Valpo

I flew into Santiago yesterday morning and found B and Chris at the airport. Amazing to see them after so long. For those of you looking for updates, they have not changed all that much.... which is a good thing. As proof, Benji is sitting across the living room from me right now trying to take apart a keyboard to fuse with another keyboard to make a super-awesome multicoloured keyboard for his mac. There was dancing earlier. Love it.

Valparaiso, where they live, is neat. It's a little run down... bohemian, you could say, but still has a lot of charm in the cultural stuff going on. It's one of Chile's major port cities, so the harbour is pretty serious. You're not allowed to take pictures of naval stuff though, as the army is paranoid about Bolivian and Peruvian spies. The whole place has a lot of emphasis on military. They're clearly very proud of their military history and that orients their culture. As does soccer, clearly. We watched the match against Ecuador last night at a bar. Intense!

Chile has a lot of stray dogs. Like, a LOT of them. And they're not overly scruffy or sketchy looking. You could totally get money for some of these in Canada. They just chill out on the streets and wander around, follow you for a bit if it looks like you might feed them. They're not threatening. The cats I've seen, however, are pretty scruffy. Even the house cats. Weird. The one that lives next door to the boys is, I think, in heat constantly and yowls. Worse than the cat at home, Dan. We have it good there. Seriously.

My Spanish is definitely not adequate, but it's getting better literally by the hour. I can manage enough, if people speak slowly, to get by. I imagine it will just get better as the trip goes on, although if the accent changes, I'm screwed!

So that's it so far. I think we're going to a movie tonight (in English with Spanish subtitles! YAY!) but last night we were up late, so probably not tonight. B promised he'd take me surfing soon, too.

Miss everyone, and hope you're all well.

Goodnight!