Lori, Gladys, & Simoné at our apartment complex's party.

yo! so i'm still in chile (obviously). last weekend was chile's fiestas patrias celebration, which is was a blast. i had off from classes thursday-monday. it was basically one gigantically long party! lots of food, especially empanadas, anticuchos, and choripan (all delicious). i went to the fondas at the sporting club a few times, which is made up of a bunch of separate little booths (/mini restaurants) with lots of food and drink. There were also booths with random trinkets and lots with games. They were PACKED, especially on the 18th (chile's actual independance day). it was impossible to find a place to sit!

Small portion of the food at the asado.

on the 18th i went to a 6 hour asado at a family friend's. it was probably one of my top days in chile so far. i had TONS of delicious food (like probably more than i have ever had in one day)...a ridiculously huge amount of meat, loads of pan & pebre, etc etc etc. the night of the 18th we went to "fuegos artificiales"/ fireworks. not sure why, but for some reason i was expecting them to be not-so-amazing compared to our fourth of july fireworks. definitely blew those way out of the water. they even made disney world fireworks seem puny. there were three sets of them shot of from boats in the ocean, and they were huuuuge! on the 19th, i went to quintero with my family to meet glady's family. it was a really relaxed late lunch with her siblings. her brothers played guitar and the whole family sang songs. there was a lot of victor jara. simoné gave me a lot of the songs the next day, so i have a huge supply of spanish music now. on the 20th (last day on break), lori & i went to a boat show in valpo. it was cool and all, but not exactly my thing. the metros were SO packed. people were packed in there so tightly that when lori opened the door to try to squeeze us in, people fell out! oops!

At the asado

Glady and her siblings!

today i am going to con con and am possibly going to attempt surfing in the sand dunes? not really sure how that's going to work out...but i'm going to give it a try!

<3