History, Birthdays and Good Chilean Fun

This past week was short and full of excitement.  Monday evening, Erin and I went to the conversation club Spanglish at a local bar and practiced our Spanish. It is always great to meet people who want to learn a new language like us. Tuesday was a National holiday, so there was no classes. To celebrate the day off, Erin, Emy and I went to the Museo de Memoria-The Museum of Memory. This museum was all about human rights and the events of the coup de'etat on September 11th, 1973 here in Chile.  Long story short, Pinochet who was the military leader at the time, took over the government and made himself dictator because the president at the time Allende was leaning towards turning Chile into a communist country.  On that day, Allende committed suicide to avoid being tortured and killed by Pinochet's men. During Pinochet's rule, thousands of people were tortured and killed because of the communism scare. The museum had a lot of pictures, artifacts, videos, and testimonies from the people who were tortured. The dictatorship only just ended in the 90's. So twenty years ago, I definitely would not be coming to Chile. But, what was interesting was that we didn't learn about how Pinochet turned the economy around, helped a lot of people, and built new highways and safe neighborhoods. Still today many people support Pinochet, while many people despise him. I've talked to several of my students about the topic and have been learning a lot of history. It's been very enlightening. Here is a link for some more information about the events of September 11th, 1973. (Obviously September 11th isn't a good day for the U.S. either...)  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d'état  The cross street that we live on is called "11 de Septiembre" and was just recently voted to be changed last week to a new name because of the sensitivity of the date.

After the museum, we hiked up Cerro San Cristobal to the statue of the Virgin Mary. (Kind of looks like the mini-mini version of the one in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil.) It was a hard one hour-long hike to the top, but the sunset was amazing. We could see the whole city and had a great view of the pink-tipped Andes.

Wednesday was Erin's 22nd birthday. I blew up about twenty balloons and decorated the apartment and Emy baked a cake. We also bought her some warm slippers and chocolate. We had a few friends over for cake and homemade Pisco Sours to celebrate as well.

Friday night, Erin and I went to a local bar for Salsa and Bachata lessons. It was a blast! Every couple minutes you would switch partners, and a Chinese man was was teaching the lessons- he was a great teacher and very entertaining. We will definitely be going back to keep learning.
Saturday the girls and I had our Spanish lesson which was more about us asking her a million questions about Chilean slang. That night we went to California Cantina for their delicious nachos. We met the American owner of the bar/club who was really nice and told us about some events he had coming up. The bar is putting on some big charity events, for example, a fundraiser in October for Breast Cancer awareness, and another event in December for fighting childhood diseases. He said he needed help with event-coordinating and would think about hiring. I sent him my resume right away so hopefully I am able to work with him. Later, we spent the night dancing away at California Cantina and listening to fun DJ's and a live Chilean band. And (almost) like true Chileans, we stayed out until almost 4 a.m.! I couldn't believe it. I can check that off my list of things to do in Chile now, as I don't want to do that ever again.

The rest of the weekend was spent relaxing, cooking, and prepping for this weeks classes. Today was the coldest day of the year, at a low of 28 degrees, so all you in Colorado, send some hot weather this way! Miss you all, soak up some sun for me.