It's a little chile...

oh come on...everyone has thrown puns at me for months. I'm allowed to use them too. And it really is a little bit chile here. The current temperature is 50 degrees. Although here it's actually read in celcius...so that would be what...18??? I'm not really sure to be honest. Between the conversion of money, distance, weight, speed, and temperature, I'm kind of on overload. I'm carrying around like 30.000 pesos, and thinking it's a lot of money to be carrying on me, but in reality, it's only about 33 dollars or something. Keeping all of the conversions straight is getting to be really difficult. And on top of that...the language...ahhh the language!!! People here talk so incredibly fast!!! It's insane. They also don't pronounce 'd' or 's'. so 'gracias' becomes 'gracia' and such. It's basically impossible to understand someone just rattling off like normal. I have to ask people to slow down and even then it's still so hard to catch what they're saying. You have to just accept every third word and pray that the two you're missing aren't important.

Aside from all of that...the city is beautiful!!! My window looks out to the Andes mountains. The only thing in my way is a few palm trees and a couple of buildings. And yes, I did say palm trees. There are palm trees here; and plenty of them, especially in the area I'm at. I'm living in one of the suburbs of the city, so when you walk down the street you see lines and lines of houses on either side of the street, all smooshed together, and gated in with fences and walls --sometimes walls of trees and bushes. The architecture is gorgeous. The houses are a cross between the spanish style, yellow, stucco houses with the red, u-shaped shingles, and a completely different style. And the walls have a light smattering of graffiti, which of course makes me happy. Today I passed a stencil of Charlie Chaplin...go figure.

I remember being told two contradictory things as far as the male Chilean's reactions to foreigners. First...I was told that men would flock to any blonde girl. And second...I read that men are very shy, because Chilean women can be rather intimidating. Well...I'm here to tell you that the first story is definitely the more truthful. While walking down the street, I can't pass anyone without being stared at and or receiving a comment, or car honk, or whistle. While walking past a building under construction, the men (who were scattered among the fourth and fifth floors) all stopped working and clapped and whistled at me --they actually clapped... and when i walked behind a truck, they stopped...but as soon as I came back into view, they started again. Now, I have worked a landscaping job and often had truck drivers honk at me and what not back at home...so I've actually gotten rather used to just ignoring it, and it doesn't bother me at all anymore. But this...well that is probably one of the most uncomfortable and embarrassing things I've ever experienced. Walking down the street and having a large number of men actually clapping and whistling at you from four stories up...I think from now on I'll avoid large groups of men.

I actually made my first trip to the supermarket today as well. I bought a box of cheerios, a bottle of water, a jug of juice, and toilet paper. I went to buy milk, but soon discovered that all of their milk is one of the "dry food" isles. Meaning it's either powdered milk, or it's just warm. Which I'm not a big milk drinker to begin with, but as far as I'm aware, milk shouldn't be kept warm. So I suppose I'm going to have to further investigate the milk situation and simply eat dry cereal until then. And as far as the water...that was my second failed attempt to just buy a normal bottle of water. Both turned out to be carbonated. The first actually turned out to be apple flavored, which I thought was rather gross to begin with, but after sampling the plain flavor, I found it rather appealing. So now I'm attempting to leave the cap unscrewed to see if it tastes better once the carbonation is released...it probably won't, but it's worth a try. I tend to like my pop a bit more flat, so maybe water will be the same for me... And I suppose I'll just have to be more careful now that I know that carbonated water is so popular here.

Well...that should probably do it for now... hopefully I'll have pictures to post next time... until then...