si, gracias, quisiera algo vino. roja, por favor.

ok i didnt know how to say that (yes, thank you, i would like some wine. red, please) when they offered me a glass of wine with my suprisingly delicious-for-airlplane-food raviolis, but now i do, and thats how it came to my head when i started writing this. the wine wasn't half bad, and they even served it in plastic stemware. beleive it or not, they offered to feed us again later, with tacos de pollo, but we declined, still full from the previous meal and shaylas rediculous bag of candy she got at the airport. oh, and the cookies we brought.

we got in around 830, customs and immigration were smooth, as was the whole Copa airlines experience. outside the airport was a slew of cabbies who all had the 'muy most cheapest' cabs into the city, but we passed them to the cab we prepaid for at the desk inside. He managed to squeze all 6 or 8 or whatever massive bags into the sedan, using the front seat as cargo space. Then we cruised into Providencia, a district in Santiago (there are over 20ish i think). Our hostel was here, and its close to where Shay and Alisa meet their housemoms the next day.

we settle in the hostel, shower off the nastiness that acccumilates from 14 hours of planes etc, and make our way out to dinner. we asked the matrodee (or dude at the counter, matrodee is a little fru fru for hostels i guess) where to go. he sends us to Bellavista, which I think is just a name for an area of town, not a whole district, but i dont know. We walked along the ...dirty...river that runs along the central street of the area and a visitor joined us and led the way --a lone, confident, tagless pooch, who for whatever reason gave me an edge of comfort on my first walk through Santiago.

the place we ended up was a swankier area, full of clubs and resturaunts, but a lot of them in this central square looked engineered for tourists. we were hungry, so we just walked into one. the place was like a chilean version of the hard rock cafe or something, not what i want out of my chilean dining experience, but oh well, deal with it for the night. we ate, it wasnt horrible, and and Alisa tried the famous pisco sour, which didnt go over that well with us. nevertheless, we were in good spirits to have made it. we went home and slept.

except.....there was this old euro-dude who went to bed in his clothes on and with dirty feet who snored like a goddamn dying hog. i didnt sleep well.

but, i slept well enough to get our first full day of Chile started with gusto. breakfast at the hostel was white bread, cheese, instant crappy, i mean coffee, and some good melon juice. oh and corn flakes. we then reorganized our bags and left to meet the house moms.

(shayla meeting the mom)

Shayla's house mom, Anjelica, kindly invited me back with them, where she made us pisco sours that trumped our mediocre first impression of them. she also fed us avocado, tomatoes, bread, steak and mashed potatoes, and a wonderful local rose. i had to take a small siesta after that lunch.

shays room

then,Anjelica helped us buy Bip! cards (for the metro) and prepaid cell phones to use here. (i got a text from AT&T saying its 3.50 a minute here and 20 bucks/mb). Shay and I came back to the hostel, where I'm staying for the next week, for a pesto pasta and red wine dinner, on the house. it was great. the meal, and the whole day.

so, after accompanying shay home, and a couple hours later, i'm atop my bunk, pretty damn tired. oh, and its damn hot here (85-90 in the day, and still warm at night).

goodnight!

ps, sorry the pictures suck so far. didnt have much time to take any good ones yet. plus, its a pain to put em on this blogger thing, so i'll figure a better way to get them all up.