Mi cuidad! (My city!)

So I've been here in Santiago for 6 days now. This city is beautiful! Below are 4 pictures: The first 2 are looking east at the Andes mountains (in the far distance, upper-left corner, you might be able to pick out the glaciers that are over 4000 m high!) that I took from the balcony of Ricardo, one of the meteorology profs at the university who has graciously opened his apt to me this week. The last 2 are from Google earth locating the apartment I hope to rent next week.




Some random (maybe funny) things have happened thus far, as might be expected.

- I bought groceries 4 times with little incident. Woohoo!
- I attended a meteorology seminar given in spanish (subject: wind flow & turbulence over an isolated active volcano in southern Chile) and understood maybe 50% (helped that the ppt slides were in spanish).

- Two large & ferocious dogs scared the crap out of me on Fri when I was walking to the supermarket. They are kept in a small fenced-in front yard of one of the apts on the way to the supermarket. Sad thing is that I had seen these dogs once before ... but forgot that they might be there.

- Pizza has turned into my favorite (or at least most frequent... 5 times in this week) meal. It's convenient & cheap, and I don't yet have access to a kitchen to make my own food. At "Gino's" (who else but Gino would open a pizza place? I mean, "Carl's" just wouldnt sound right), I thought I was ordering 1 personal-size pizza off menu # 2, but when my order came up, I was the proud owner of 2 personal-sized pizzas off menu #1. Oh well, que es la vida!

- I've seen lots of Santiago: on foot (mostly), via the Metro, and in the cars of my colleagues. My direct supervisor invited me for a very nice meal at his house yesterday (Sat.), and then we and his youngest daughter toured parts of the city and walked up part of the San Cristobal hill to get a nice panorama.
- I visited a church today (Sunday) and enjoyed singing christmas carols in spanish. :) Now if I could only understand the sermon!

- I met a very nice Paraguayan girl in line at the Police office (where I had to register my visa), and she and I went together to the next stop, the Cedula de Identidad office (national ID card office). We enjoyed some pizza and I was able to practice my spanish, which was pretty much all I could do because she did not speak any english.

- I've seen several dozen stray dogs, and perhaps half a dozen men, doing their business at random spots on the street. Guess if you've gotta go, you've gotta go, and it seems that as long as there's a tree...

- Today I randomly scored a jackpot for local shopping! So far all I saw were name-brand dept stores & upper-class-type malls, but today I wandered upon a street market, with probably a hundred booths selling everything! One of my favorite combinations was a store that sold batteries, plug adapters, christmas cards, ice cream, beach towels, & usb cords. A very nice assortment indeed!

- Random people have noticed my gringo-ness (i.e., tall & blond... dead giveaway) and come up to me with random english phrases. Most of these people, however, have been either drunk or impaired, so I'm not sure what that means! Regardless, when you're an extrovert in another culture and starved for interpersonal interactions, you take what you can get! I've enjoyed corresponding, but my spanish is still too horrible to really say anything to them.

- Yesterday and today I went jogging at the park O'Higgins (a very Spanish name, eh?), which is only 5 mins from my apartment. It was nice to get some exercise and be in the company of other joggers, bikers, roller-bladers, dog walkers, soccer players, and even a few playing "street tennis".

Stay tuned for more photos & stories!