El cine y los micros

Hola,
Today is absolutely beautiful, the sun is shining brilliantly for the
first time since I arrived in Viña. I did decently on my pruebas, I
still do not know what I received on my oral part, but on the written
part I earned a 5, which is a B in the United States. It will be used
to help me pick classes to take. I think I did very well on the oral
part. As a CIEE group, we did not have anything going on this weekend, so we had a chance to get to know Viña on our own.

After my oral exam on Friday, Fernanda picked me up with her friend
Lola and her daughter, and we went to another friends house to drop
something off, and then we headed to Fernanda´s parents´ (Ita y Tata) house for tea. Her parents are in their 80s. Her mom´s health is
failing, but was still a very sweet woman. When we got home, I went
with Lelo and Alvira to the supermarket to buy some things for "happy
hour," cheese, wine, olives, salami, a mixture of pickeled things: ham,
turkey, pickles, cauliflower, carrots, olives, and something like
bologna. Lelo taught me how to tell if a wine was going to be a good
one...first you swirl and see if the wine has legs (whether it drips
down the glass), then you look at the color, then you smell it, and
finally you drink. The wine was spicy, but very good. I met many of
Nico´s friends, Felipe, Sebastian, and Neno. After "happy hour" at my
house, I went out with a group of CIEE people and some of the siblings
of my friends. We went to a place called Casa Journal, it is a place
to sit and talk and just chill with friends. Afterwards we went to El
Huevo, a club where we danced the night away. It was really fun, I
really like dancing.

On Saturday after I woke up, we went to buy me a cell phone, it was
really cheap in comparison to those in the US. It cost 16.990 pesos,
which is about 35 dollars. With the phone I got 10.000 pesos worth of
minutes (not sure how many minutes I can actually talk with them, but
quite a bit), and 50 text messages, so I pretty much got the phone for
free. Then we, Fernanda, Alvira, and I, went over to Ita y Tata´s for
lunch. It was a salad with tuna fish on top and fricase, fried
potatoes, peas, hot dogs, and a bit of cream. It was really good.
After lunch I came home to hang out, but Emily called me and invited me out to Pirates of the Caribean 2 with her, so I headed off to the
theater. I got there right as the movie was starting, and didn´t see
Emily so I headed into the theater and sat down, thinking I would catch
her after the movie. I left the theater and still didn´t see her, so I
waited and then called her, but she didn´t answer, so I waited some
more and then called her again, this time she answered. She said she
was still in the theater, I said I was in the mall, but would come back
up to the lobby of the theater, so I did, and then I waited some more.
Still no Emily. She called me back and told me her phone was about to
die, but where was I, so I described my surroundings and then waited.
Finally she and her siblings come walking up the steps. Turns out
there are two movie theaters in Viña like right across the street from
each other, and we were each in different theaters. Neither of us knew
there were two of them! Afterwards we went out for tea and then back to Emily´s house to hang out for a bit, then I came home on a micro
accompanied by Emily´s brother, Axel because he was on his way to a
friends house. We waited for a micro for a long time, and then finally
the right one drove past. When it was time for me to get off, I rang
the little bell, but the driver didn´t stop, or even seem like he was
going to stop because he was getting faster. I got really nervous and
so I rang the bell several more times, but to no avail, it was broken.
So I whistled with my fingers, and he stopped, but then the doors
didn´t open, so I yelled, more loudly than I wanted, ¡Abre la puerta,
por favor! I felt very embarrassed after I got off the micro, but oh
well. When I got home, Lelo and all of Nico´s friends got a real kick
out of my experiences for the day.

I am learning, and will continue to learn about being in Chile.

Love,
Kathy