Sabado

I woke up to dogs howling, footsteps moving back and forth, and large objects banging against the walls. My shower never got quite warm enough, and once I was out my towel somehow got soaked before I could ever use it. (Since they don't use dryers, my towel never is fully dry. It's always cold and damp from the previous day's use, but today it somehow was just soaked) My cereal is soggy, and it's supposed to rain today. It's going to be one of those days...

On a lighter note, this last weekend in Papudo was spectacular. To make things easier, I'll break it into a different entry for each day, starting with Saturday (Sabado). I woke up and met Gabriela's boyfriend Carlos. He's a really nice guy and as her (host) older brother, I definitely approve. I finally figured out how he's related too. It's as if I were to date my mom's brother's (my uncle's) wife's little sister. Fair game in my opinion. I guess they met at the wedding of the uncle and his wife and she initially didn't like him but now they've been dating for 16 months. Cute.

Anyways, we hopped in the car with Rodrigo and went to get a crapload of bread for his sister's cafe. Afterwards, we went to get some fish and seafood from this market. It turns out I ate clams with parmesian cheese the night before, but the cheese was so overpowering that I couldn't even taste the clams. The eggs of a large fish, however, I wasn't a fan (I don't know what fish, they just said a fish).

We finally got on the road way later then they wanted, and after filling up with gas Rodrigo told me to buckle up because it was going to be like Speed Racer. He wasn't lying either. We were passing people in places where I didn't think it was possible. I almost got nervous at one point (this is a lot coming from someone who has ridden with Andrew for years of his life) but not quite...ha. But seriously, we were doing 110-120 (km/h mind you) on 60 & 70 km/h roads. The views were amazing once we reached the coast, and the family made sure to point out each and every thing we passed (it got a little annoying after a while being told to look every three minutes, but what can you do right?).

When we arrived we went to Cafe Moca'ss, Rodrigo's sister's cafe (he late told me all four kids bought it years back so they could have extra money, but she's the only sibling who actually lives in Papudo year round and works there all the time). Oh how I loved that cafe...I basically got anything I wanted for free. I raked up a tab of easily over $20 during the time I was there. I had great hot chocolate, chicken and pesto empanadas, juice, ice cream, and hot dog & chicken skewers. I definitely will miss the luxury of basically living in a cafe. They have a small cabana they called it down behind the cafe complete with two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a small kitchen/dining room area. I shared a room with Rodrigo Jr. and my parents took the room with the one big large bed. It was a surprisingly comfortable Mickey Mouse bed (once I got past the lingering smell of kid) and the house was all around warmer than what I was used to here in Viña.

Next stop was my mom Ginesa's parents' house. Boy was I welcomed there! Her mom and dad both gave me huge hugs and right away called me their son. During this trip I realized all grandparents are pretty much the same. My host grandma kept trying to feed me and give me stuff to drink, and my mom and her sister kept trying to do stuff in the kitchen so my grandma wouldn't have to, but she kept trying to help. Totally reminded me of my past Christmases...

After a nice lunch and meeting Gisena's two brothers and parents, we headed on over to Rodrigo's parents' house. Much of the same when I entered here. His mom gave me a big hug and his dad was very friendly as well. I was offered food once again and then I talked with some family for a while. One of the funniest things I've seen so far: a boy about 6 years old had a small rock and tossed it at another kid and it hit him in the butt. The kid didn't notice but the 6 year old saw that I noticed, and he proceeded to laugh with this sneaky grin on his face for the next five minutes.

Next, we headed to the cafe to drop off our stuff and my parents and I went for a walk along the beach. This is where I fell in love. It's such a small yet beautiful beach town. Sure I've seen beaches like it before in the past, with long walkways right up along the beach and numerous restaurants and bars right next to that. But all of those cities have been 5 or 10 times as big. Papudo has around 4.000 people, and many only live there during the summer. We were able to catch the sunset and walked the entire distance one way and then back the other along the walkway. They pointed out lots of cool buildings and even showed me the church they got married in. I took lots of pictures and you can check them out on my facebook if you'd like. Oh how I want to come back during the summer...

We headed back to Gisena's house after our walk for our once. I was taught how to play a few card games and played with some cousins and Carlos. I really liked Gisena's family, they were so friendly and one of her brothers has a three year old son Nicolas who is adorable. He is super smart for a three year old (or maybe I thought he was so smart because he could say phrases that I only learned last year), but seriously, I want one. I wanted to take the Spanish speaking child home with me, but I figured that would just be weird and I'd probably be shunned from the family for good.

The main reason for our trip to Papudo other than to show off what Rodrigo called the 8th Wonder of the World was because there were three or four birthdays in the family this past weekend. So later in the night, there was going to be a suprise party for one of my cousins at the cafe. They had it all decorated up nicely and had a bunch of family and friends over. I met some of her friends from school who were all pretty friendly to me and called me super macho for coming to Chile by myself, but they just weren't my type of people. All they did was drink and smoke, drink and smoke.

The party was a little awkward since I'm not much of a party guy in America, yet alone at a party where I barely speak the language of everyone attending. I did manage to have an old partially toothless man who spent half the night smoking mumble to me in Spanish for five minutes about his son and that was all I was able to catch. After everyone stood around talking and eating for a couple hours, they dimmed the lights and put on some music for dancing. My mom eventually had me get up to dance with her, and that's when all of friends of the cousin started cheering for me and yelling my name. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy dancing, just not when it's only 10 kids or so and all of them are grinding with each other while 20 older family members just stand around watching and talking.

I went outside with my parents and Rodrigo and his brother-in-law talked to me about classes in Chile compared to racism in the US and I actually learned quite a bit from them and how things in the country work. It's a little sad that your last name can determine what kind of job you can get, but they're used to it after hundreds of years.

After everyone started leaving, I finally decided I couldn't stay awake any longer and headed to bed at an unknown time. (It was way later than I'm used to) I slept wonderfully, though I smelled of nasty cigarette smoke.

And with that, I must be going to class. Hope the day gets better and the rain doesn't come. I'll let you know how the rest of my weekend went later.

Chao.