Frio Frio Frio

Hace muy frio hoy! It's about 34 degrees here this morning, tell me again why I decided to give up two of my three favorite months of the year to go back to winter? This definitely will be up there for my favorite August yet...

Fun fact: It's so cold that after I'm done taking a fairly quick and warm (not extremely hot) shower, the bathroom has become so full of steam that yesterday I couldn't clearly see my towel on the ground five feet or so away from me.

Yesterday was just another day, I understood my first professor and he let us out ten minutes or so early. It was very warm and sunny outside so we ate lunch in the plaza right across from the campus. I still need to take some pictures of the campus, it's really unique. Our second class the professor had to be somewhere at 3:30 so he let us out a half hour early. A few of us went into the city a bit to find an open air market and I bought myself a sweet iPod case for 1.500 pesos (a little less than three bucks). After, we were supposed to have an excursion with our Chilean students at 4, but by 4:25 we hadn't seen anyone. Luckily, my group's leaders showed up just as we were about to leave so we headed through the city to the Natural History Museum of Valparaíso. It wasn't what I was expecting, but it was very interesting to say the least. They had a two-headed baby in a glass jar. Right across the street, there was a really neat plaza that we went and checked out. I love the plazas here, they're so beautiful and relazing. I took photos of the day and posted them on my facebook if you care to see.

To get home, I hopped on a micro and ended up getting stuck in a huge taco (traffic jam). It was so backed up, and our micro kept blocking other lanes of traffic so finally he just went and cut off tons of angry cars. It really was the smartest thing though because if he hadn't, they would've been waiting even longer to get by him. It turns out, there was an accident up ahead that was only taking up one lane, but I guess they're just like Americans in that whenever there's an accident, everyone has to drive by really slowly to see what's going on, which causes everyone behind them to slow down and stop.

After dinner, Rodrigo Jr. asked if I could help him study English. I said of course and so we worked a while and I helped him learn some of the irregular verbs in past tense. Gabriela also asked if I could help her out by going over a test she took, and then going over the use of any-, every-, some-, and no-. It felt good to actually know something here, haha.

It's cold here, except it's supposed to get up to 62 today. It's very strange. I need to get to class soon. My culture and conversation class is going to a fruit and vegetable market today, I think it should be exciting. I love how with my classes here, the professors will just take us walking through the city to experience first hand what we're learning about. I guess Spokane just isn't full of as much life as Valparaíso is, haha.

Chao mis amigos.