The Call to Chile: Singing and Walking

(10/19-10/21) Interesting enough I woke up Friday with an eye infection. It wasn’t pink eye but half of my left eye was bloodshot red. I decided it would be a good idea to wear my glasses for a few days and buy some eye drops. Not much happened during the day Friday so I read and watched Dr. Who for a little while. Then we started getting ready for Open Mic. Open Mic is an event they have here once a semester where the students can showcase their talent whether it be singing, playing guitar, dancing, or reading poetry. Frizz hosted is as Spandex Man, it was pretty funny. I had three acts during the evening. I did a song with Katie, I did a song with Claudia, and I did a dance with a few other girls in El Oasis. It was really fun. Some other acts included the Backstreet Boys, Adele, and Jeremy Camp. There were a lot more songs in English than there were in Spanish, but I thought the Spanish songs were really pretty. Anyhow it lasted about three hours and everyone had a blast. After it was over I Skyped my parents for a little while and then I met up with a group at Guaton which is my favorite restaurant. I decided not to buy food though because I had eaten there twice this week. We got back to the house and I went to sleep. Saturday was pretty awesome. I had made plans to meet a student for lunch, her name is Natty Meli. I met her in the metro station, which was complicated place to meet someone because it was huge, and we walked to a fairly nearby restaurant. We decided Italian food would be good so she led the way to this pretty fancy restaurant. It was delicious though and I really enjoyed it. I will be going back there. It was ironic though because as Natty Meli pointed out we were in an Italian restaurant in Chile and they were playing Mexican music. Pretty funny. Anyhow, at lunch we talked about our mission work. She spent the summer in Kenya, Africa with a program called Reach. It’s like Globalscope but just for the summer and there are a ton more locations for Reach. It was really cool hearing about her experience. After that she asked if I wanted to go check out some museums, which of course I did. We went to three different museums and all were very different. The first one was about art and didn’t have a whole lot because they were switching exhibits, it was pretty though. The second one was a Memorial Museum and it was really sad because I learned about the torture and how people were treated under the dictatorship and how people were violated on a daily basis. It was a beautiful museum, just extremely sad. The third museum was a history museum and it walked you through the forming of the earth and plants. It was really neat! It also showed a bunch of old animals, and a bunch of Chilean animals I had never seen. After that we decided to walk to this park that had a bunch of clothes for sale. I found a UGA shirt and just started laughing. There’s always a bunch of random American clothes. Then we walked all the way back to Plaza de Armas looking for a music played for Natty because hers broke a couple of weeks ago. Then we walked to the subway and said our goodbyes. We spent about 8 hours walking the city and had to have walked over 15 miles. It was great though and I really enjoyed getting to know her. I understood about 80% of our conversations too which was awesome. Once I got home I had just enough time to eat a sandwich and then Katie and I had to go to a friend’s (Katy’s) birthday party. I was pretty exhausted after all that walking but I had to push on. We got to the place around 10:30 and it was this restaurant with about 20 other of Katy’s friends. We were pretty crammed around this table. WE sat there talking until about 12:30 and that’s when the music started and so did the dancing. By this time I was ready to fall asleep standing up. After an hour of dancing I was pretty dead so Katie and I decided to leave. It was really fun though. We walked home and went to sleep. Sunday I woke up at 12:30pm which was pretty impressive for me, I think I was beyond worn out. It rained almost all day so I didn’t get the chance to go out. I did laundry, watched some Netflix, and did some design work for my mom. Katie and I watched a movie that night and then I wrote some letters and read a little. It was a pretty good do nothing day and a pretty good weekend.