Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in rojaenchile's LiveJournal:

Sunday, June 5th, 2005
12:12 pm	O say can you see... Oh my god! My livejournal options are in English?? Where the hell am I? AMERICA!!!! I can't believe I am back. The insanity. The fucking insanity. I am still in shock to think that I was in Chile 24 hours ago. I'm happy to be back, but really freaked out. I was excited to come home, I actually started singing the national anthem. Yeah, I hate you George Bush, but we do have a pretty freakin sweet set up here. My cat loves me and was happy! She didn't like being in this big house all alone, and now she is sleeping contently on my bed. I don't know how long I'll write in this journal, probably another few weeks while I digest everything. Friday was the last day and absolutely perfect. I couldn't have asked for a better day to end it all. I'll explain it a little later, right now I need a shower and some FOOOOOOOD!!!! I've missed Chinese food and real pizza like nobody's business. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, June 3rd, 2005
10:52 am	last day... So it´s the last day of school today. The teachers are sitting us down and talking about how we did and all that jazz. It´s a little awkward, I don´t know. Carlos said thanks for keeping the class entertaining, but it didn´t really feel like I did that, I think he just needed something to say. I hate meetings like that, they feel so formal and serious. We are all supposed to go out to breakfast but I don´t know when that´s happening. Tonight we are hoping to go out with the teachers so I think I´ll write them a little thank you note. They´ve been great. It´s so weird to be leaving tomorrow. Carlos was telling me, it´s a hard program to be in because once you start getting the hang of it, you have to leave. It´s really important that I continue studying when I get back if I want to be able to speak fluently. I wish that I had been able to become better friends with him, to connect with him on a higher level because he´s such a great person. Hopefully the letter I write will let him know that. Last night we had a great dinner with Joe´s family and Collin. Have to go now, I´ll tell more later, including how Lindsay and Joe got stopped by the cops in the middle of the street, patted down, and robbed for some money. Crazy. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 31st, 2005
2:55 pm	One of these things is not like the other I´m just gonna come out and say it - I´m really excited to get home and watch the episodes of Lost that I missed. Okay, whew. Sebastian already has a bootleg version of Episode III on his computer, but it´s dubbed in Spanish so I somehow hated it even more because I had no idea what they were saying and concentrated on the over saturation of CGI. There´s a lot of different things that happen here that I haven´t really talked about. Let´s see, some differences -People are selling stuff everywhere! Every five feet there is a little tienda with cigarrettes or chips, or magazines, and then there´s ones with hats and all that jazz. -Random dudes hop on the bus and yell things at you in Spanish so they can sell you candy, then when they realize nobody wants it, they get off -Other random people walk on the bus and give you things like Winnie the Pooh cards, then they sing something in Spanish about how you can just give em some money and keep the cards, then they take them back! -You always have to ask for the check in a restaurant, even if you are blatantly staring at the waiter for it -There´s a million squeegee people -I think in a lot of places, if you want to park your car, you have to pay some dude to wash it. I´m not exactly sure, it´s kind of confusing, but most of the car washers set up shop on the street or in a parking lot -there´s this thing, manejar, that´s a sweet caramel type thing, that they put on everything, and it fucking rules - they put a ton of mayonaise on everything, and it comes in a bag! Yogurt also comes in a back! And milk! Well, some milk. Oh my god the chocolate milk here is amazing -McDonalds sells empenadas! - they do the kisses on the cheek, and I totally love it! I´m going to miss it lots, but mostly because the guys here have fuzzy faces and that makes it fun! - My mom cleans all the rooms and makes all the beds every day -lunch is a huge deal! Everyone comes home for an hour, hour and a half! more later! (Comment on this)
Monday, May 30th, 2005
10:44 pm	la rutina diaria After speaking to someone today who´s been reading my journal, I think they got the idea that all I was doing was going out to bars, getting drunk, that kind of thing, here. Really that´s happening a lot less than it might appear in this blog. It´s been really hard to describe the amazing things I´ve seen here. I´ve always had a hard time putting into words the emotions that go through me, so I guess on here I figured talking about what I did the night before was easier. In my hand written journal there´s a whole hell of a lot more, but stuff obviously just for me. If any of you are worried that all I´m doing is going out, it´s very far from the truth. A lot of nights we will go to a bar nearby but that´s just because, really, there´s not a ton to do here when you don´t speak the language fluenty. We´ve visited great museums, art galleries, places I would love to go, expect all the information they give me about it is in Spanish. But anyway, the bar is just somewhere to go, sit down and eat papas fritas with the super sweet ass ketchup and mustard and drink a beer. Only one night here have I really gone overboard, which was talked about in that lovely hangover post, and dammit, I can´t remember the spanish word for hangover. I know I don´t talk about school much, but it´s a fun easy time for the most part, I learn Spanish words, and talk shit about a girl in my class who I don´t like. Today was great, our teacher Felipe made us write things that had been corrected in our homework on the board, and it was so many small things that always throw me off. I really felt like I was actually getting a grip on it. Though I still hate preterite and imperfect, with a passion. Though saying something for the future is great. "Yo voy a regresar a Utah el domingo". Ahora, yo voy a hablar en español en este diario. Mi español es mejor aca (aqui), pero espero que yo recuerdolo cuando yo estoy en Utah. Yo quiero regresar a Chile un otro tiempo en mi vida, y quizas (I don´t know if I did that right) vivo aqui. A mi me gusta me madre Chileana. Ella es muy simpatica, y cocina bueno. Necesito comprar un regalo para su, pero yo no se que su da. Anyway, I miss my friends and family a lot. I´m sad to be coming home on Sunday, but really excited at the same time. I feel so much more focused. I´m questioning what I want to do in my life though. I love to entertain and make films, but I don´t know how good I am at that. I have always had the urge to be the kind of person who has a job for helping other people, and I don´t know if that´s what I should really be doing. It´s a hard thing to decide. The Ulster Project this summer should be an interesting perspective. (Comment on this)
Sunday, May 29th, 2005
6:56 pm	I admit it - I'm a sailor I´m a little bit embarrassed about all the swearing/drinking stories in here now that I know my grandma and john are reading it (hi guys!), but it´s just me being glorious me. The party was very fun last night, Carlos lives on Cerro Concepcion, amazingly beautiful with a view of all the hills and the downtown area of Valpo. Gorgeous house too. He´s such an amazing guy, he is very passionate and caring about the social and economic issues in the world. We sang some Joni Mitchell together. I found a picture of his house. It´s that black one behind the yellow building which is Hotel Brighton. Aa you can see, it has a great unobstructed view. I walked up this road It was hilarious, there was about 7 people left at the party when we were all outside except for some chick from California who was in Carlos room totally passed out because she drank a bathtub full of alchohol. So, Claudia, a friend of Carlos, closes the door and accidentaly locked us all out. We were stuck outside, trying to knock on his window and wake up the drunk chick. It didn´t work, it was hilarious. So, Carlos´ room mates were at this feminist party at some bar close by. We went there, and some random guy started taking pictures of me, because apparently he found me attractive. We kinda tango danced, I bought him and Carlos a beer. Lindsay was pynched as hell and all over Collin. After, Joe and I came back to the apartment building and had some nice tipsy political conversation on the bus ride. He wanted to drink the wine that he had bought, so we went on the balcony of my place and broke it out. We were just sitting there, discussing people and stuff, talking about how awesome Emily is, laughing it up. I was doing pretty well, not too bad out of shape. All of a sudden, Joe sits straight up in his chair and says "Oh no" with a terrified look on his face. I had a feeling something bad was going to happen, and I said "Are you going to just burp or throw up?". The answer was throw up, which was made apparent to me by his next action which was leaning over and puking on the balcony. I looked away, not wishing to see the vomit spewing, and then I looked back and he was standing at the edge of the balcony, attempting to throw up between the plastic fence-type thing that is way to high to project vomit over. I went and got him some water and he just felt fucking awful. There was little bits of barf on the plastic fence and on the glass balcony thing, and his face. That was probably one of the funniest moments in my life so far. He was like "I feel so bad", with a little bit of dark spew on his cheek. I told him to go to sleep, so he went home and I tried to clean it up with a pitcher of water or 5. Everytime we talk about this I laugh uncontrollably untill my stomach hurts. Awesome. (Comment on this)
Saturday, May 28th, 2005
5:35 pm	andar con caña day! Oh my god. Today is officially the day of the worst hangover of my entire life. I hate pisco. Hate it hate it hate it. It´s the big liquor here, you can get pisco sours anywhere, it practically comes straight out of the tap. It´s pronounced pees-co, by the way. It´s 5:30 pm and I still feel like shit. We went to a club last night, there was nobody there at like 10, so we sat around, had a piscola (pisco and coke), almost the entire glass was liquor. So we all had another one. Then we shared one. Then we had pisco sours. Holy lord. The other night Carlos said he had a bad history with pìscola and now I know why. Hopefully we will feel alright tonight for Lindsay´s birthdayness. I went over to her house for lunch and she looked like she was hating life pretty hard. I think Joe wanted to kill me last night because I was being so loud on the bus on the way back. I don´t really remember that. Lindsay totally made out with one of the monitor guys, hahaha, Felipe. At least I didn´t do anything like that. The guys are much different here than in Argentina. My head hates me so hard. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, May 27th, 2005
2:42 pm	El fin de semana I´m really looking forward to this weekend. Tonight we are going to some club and tomorrow is Lindsay´s birthday. My teacher, Carlos, the fucking coolest guy ever, suggested we have it at his house. So we are going to BBQ first and then have the party till midnight or so, then go to a bar or someplace after that if we want to. It should be a blast. School has been really hard this week, the imperfect and preterite are like hell on earth. We took a small test today, and none of it was what I had studied for, of course. Instead of my name, I put Satan at the top along with "I have no fucking idea :)". At least I made him laugh. My stomach kinda hates me today. Can´t tell if I´ve been losing weight or not, I should be, but at the same time I ate so much damned food in Argentina that I probably would have gained it back. I made a friend named Sebastian, he said there´s a European film festival going on this week and next so that will be fun to check out. I need to take a million pictures now that I finally have a camera. One more week! (Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 25th, 2005
2:40 pm	Mendoza Shmendoza Back in Viña, finally! I can´t believe the bus ride yesterday, 14 hours long. And no refund for the ticket that I was going to use Wednesday if I had to. Whatever, it was only like 15 bucks. We were stuck in the same place for 7 hours thought, waiting to go through customs. A little frustrating when all you´ve had to eat is a cup of tea and some little croissants. This kid Cory had bought some homemade wine though, so we broke that shit out and relaxed. Going on a walk in Valparaiso now. (Comment on this)
Monday, May 23rd, 2005
7:04 pm	Mendoza Rox So looks like I am stuck in Mendoza, Argentina for possibly a few days. Apparently the mountain pass that´s the road back to Chile closes and opens more often that Paris Hilton´s legs. But, if there´s anywhere to be stuck, it´s Argentina! I can´t believe how cheap it is here. The other night, 5 of us ate out at a really nice restaurant, had a bottle of wine, two cocktails, plus all of our dinner - 10 bucks each. Seriously, it´s insane. I´m probably saving money by being here. I bought an amazing scarf, they have little shops open at the plazas everynight selling homemadestuff. Gorgeous stuff, my scarf was only 7 and probably would have been at least 15 in Salt Lake. I have so much I want to talk about! This trip has really been, as cheesy as it sounds, a life-changing experience. Meeting Frank has especially been interesting. I have mostly realized how incredibly lucky I am, to live where I do, to be able to have all the things I have. And also, that I don´t need almost everything i have. I can´t wait to get home and simplify. This keyboard sucks, and I want to see if I can go watch the Simpsons in Spanish. Toodles! (Comment on this)
Sunday, May 22nd, 2005
4:22 pm	Mullets, Darth, and Meatloaf So here I am in Argentina. We met this German guy named Frank on the bus here who looks exactly like Meatloaf. He´s been here quite a few times so he hooked us up with a hotel, about 15 a night per room. Yeah, it´s ridiculously cheap in Argentina. I have so much to talk about, this Frank guy is really interesting, he´s been traveling everywhere for a good chunk of time. Don´t have too much time to talk about it thought, we´re going to go shopping at the plaza. Saw Star Wars. Boy did that suck. The movie, not the experience. There were assigned seats? Observation: The mullet is HELLA popular in South America (Comment on this)
Thursday, May 19th, 2005
10:03 pm	Workin for the Weekend Solution to the I´m-In-A-Foreign-Country-And-My-Friends-Here-Are-Sick-Of-Me-So-They-Didn´t-Call-And-I-Feel-Lame-And-Kinda Depressed-About-This-And-Shit-Involving-Dudes-Blues - Put on a dance mix made by Cory Tallman, and rock out to Loverboy and others, while a little bit scared of being walked in on because your door doesn´t lock. Thank god for CD players. I´m in some serious need of karaoke, and a god damn distraction. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
3:30 pm	That whole "life-changing experience" thing I don´t need most of the things I own. I am doing a cleaning when I get home. Yes. I miss so many things but at the same time, I realize how many things I do or have or like don´t have much substance behind them. I hate that. (Comment on this)
1:59 pm	where's the barf? So yeah, it looks like I did in fact eat blood sausage as I found out later that day. Wow. Who was it that left the comment about it? You didn´t leave your name. Things are going alright. I´m in a psuedo shitty mood the past few days. Don´t know why, I think it´s all a part of the ¨phases¨ you go through on these trips or something. We are trying to go to Mendoza, Argentina this weekend (bus leaves tomorrow morning), but it´s been snowing there and the pass was closed yesterday. So we don´t know if we´ll be able to get in, blah, I don´t want to have to worry about it. Plus I still haven´t figured out the money thing, it´s really frustrating. Yesterday Marisol, Fernanda´s sister, was at the apartment when I got home and said something about bringing me to get my $100 bill cashed (turns out there was some counterfeit money made recently with a similar serial number so that´s why they won´t cash it). I was so tired, and kinda sick, and just didn´t want to deal with it. I told her they wouldn´t cash it but she didn´t believe me, we went to the mall where, of course, they didn´t cash it, then I had to follow her around the grocery store while she said things to me of which I understood maybe 2 words. Luckily I got back in time to get a call from Stephanie, and her and Joe and I went to Pedro Feliz, a Jazz club. Lots of people from the program showed up, the place was absolutely packed. It was really good music, but hard to handle all the people. Carlos, my teacher, showed up so that was fun to see him. I´m a tiny bit miffed because I had bought a "ron" (rum) and coke, and had it at the table. A kid from the program, Ben, got up and hit it by accident, and it spilled all over me and on him too. Instead of being like "oh I´m really really sorry", which is all I would really ask, he blamed it on me, because I didn´t move my drink. WTF? That thing was expensive too, like 6 bucks. The kid I was talking to, Sebastian (there are so MANY SEBASTIANS!), was like "he should have bought you another one" which gets me thinking, wait, yeah, he should have!! It´s dumb to dwell on, but it just really annoyed me. Especially because I had bought a beer for him already, and he didn´t even apologize. He´s really defensive about everything though. That´s been an interesting part of this experience, the things you find out about people in a short amount of time. It rained a lot today, I mean a lot. There´s a street right next to our house that is a street sometimes, and a river others. I´m finding that my minimalist approach to packing was too minimalist and that two pairs of jeans isn´t cutting it when one has a foot of mud and water on the bottom and the other is still outside drying after two days (no dryers here). Can´t really afford to go shopping either. Oh what fun! Oh well, I´ll survive, one way or another. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, May 16th, 2005
8:45 pm	mystery meat So much to write about, so little time. Today after school Joe, Lindsay and I decided to find somewhere to eat. All I wanted was a cheese empenada, and they serve them literally like every two feet. Of course we go into the one restaurant that doesn´t serve it. Our first mistake, not making sure they have a menu you can read. The waitress says some words to us in spanish, a question with the word "menu" at the end, so we say, why yes, let´s see a menu. She then says more words in Spanish, which we soon discover is, in fact, the menu. We all nod and say "si!" a lot, and end up ordering whatever the fuck she is talking about. So the first part comes. The other day I realized that you never know when you are finished with a meal here. You think that salad was your main dish? Oh ho ho ho how wrong you are. Think you´re going to finish that meal in a measly little hour of time? Oh hohoho, do you have a lot to learn. She brings us tomatoes (my favorite!!! That´s sarcasm by the way!!!), stuffed with some kinda chicken salad. At this point we had no clue if this was all we ordered or not, but the meal is only like 1400 pesos, so about 3 bucks. I eat the chicken salad, not bad except for the hard piece of something that does NOT belong in a chicken salad. Then comes the soup. Not awful, pasta, eggs (they put eggs in everything), cilantro and tons of grease. Fine, good whatever. Then comes the MAIN COURSE. The MAIN COURSE is in shouted, capital letters for good reason. OH MY GOD. I don´t know exactly what it was, but Joe said something about Haggus. Basically, some black intestine of some animal, stuffed with black meat. I seriously almost threw up right then. We were all absolutely horrified. But what could we do? I put my knife through it, mixed it in with the rice, and just told myself it was black beans. I just tried to do a search to find something, anything resembling that shit, but alas, nothing can ever look as disgusting as that thing did. The closest I can get to is a picture of a sea lion: What I ate looked like the body of that sea lion - black, wet, shiny, and stuffed with shit you do not want to eat. Then, desert!! Yay!! Fruit with ice cream!! You can´t go wrong!! Except when your friend finds a bug in it!! Then it´s kinda nasty!! Yeah, that´s what happened. And that´s the adventure of lunch today. Going out to the bar to "study". My homework is hilarious - we need to bring 15 "horas" (like 1:15, 6:38), and 20 descriptions of vegetables or fruit. Hahahaha. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, May 13th, 2005
9:19 pm	ignore this I am in Chile and have had a few too many. Now I don´t know what to do, because a friend called me earlier, but I can´t figure out how to work the phone to call her back. I think it stops working after a certain time. I have no idea what her son is saying to me about the phone. Tonight Joe and I talked to some very nice stockbroker who has a brother that works in film, I probably should have gotten his contact information. I hope I get to go out and do something tonight, I really don´t want to sit here in this state all by myself. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, May 12th, 2005
2:52 pm	Neverending Lunch Story I just got back from a thing where they pair you up with Chilean students and you speak to each other to practice conversing in each other´s language. It was really fun. I wonder if there is anything like that at the U. Yesterday was great. We had class, and then me and a guy James, a photo major, went in search of change for our American currency. We found a "casa de cambio" but they wouldn´t change my $100 which sucks because it´s like the only cash I have. Something about the wrong serial number, they can´t take it. Samt thing happened to a lot of other people. I forgot about a 20 I had in my backpack so that should tide me over for cash untill I can figure out what to do. Hopefully my parents will send my debit card but they haven´t written me back yet. After the casa de cambio we went in search of food. Some guy standing outside a restaurant was very very enthusiastic about the menu, so we said "what the fuck, why not". I saw a cheese empendada (empenadas are everywhere here), so I ordered it and before we knew it, we had apparnently also ordered salad, soup, a main course of squash with beef and rice, and fruit. I have no clue how that happened. Luckily I at least communicated that we did NOT want a whole bottle of wine, just a glass. The wine is good here, apparently there is wineries all over the place. If anyone is interested in me bringing some home, let me know. I told James I would just pay for it with my credit card, and it was so funny because halfway through the meal he was like "I´m sorry, but I don´t know your name." He´s kinda a weird guy, I´m not sure how to read him. He seems like a stoner type dude I guess. So anyway, at the restaurant, they brought us the empenadas (which we had thought was our main course), the salad, then the soup. We asked for the cheque, and then she was like "bladadadadada balalalala", something about how we hadn´t eaten part of the meal yet. We thought the empenadas were the main course! Luckily they wrapped up the fruit for us to go because we had to make it back to campus for a group walking tour thing. I barely made it back, met my group as they were leaving. I am so glad I did though, because we went to "La Sebastiana", the house of Paublo Neruda in Valparaiso. It was amazing. So beautiful. It was really big too, four floors with an amazing view of the city. I don´t know too much about him, but they had these papers in each room about items in the room and interesting things that showed the aspects of his personality. He had a great sense of humor and passion for life, it seems. In one room there was a painting of a Queen wearing a ruff, and across from her on the wall was a man wearing a ruff. It said that Neruda bought the painting of the man so "the Queen wouldn´t be lonely". Also, in his bar, he was the only one allowed to make the drinks, and nobody was allowed to be too serious or too intellectual. Yesterday was my first real annoyance with "being American". Nobody can do anything without talking to each other. We talk all the time, and we talk loudly. When the tour guides would address us, it would be in a calm voice, loud enough for everyone to hear, but never shouting or yelling by any means. There were a few other things along the same lines that bothered me, and I just wanted to say SHUT UP! Ah well. After La Sebastiana, we went to an outdoor museum. It´s a collection of murals painted on the sides of houses and buildings on Cerra Mar Vista. It was really neat, I wish I had brought my camera. I haven´t brought it anywhere with me yet since it´s not a good thing to bring with you because it could get stolen. Tired now. I should study. I hope we get farther in our classes than we are now. It doesn´t feel like we are really going anywhere in it, and I would like to be conjugating verbs like some of the higher classes. Though I really like my teachers, but it might be a good idea to switch at this point, because some of the people in my class get held up on a few words and we take half an hour talking about it so they can figure out what the teacher is talking about. On the plus side, it´s so much fun when my professor speaks in his British accent. I love it! This is an example of what you see when you go up the Cerras (Comment on this)
11:31 am	Cristal No time to update too much. Last night we went to a bar, it was fun. I still can´t believe how strong the beer is. Some Chilean guy was telling me he liked my hair and trying to get me to dance but I didn´t want to go alone. We were supposed to go dance after that in a group but we never made it to the dancing on the third floor, I didn´t even have any idea where the dance floor was. So far I haven´t really been taken aback by anything here. I think it´s because I prepared myself for a much different culture. More later, class now! (Comment on this)
11:27 am	:) Dear Diary Chile is great! -Love Barbara P.S. I sat next to Collin in the computer lab today. He is sooo cute! (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 10th, 2005
6:11 pm	9 days till Star Wars So today was our first day of class. It went really well. There´s only 9 people in class, so that´s good because it´s much easier to understand what´s going on. We kinda were able to wander around the city today, which was neat. So many little shops! Joe and I went to a restaurant where I struggled my way through ordering roast chicken and rice, which wasn´t too bad. I hear the empenadas are where it´s at though. I´m totally digging Cristal, a beer they have here. And now I can say I´ve drank Cristal LOLOLOL. After class there was an opportunity to learn some traditional Chilean dances, so about 10 of us attended. It was really fun, and confusing. Joe has no rhythmn, it´s hilarious. I was out of breath by the end though, it was a workout. Today I made my official first purchase in Chile of two coca-colas. Surprisingly, there is no good coffee to be found ANYWHERE. It´s all instant Nescafe crap. What? I thought this was supposed to be land of the coffee. We were dying for some between classes today, but had to settle for good old coke. I´m sure you want to hear about all the excitement of my first purchase. I went into the store (I think it was a candy store because that´s pretty much all there was). Joe wanted one also, so I said "Necesito dos Coca-Colas." And she understood me! YIPPE! Her cash register was absolutely ancient, complete with a crank and all. Awesome. Still want to pet every cat and dog in sight. They are all just so nice! the dogs sleep everywhere. I think I had forgotten what a dog looks like with balls, one of them was licking itself and i was a little taken aback. I´m sure that´s a detail everyone´s dying to hear. When we got off the bus today, the weather was perfect. A slight breeze, and the sun beginning to go down. I need to charge my camera so I can start taking pictures. I need to make sure I remember all of this. Tonight we are having lasagna for dinner. I think this is because I told her I like Italian food. Joe is coming over, but she said we can only talk in Spanish at the table. We´ll see how that goes. My teachers are great! There´s one in the morning and a different one later on. Felipe is a sharp dresser, and Carlos is muy guapo, and I think he is British but I couldn´t tell cause he only spoke in English a few times. I wish I was thinking more insightful things, but this is all I can muster for now, la bailar has made me tired! (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, May 9th, 2005
9:33 pm	Uh...Chile! Well, it´s my second day in Chile and the first day of this blog. How exciting for all of you! So I had something interesting happen to me today. After Joe and I got back from the walking tour around Valparaiso (I finally spelled it right!), his abuelo (grandfather for this trip), who is the cutest little old man that wears a black beret, asked if Joe wanted to buy film. At first the confusion was "Necesito comprar peliculas?". Peliculas means movies, I thought he was asking if Joe wanted to buy a movie, but he meant film for the camera. Oh that was a hilarious story, eh? Anyway, we go to the Kodak store, and this woman comes in and asks me if I speak English to which I say yes. She then tells me she needs my help filling out some social security form because she lived in New Jersey for two years (two years and she never learned English??). Okay, sure I say. She just needed to know where she had to sign her name. We are standing there and she points at my stomach, blubbering some words in español that I don´t know. I just look at her and her husband in a confused way and to my HORROR, realize that they are asking if I am PREGNANT. YES, THAT´S RIGHT. Her husband asked if I had a "surprise". I am (obviously) horrified by this question. So they say "Are you pregnant or just fat?". Uhhh....WHAT THE FUCK? I said "This is my stomach" and the lady said something with "gordo" in it, meaning fat. She said "You have to lose that" and I said "thanks" in a way that meant "thanks for being a huge bitch". She then pointed to her own stomach and said she needed to lose weight also. You know what, it´s true, she probably did. But did I come up to the street and first ask her for her help with something she had no obligation to help me with, then proceed to tell her on my own accord that I believed she was fat? Nope, I sure didn´t! That totally made my day! So the best part is, right after she tells me this and I finish helping her, she wants to buy me a pastry from the place next door! What?? You call me fat and then try to feed me?? She´s like "Oh please let me buy you something, I will feel bad". If I knew Spanish I would have told her off but I was just so shocked at her rudeness, I didn´t know what to say. They started talking to Joe´s abuelo, and he was very short with them, I am assuming because he didn´t appreciate their rudeness either. Afterwards, we laughed and laughed. So that sucked. I told Fernanda about it, and she was mad at the woman. She said she probably thought I was pregnant because of my big boobs. Guess I just can´t win. Tonight Sebastian, the 16 yr old, had a friend over during lunch or dinner (I don´t know which one it was because they eat so late). They were laughing at me, probably because I don´t know what the hell is going on, so instead of being embarrassed I just said ¨"you´re laughing at me" and they giggled more. Maybe it´s because of my big breasts? They must be in cahoots with that woman. Hoy dia, caminaba a la cerra Polcana. Today we walked up the hill Polcana. I don´t think that´s the right word but I don´t want to get the map. It was a hard walk, they have trams that go up it because it´s so steep. It was an amazing view though. These two cities are really beautiful. Valparaiso looks a lot like San Francisco! Okay, gotta go, her kid is so addicted to the net I´m scared he will hurt me if I don´t get off soon. (2 Comments |Comment on this)