO MONTT airport and sternly dropped into the Naughty Things box. go figure)

Reasons I'm glad I"m home
1) Cranberry juice
2) Less expensive books, music, cellular minutes, postage
3) Healthy food
4) Snow and no pressing reason to have to go out in it (except to make snow penguins=). central heating.
5) my parents, my house, my piano, quiet, finding myself again

To quote Dan, oh cruel fate.
how did I miss both Gomez and Starsailor by mere days???

Two little neighborhood kids came by and asked my mom if they could shovel our walk for a dollar. Mom said she'd give them two dollars each, but when payment time came, she could only find 3 dollars (and lots of euros/pesos/argentinian pesos). A couple minutes later, one of the kids came back, ringing the bell furiously.

Here, he told her, handing back one of the bills. We don't really need the extra dollar.

so cute:) (she told them to keep it)

My nomadic ways are coming to an end. Temporarily, perhaps, but for long enough. I haven't slept more than two nights in the same place since December 27. That includes buses, planes, dorms, estates, cushions, and normal beds. I'm D.C. (or rather, Bethesda) home, where the house is cold but heat controlled so, the postcards are on the fridge, and everywhere I look something helps me slip into myself.

The plane into National took a loopy route, which took us over the frozen Potomac (flying back from Punta Arenas we saw the Southern and Northern ice fields, acres and miles and mountain ranges of ice, tongues stretching out into glacial lakes. But yet, Punta Arenas was considerably warmer...) and both the MD and VA sides of the metro area. Yesterday I dragged my parents up Cerro San Cristobal, where Santiago's urban grid stretches out in all directions, receding back into a summer haze that obscured the Andes. Here, everything is wooded, if not green- here, the city is provincial in size, but for the ritzy mansions for sale in the Long and Foster mag I flipped through in Ross's car.

I missed Washington. I'm happy I'm home.

Parents came today, and off we go! (slowly, parentelly). Santiago, Chiloe, Torres del Paine, Santiago, and home sweet home.

I was determined, and we went, and it was fun though more time was spent in travel than was reasonably expected....(buses run between Valpo and Santiago every ten minutes or so, and we managed to get what seemed like the last four tickets of the day, and not even direct/ Vina del Mar. THAT many people at the bus terminal). New Years in Valparaiso. Despite the immense crowds headed that way, the city seemed to absorb them all. Despite the thousands of people, I saw two kids who had been studying at la Catolica. and though we got to supermarket right after it closed, champagne was had, in the form of opening our mouths and catching the spray from bottles being opened all around us. So many fireowrks that, in the finale, the sky was so bright with shimmering white it could have been mid day. and, after not having eaten much at all, a dangerous run in with a rum and coke that was saved by a completo (closure, maybe?) my only other completo in this hot dog mad town was the first day of school). Even though there was no ractual countdown, and we figured out it was the new year when we started to get doused, a solid start indeed.

Scott, his girlfriend Sarah, and his brother Jeff and I, returned to Santiago during the day, after a very short night in the Casa Familliar Carraso (me sleeping under a creepy postcard of the Entel Tower superimposed in various places, like New York City, and the Pyramids.)
La Moneda, Plaza de Armas, Cerro Santa Lucia (in the process running into Scott's friend Pedro, and a chilean from my history class. its becoming a small country). Jeff and I were spirited away (after cheese and mortabella because it was cheap sandwiches) to the furthest reaches of the city to watch Lord of the Rings, feeling bad Scott couldn't make it (though he probably could have caught the million endings- I now know what people mean!) Trying to wean myself off a really nice apartment tonight by going over to the hostelling international hostel. other side of town. No tweeting birds and mountain views...