Aprovechando

Our time in Santiago is coming to an end, and so I'm trying to take advantage of (aprovechar) the opportunities that surround us. In December I made a list of all the things I wanted to see and do before we left, and I'm happy to report that I'm going to end up doing most of them.

Last Friday night we celebrated Taylor's birthday (a few days late but the timing was better this way) by having dinner at a fun restaurant and then enjoying a set of Chilean-Cuban fusion music at Club de Jazz, one of Taylor's favorite nightspots from his undergrad days. Saturday I went on another bike excursion organized by spanish school, and enjoyed the excercise and the asado afterwards. Here's the river we rode to:

Rio Clarillo

Saturday night we had our Chilean friends over for dinner, which was a little stressful after Taylor and I were both out all day (Taylor decided to climb Cerro Manquehue, which he hated almost as much as I did), but it was fun. We introduced them to one of our specialties--Indian food.

Since it is summer, there are a bunch of art/music/cultural activities going on in the city. Wednesday I went along on another city tour with school, which ended up at the Feria Indigena, a celebration of the indigenous cultures of Chile. One of the groups was performing the traditional music and dance of the North, which I first saw our last night in San Pedro. This time I got a picture!

traditional Atacamanian dancing

Later in the afternoon there was a group from Rapa Nui (Easter Island), which not surprisingly strongly resembled the style of the Maori in New Zealand.

This morning I tried to see the changing of the guard at La Moneda (the presidential palace/main government offices), but either we missed it or it didn't really happen--I vote for the latter. It was supposed to be at 10:00, and Tasha and I arrived at 9:55 and there was no evidence of any ceremony, just throngs of tourists waiting to enter the courtyards. But, at least I got to inside, which I couldn't do when we toured the city with my parents because there was a special event that day. Since I now have tons of pictures of the building, here's one:

La Moneda, from the newly re-opened Alameda side of the building

Tonight several of the city's museums are free from 6:00 pm to midnight, and since I've slacked on all my other oportunities to go for free (they are free every Sunday), I'm going to go visit the history museum and the fine artes museum. I'm also hoping to drag Taylor away from the computer to come with me and have dinner in the centro, but we'll see how that goes considering that...

This weekend, instead of packing up our life or Taylor finishing his work or anything sensible like that, we're renting a car and going wine tasting tomorrow and hiking on Sunday! It will be a great last weekend in (or at least near) Santiago.

To finish up the subject of "aprovechando," I took one-on-one classes these two weeks to help me get back into this Spanish-speaking thing. The first few days I wasn't sure how helpful they were, but I surprised myself the second week in that I had some good conversations with the teachers, with good grammar and good vocabulary and everything. So in the end, I think it was definitely worth it to wipe off some of the rust that had accumulated in December, and I hope it will pay off when I get to Lima and I have to do anything that involves Spanish (I have no idea how much my job will require). I still become stupid when nervous or not warmed up, but I guess there's nothing I can do about that but practice and accept that I make mistakes.