Tour of Valparaiso

Helloooo! Today we went on a tour of Valparaíso, the city next to me where I will soon (ughh) be taking classes, with everyone in my group and it was really great! We started at Casa Central, the main building at my University, and then all got on a bus and drove around while a tour guide explained our surroundings. Then we drove up hill for a really long time and arrived at Pablo Neruda's house. He lived really far up the hill so the view from his house is unbelievable. We went through the house and had head sets that explained each room and the house was so beautiful. Each room had huge windows and you could see the whole city of Valpo and the ocean. Sadly my camera died the second I got off the bus, so I stole some pictures from my friend.

After that we drove to an area of the city that had a million little cafes and amazing houses. There is graffiti and art all over the city and some of it is really cool. The houses are all brightly colored and the streets are very hilly, which kind of reminds me of San Francisco. Also there are about a billion stray dogs here so they followed us around for awhile. (The other night 9 dogs followed my friends and I home it was crazy.) The dogs are harmless and it's kind of sad how many of them there are and a lot of them look like they're in pretty bad shape.

After walking around we went down to the street, and because the town is so hilly there are "ascendadors", kind of like elevator/gondola things that you can take down to the street, which were really cool. Then we got some lunch and got back on the bus and went to the port where we got on a boat and saw the city from a different point of view. On the boat we saw seals that were everywhere and hugeeeee. They were pretty cute and some were just jumping around in the water.

After the boat we went back to vina del mar and a few friends and i walked to the beach and sat and watched the sunset. (we didn't actually see it fully set cause we were cold, buttt it was pretty nonetheless.) We also pretended to be guests at the Sheridan hotel and walked around there and are now plotting how we can somehow/someday sneak in and go in the hot tub because it is just so cold here sometimes! Probably won't happen but the hotel was really nice and warm!

Now I am back at home and going to rest until I meet up with some friends and go out for the night. I start school on Wednesday and I haven't completely picked my classes yet but I have an idea. Also there are a ton of clubs and community service opportunities you can do through the school and my friends and I were thinking about helping out with little kids and teaching English or maybe taking in street dogs and cleaning them up and give them flea medicine. Also there are a lot of club sports, which I might try and join and also an intercambio program where the school sets you up with a chilean person and you help teach them English and they help teach you Spanish. All in all I haven't spoken too much Spanish because i've been hanging out a lot with the "gringos" (americans) in my group but I know when classes start my brain will hopefully make the transition!