Back from Santiago!

Hola!

So this weekend was awesome. On Friday I went to a party for the exchange students where the school rents out a club and the exchange students went their for a night. It was pretty sweet... the girls in my group, Ricardo, and me ended up getting drunk off of Chilean Pisco... its so easy!! And somehow during the night I saw my exchange coordinator at the bar WASTED! It was so funny... we ended up talking about sex in the bathroom... so random?

So this weekend, my first actual weekend in Chile, I went to Santiago with Tati and Diego and their friends to go to a carnival. We left Vina at like 12 and got to Santiago at like 2 or so. Santiago is so huge and while driving through it I definitely saw the poverty infested areas... where there are kids on the street begging for money or trying to do tricks for any sort of charity. It was really sad. We went to Maca's house whom I've met before and we all just chilled at her house, and ended up sleeping away the afternoon during SIESTA. But then later at night we all got ready and went to the club "LA PLAYA". It was really cool... super packed and way different then the clubs in Canada. I ended up dancing with a ton of Chileans who were all trying to dance mirengue and salsa.. and I had no idea how!! It was a blast. And you know what they do... they shoot shampoo into the dance floor!! So random but FANTASTIC when you are wassssted. Also, I ended up meeting a really cool guy too. He is the brother of Maca - the girl who we were staying with in Santiago. He's some sort of engineer and is going to Berkley next fall.. super nice guy... a lot of the young people here can speak some sort of English so its fairly easy to make minimal conversation with strangers. We left the club at 4 and walked to the van that Nico was driving to take us home.. I was talking to that guy that I met in the back seat of the van and the door was open and there were 5 people standing outside the van... when all of a sudden 4 girls came into the van and stole Tati's purse and ran. It happened so fast NO ONE knew what had just happened!!! Unfortunately my driver's license was in the purse but nothing else.. but it just goes to show how careful you have to be in countries like this, especially huge cities. It was kinda scary because I have only been here for a week and everyone was concerned about me but I felt bad for Tati because it was all of her stuff stolen!!! But anyways today we hung out in Santiago all day and then went for Chinese food and now I'm home! I'll post pics of the ppl I was with!! Talk to you soon.. xoxo