Funniest Thing I've read in years

I know that I can be pretty random sometimes, but the guy who wrote this is my officially my new idol. here's the link: indoor swimming pool

Here's an excerpt:
Manager: Sir, can you tell me why you’d like to return this pool?
Tynan : I was going to buy a penguin, but I was worried the pool was going to leak on my carpet. It doesn’t say anywhere not to use it inside, but I don’t think it’s sturdy enough.
Manager: Are you being serious?
Tynan: Yes.
Manager: Ok… I guess we’ll take it.

By the way, i discovered this story on reddit.com - a wealth of info and hours of fun.

Busy, busy, busy

What have I been up to? Well besides peeling copious amounts of skin from my body (damn that hole in the ozone layer - see previous posting), I've been buying the necessities to prepare for my trip to Patagonia. Most of the stuff I can rent down there, but I needed a jacket, hiking shoes, pants, headlamp, cutlery, scarf, hat, gloves... TG for Lindsay, or I would never know what to get. (Incidentally, Lindsay and I are not allowed to go shopping together ever again. We are bad influences and cannot resist deals on shoes or tank tops at Zara.)

I tried to take some pics of the really cool buildings here in Santiago, but the pics just don't do them justice. They other pics are from this cool, organic restaurant called Fresh/Good. The one pic that looks kind of blurry is the tag on some back to school uniforms - the brand is called "Hate the School". Freakin' hilarious, if you ask me. I saw it at this store called Jumbo - Chile's more upscale version of Walmart. We had a bit of an incident there trying to return some $12 bottle of sunscreen that my friend Phi bought and decided to return right away. 20 minutes later, after giving them my passport number, address, phone number and promised my first born child, we were out of there.

Inside the Mountain

(note: until I get a new camera, I will be posting pics from earlier in the trip, so they won't really match the current posting. These 2 were taken from my bedroom window here at diff times of day.)

Things are great here. I have pretty much recovered from the unfortunate events of last weekend...new eyeglasses, new chilean cell number (using my US phone too-it only cost $10 to get a chip that works here) and not so sunburned. Speaking of nasty sunburns...for those of you planning on visiting Chile sometime, there is a big ol' hole in the ozone layer down here, so much more sunblock is needed than normal. Yes...this certainly would have been useful information had I heard about it before last week. Ouch! Don't worry, now I lathering myself in sunscreen at all times.

Despite having a lot of homework (this week being our last and all!!), I've had so much fun. I have to say, you really can't beat the people here. They are wonderful. The other students have been showing us around quite a bit. Tonight I do planning on catching up on some sleep though.

A n y w a y. Today we went on a visit inside of the worlds largest mine. It's a copper mine that is on the inside of the Andes Mountains. Seriously, it was unreal. A lot of the mining is done with robots that are controlled with joy sticks. They let my friend Kelly operate it for awhile even. It looks just like a video game, except you are busting up giant rocks instead of playing Madden. I can't imagine a US company allowing some random person to control million dollar equipment, which is another thing I love about here. Not v. many rules.

Love the food too. I've become a big fan of the Chilean style of eating bread with butter and salsa. (They don't call it salsa, but it's pretty much exactly like pico de gallo.) Yum. Plus, there is really good meat everywhere, and I've never eaten so much fruit in my life.

Stolen

Yesterday was a very bad day. It started out great, a bunch of us had rented cars and drove to Viña del Mar and Reñaca for the weekend. I would post the pictures that I took (this one I just found on the internet), but but my camera was stolen...along with my wallet (cash and credit cards), cell phone, new eyeglasses and everything else that was in my little bag.

This happened about 15 minutes before we were leaving. I went to have something to drink at these little tables in the shade on the edge of the beach, and I ran into two of my friends and sat down to talk to them. I put my bag on the floor next to my feet and chair (yes...like an idiot). A few minutes later I realized the bag was gone, but none of us had noticed anything or anyone suspicious. By that time, the person who took it was long gone. Ironically, the reason I had so much important stuff in it is because it's not so safe to leave things in the car.

Anyway...the good news is that I still have my passport and one visa check card (which were at home in my apartment). I am v. thankful for that. I cancelled the other cards.

After it happened, I felt physically sick for awhile, but I think that was also partially due to my extreme sunburn (see...bad day all around). Today, I still am bummed but definitely feel much better than yesterday. (And I've pretty much stopped replaying the whole thing over and over in my head..."If I'd only done this..or this..., etc.") After all, it could have been worse, and it was a sobering wake-up call which will remind me to be vigilant at all times during the rest of this trip. Also...thanks to everyone that was with me for being so great and helpful and to Ames for helping me get money transferred from my wamu account to my bank1 one. I would have been a wreck w/o you guys.

One final thought: What is wrong with these people that steal things? Don't they know how mean it is? Get a real job.

En Vino Veritas

Our Doing Business in Latin America class took a field trip today to a vineyard about 2 hours out of Santiago. The landscape looked exactly like Southern California, which was little weird. Clearly the best part was the lunch (pictured here). I also got to brush up on my wine tasting skills, although none of us spit out the wine as apparently you are supposed to do.

Bachelet - Por Chile. Por la gente. (that's the slogan)

View this clip on Vimeo

Here's a video from a political rally we attended yesterday. (Countdown...2 days left till Presidential Election.) It was a very excitable bunch, and very loud with lots of musical acts. There were vendors selling everything from flags to beer to confetti to ice cream. V. festive feel.

We didn't stay for the whole thing (I went to see a play - which is a whole 'nother story prob not fit to explain here on the web...ask me about it when i get back though b/c it was really interesting), but still managed to get stuck in human gridlock as we tried to leave. Dio mio! I'm a little bit clauterphobic in crowds, so it was a less than pleasurable experience. It was fun though before we tried to leave.

Do I look like I speak Spanish?

Apparently, in Santiago, I sure do. I do understand some of what is being said, but the accent here is really confusing. I had a very comical encounter with the plumber who just kept getting madder and madder the more I said "no entiendo". and "despacio, por favor". People here just keep talking on and on whereever I go, and I barely get a gist of what they're saying. I've perfected the "nod and smile" strategy, which works like a charm until they ask me a question.

Anyway, today we walked all around cerro san cristobal, which is a hill overlooking the city with a park on it and a big statue of the Virgin Mary. To get up there, you take this funicular (which is like a small bus on a train track that goes straight up the mountain) which was has not changed much since it was built in 1925. Then there's these little cable car things which takes you to the other part. There's also a trememdous public pool, but I didn't know to bring my bathing suit.

We had lunch at this restaurant at the top. A word of advice about dining in Chile: be sure to give yourself a good two to three hours because you won't be getting out of there before then. The waiters don't like to visit your table (or even enter the dining area) but once every 45 minutes or so. Oh well, at least the food is good and it's not like I'm on a very tight schedule.

"...clever ways of fastening bits and pieces together."

Here's a pic of one of the courtyards at my school. It's really quite a beautiful little campus. My fav thing (not surprisingly) is that we get a 15 min break in every class and they give us coffee, little sandwiches and fruit. How about it, Indiana?

I'm taking two classes here: one of them is great (Doing Business in Latin America) and the other one sucks big time (International Marketing). I could honestly go on and on about the bad prof in Int'l mktg, but I will try to hold back a little. To amuse myself, I write down stupid quotes that he says and keep track of how many times he mentions Canada, his current home and fav subject. Today, I almost lost it after he kept mispronouncing Chilean ("Chilly-en") and Nicaragua ("Nikki-a-ga"). I really wouldn't make fun of someone pronouncing things incorrectly (lord know my pronuncian is far from perf), but he really is a complete pompous jerkface windbag, so I feel justified.

made

We're here. Didn't do much exploring today, but we did walk down to our nearest metro stop (Av. Cristobal Cólon) so that we'll know where to go when we head to escuela tomorrow. These pics are of the metro station. V. new and reminiscent of O'Hare airport.

I also included a pic of a political poster - there are hundreds of these around the city. The Chilean presidential elections are this month, and there's a woman candidate, which is cool, I think.