Valparaiso was amazing. totally la raja. i don't know how many pictures this blog can handle, hopefully a million because I took a lot. It is a really cool looking place. It's made up of a bunch of hills covered in houses of every color imaginable all attached to eachother with cats jumping from roof to roof and really really steep streets full of murals and artwork. It was definitely a contrast to Santiago.

On Friday Jenna, Felipe, and I took the bus to Valpo, got off and were assaulted by a million women trying to get us to come stay in their hostels, which was good beacuse the one we were thinking of staying in was full. Somehow we managed to choose a really good one on Cerro Alegre (cerro = hill) in a cool neighborhood. It was not like hostels here, the owner didn't live there and there were just 3 bedrooms. By chance the room they had available had three single beds in it and there was a big living room and a kitchen, although no stove it turned out (we ended up cooking hard boiled eggs in the water boiler for breakfast). So essentially we had our own apartment for the weekend (for $4000 pesos!)

We went to La Sebastiana, one of Pablo Neruda's houses, which was phenomenal. We weren't allowed to take pictures but it is a really neat house, with 5 floors and the most beautiful views imaginable. This is his bar, it was bright pink!

We did some other stuff, but I forget what right now. That night Felipe's friend Piter (Pablo? Peter? it was confusing) came and hung out with us. His sister lives in Valparaiso and his whole family is from there so it is his second home (or first, he doesn't really like Santiago). But it was great because as Felipe and Jenna did pololo-ish things, Piter took me all around Valaparaiso and I basically got my own "tour" of Cerro Alegre and other cool places at 3 in the morning. It was really relaxing because it was high up with fresh air and really crazy windy roads that are sort of chaotic and covered in artwork but except for lots of cats we were the only people out. I guess cats aren't people anyway. Then we sat in front of this really great view of Cerro Concepcion and the sea and railroad and listened to it for a few hours before walking back to the house to find Jenna and Felipe curled up asleep in the street because for some reason Piter, who wasn't even living in the house, had been given charge of the keys. They had been calling our phones and they could hear them ringing in the apartment because we had forgotten them but instead they thought that we had come home and gone to sleep and that they would have to spend the whole night in the street...

We walked around a lot more on Saturday and went to the Museo del Cielo Abierto which is a big area at the top of one of the hills where a bunch of famous artists painted murals on the sides of houses. It sounded kind of more exciting than it actually was and it was hard to figure out exactly where the museum was so we walked all through the hill but only ended up finding three of the murals. Which was fine, the houses themselves were exciting enough. Walking in Valpo is really really hard though. Probably easier than trying to drive a car, but still really exhausting. You are either walking in circles because every street is in a U, walking up steep steep stairs, or running down hills. Except that there are these really cool old shaky scary lifts all over the place that will carry you up to the top of the hill for only $100.

I am afraid this is really long and boring. Hopefully that's ok. I ate the absolute most disgusting thing I've ever eaten in my life. Jenna and I really wanted some seafood so we found a restaurant on the beach and the waitress was trying to get us to come in by explaining all of these wierd types of seafood that they served so we decided to go (not because we wanted what she was explaining) and for some reason she brought us a sample of what she was talking about. Me being me, I of course tried it. I don't know what it was but i nearly threw up. It was yellow and slimy and creamy and bumpy. It was supposed to be a shot of vitamins, but it was more like a shot of death. ugh, i don't know why I am writing about it, I am feeling sick just thinking about how bad it tasted...

(this is Felipe)
Anyway, Jenna and I have been discovering our passion for cooking and baking together. Last night after getting over the foul seafood, I was dying for some dessert but all I could find were popsicles so we decided to cook everyone dinner instead. We made really good guacamole and bread and a garlic, tomato, cilantro, onion salsa/salad (which sounds less delicious and exciting than it actually was) but we needed oil so we sent Felipe and Piter across the street to get some from the mini-market and kept chopping. After about an hour, we were getting kind of pissed off thinking they had probably gone somewhere to eat even though we were in the middle of making everyone food and we were getting annoyed that they weren't being appreciative. But instead they came back with four different kinds of cake for us that they had walked all the way to the grocery store at the bottom of the hill to buy because we had been talking about how much we wanted cake. I felt pretty bad. But excited that they are my friends. And even more excited to be eating cake...

Tomorrow we're cooking veggie chili and cornbread and russian tea cakes!