Open Air Museum

On Thursday my friend Sarah and I took a walk through the "museo del aire libre" or Open air museum which is a collection of murals and paintings on the walls of these streets. The point of the museum is to get lost in the city's beauty, so it doesn't really have a set out order. It was great to be inspired my the talent of Valparaiso.








These are just a few of many inspirational photos from this incredible place.

Hope you're having a lovely weekend :)

*Vanessa*

Valparaiso, Mi Amor

Queridos Lectores (dearest readers)

I've been living up some cultural/touristy things in Valparaiso lately.. trying to soak up all that I can in my last two months here. I will write you a little list of all of the fun things I have done.

1. Lancha Tour of Valparaiso Bay: Kathleen and her boyfriend who was visiting from the U.S invited me to go out on a boat tour of the bay of Valparaiso. We took a "collectivo" boat, which means that is full of all different families and people. The tour was only about a half an hour long, but we went by a lot of naval boats, boats that ship out Chilean fruits and vegetables, some sea lions, and we saw some beautiful views looking back on Valparaiso. This little boy, no older than 13 gave us our tour, explaining to us a little bit about the history of Valparaiso. He was very cute and a really good worker. It was cool to be out on the bay for several reasons, one because that is where all of this area was started. Valparaiso started as nothing more than a port town, where boats would stop on there way around the southern tip of South America and come up to the other side of the Americas. Also, it was cool because a lot of the literature written about Chile takes place in that bay. So many of Pablo Neruda's famous poems are about that bay, as well as Manuel Rojas. So that was neat to be there.



2. Chorillana @ Casino Social J. Cruz: A Chorillana is one of Valparaiso's typical foods. It is a greasy plate of french fries, covered in steak meat, onions and an egg. It sounds as delicious/gross as it is. The place where we went is supposedly the very first place to invent this meal. It took as awhile to find it because it really is a hole in the wall.. impossible to find because it is down this little alley. When we walked in, it was covered with random photos and extremely awkward statues. Haha, it was an interesting place. The food was wonderfully disgusting but there was no way we could finish all of it.

3. Celebration of 21 de Mayo: The 21st of May is a huge celebration in chile, i believe it celebrates the winning of the war against peru for the top part of land that is now considered part of Chile. Anyway, it is a huge celebration of all of the military forces and the president comes to Valparaiso to give a speech. She gave her speech (bc chile's president is a woman, how cool!) But then there was basically a HUGE parade around the city, full of all types of military men and women. It was complete caos to be honest! People running from one street to the next, trying to find where the other part of the parade was. Very chilean, if you will.




4. Flamenco Show at Teatro Municipal de Valparaiso: Last night I went to a show of flamenco dancers in a really old theater in Valparaiso. The theater was filled with character and little quirks, I really loved the design. The dancers were beyond incredible! A woman who works at my study abroad program was actually one of the dancers, she was also probably the best dancer out there! The colors were incredible as were there movements. A couple of times throughout the show the had spanish guitarists and spanish singers, ooo it actually brought a tear to my eye it was so beautiful. I don't have any photos yet

So those are just a couple of things I've been up to here in this city. Lately I have kind of had the home bug, meaning i've kind of wanted to be home... I gotta snap out of it because there is so much to see and so much to do here, I need to just live it all up!

Hope you all had a lovely weekend, more updates to come :)

*Vanessa*

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!

I´m sorry, I hate to give away your age.... but today my dad is turning 50!!!!

He is currently out being adventurous like always, hiking the grand canyon and exploring more of Arizona. He is always on some kind of an adventure!






Five little things I love about my dad
1. He still opens every door for me when we are out together.
2. He calls me bubba and always refers to himself as ¨pops¨ (even though i´ve never called him that)
3. He always wants to go out for breakfast at the original pancake house
4. He consistently reminds me to ¨not take this day for granted¨
5. He reminds me at least once weekly how much he loves me and proud he is of me.

I LOVE YOU DAD! I hope you have a FANTASTIC 50th BIRTHDAY FULL OF CELEBRATION!

Wish I could be there with you today, but I did happen to pick you up a little chilean birthday present, so when I get back it will be coming your way.

Sending all of my love,

Vanessa.

Dr. Dr. Sick in Bed

So it has been far too long since I've updated. It has been a crazy week and half that seemed to have flown by, without really being conscious of it. I guess for starters a couple of big things happened.

1. When I returned back from my trip to La Serena, a large sum of money was stolen from its hiding place in my room and all of the signs pointed to the fact that our maid took it. So that was a really hard week because it was an awkward position of accusing people and feeling taken advantage. In the end, we fired the maid and my host mom is paying me back for the money taken. (Since I was not given a secure locked box to hold important documents, which was required by my abroad program)

2. I somehow got super sick! I was feeling not 100% on Tuesday, but figured I was just sleepy and bogged down with a lot of work. But when i woke up Wednesday morning I knew something was up, I had an exam Wednesday morning and so I took it and then came home and slept all day long (for 6 hours) When my host mom came home we took my temperature and it was 101.3! Which is pretty high for an adult. So anyway I just took it easy and got a ton of sleep. Today I woke up feeling just as bad and went to the doctor and it turns out i have tonsilitis! I know this is gross, but I came home and looked at my tonsils in the mirror and There were huge and had big white dots on them. Eeew!

So I guess I would say I have good reason that I haven't updated! Other, less somber things... last weekend I went to a really fun party on the beach, a discoteque with a bunch of friends. I also went to Olmue (small village where host mom's boyfriend has family cabin) for Mother's day on Sunday.

HAPPY MOTHER"S DAY MOMMA! (i know we talked, but did you get my post card and email?)

Other than that, I went to the regular Tuesday night salsa sessions, and I think I'm getting pretty good. Haha, that might be my biased opinion someday I'll take video and pics of the event. It is so much fun! I love doing it!

Oh, and I went on an excursion with a bunch of girls from my study abroad group and we went to this museum and had a really nice afternoon in Valparaiso. Here are some photos:




So I'm supposed to stay in bed pretty much until I feel better, so this has the possibility of being a super boring weekend, haha.

Sending a restful and healthy weekend,

Vanessa.

La Serena, Vicuña y Valle de Elqui

I was fortunate enough to travel again this past weekend. I traveled with two girlfriends, Cali and Elizabeth and we traveled north up the coast. It was fun to be on an adventure and fun to explore! We learned a lot in these three short days of traveling.

We left friday morning at 8:00am and were on the bus alll day until about 5:0opm when we got into La Serena. We checked into a cute little hostel, with a really quaint family feel. We explored the town a little bit, found some really cool art shops and then had a nice dinner in town. We also got ice cream after which always makes for a great day. The town was pretty upscale, but the buildings were very old, which was a really nice feel.



Saturday morning we explore La Serena a bit more, and then took a 2 o clock bus to Vicuña, which was a fairly small town, which felt very much in the countryside. Everything was just a little smaller and a little slower there. We really liked the feel of it though, the people were very friendly and we were surrounded everywhere by mountains. We checked into another hostel, which was a house owned by an older german woman. She was so friendly! No one else was staying there so the three of us girls got reign over the kitchen, the living room and our really comfy room and bathroom. We explored the town a bit and visited the museum of Gabriela Mistral (famous chilean poet) For dinner, made a delicious stir fry (which we bought all of the ingredients for 3 dollars since it was all vegetables and we were in farmlands) then Saturday night we went to an Astronomers Observatory. This was rated one of the 6 best places in the WORLD to view stars, given the caliber of the telescope and clarity of the sky. It was an incredible experience! We were up in the middle of nowhere for about 2 hours which just 6 other people and two guides who knew EVERYTHING about EVERYTHING. The coolest thing was seeing the moon up close through the telescope. i REALLY liked that part. We learned so much in that short 2 hour period!


Sunday morning we got up and ate a delicious meal served by our Germany hostel lady, then we took a bus into Valle de Elqui... the bus ride in was incredible, passing the greenest vineyards surrounded by the mountains and the bluest sky. We took a tour of a pisco vineyard (pisco is a type of alcohol that is typical to chile and peru and is made from the fermentation of grapes) The tour was really interesting and gave us some free taste testing and then an entire pisco sour at the end. We took all of our tours in spanish, and it was a really great way to practice. it was also cool that we were learning so much in a hands-on way. I really enjoyed my time there. After the tour, we took a little lunch break where we are out picnic we had packed for ourselves (sandwhiches with fresh avocado, tomato and cheese - again purchased lunch for under 3 dollars in TOTAL) Then we embarked on about a 1.5 mile walk through the Valley into another small town, Monte Grande. This walk was so gorgeous and filled with natural beauty. In Monte Grande we viewed Gabriel Mistrals house and then took a bus back to get our stuff in Vicuña, ate another delicious dinner with some friend we met in the hostel, and took the bus back to La Serena.



Unfortunately, the trip ended a little bit on a bad note. We thought we had tickets for the middle of the night 1am on sunday night or monday morning, but we had been confused and the tickets were actually for Sunday morning at 1 am, meaning saturday night... so we were stuck in the bus terminal without a way back. We waited another 2 hours, until 3 in the morning where we boarded a bus back to Santiago, (because none were going to our place) and then took a 2 hour bus back to Viña del mar. Needless to say I am very tired today!

But all in all it was a great trip! Pretty relaxed but also a ton of fun. Cali and Elizabeth were really good travel partners who stayed upbeat the whole time and always seemed interested in doing the same things i was interested in doing! Overall it was a great experience! I feel so lucky to be out and seeing the world!!

Sending Adventures your way,

Nessagirl.