Been a while...

Well, it's been a while since last I updated this blog, so I figured it was time. Much has happened since last post, too much to write here, so I will give the highlights.

Last (?) weekend I went hiking in the Andes with a new Chilean friend Francisco and some other people. What I thought was going to be a nice, relaxing trip into nature turned out to be climbing up to the top of an Andean mountain. Boy was I sore after that trip. However it was beautiful at the top and completely worth it. We had several amazing vistas of the city on the hike up and at the top we had an amazing view of the snow capped peaks further off in the distance. We also met a few condors! The hike (what they call "Treking" here in Chile) has made be start itching to get back outdoors. According to Francisco, if we climbed over another mountain we would have reached a plateau of sorts covered in flowers. I hope to make it back there, but probably later in the semester when I am in a little bit better shape and more used to the thinner atmosphere.

The following Tuesday me and a few of my friends went to a benefit concert called 'Leche para Hati' or milk for Hati. It had four different bands/performers come and sing thier songs for free to help raise money to buy milk for Hati, Latin America's poorest contry. The songs were amazing and it was great to see so many people come together to help out a fellow Western Hemisphere country.

This past weekend I met up with my bud Allie for some sushi, which I got a craving for after watching an episode of Bones where they ate sushi. This was strange since before I had never really enjoyed sushi. Nevertheless, I had the craving and am now in love with sushi. That's right folks, I had to go half-way 'round the world to learn to love a food that I can get anywhere in the US.

On Saturday it was raining, so I headed to some museums to keep the gloomies away. The first I went to was the National Natural History Museum. It looked as though it hadn't been updated since the 50's and was full of dead animals either stuffed or in a jar of embalming fluid. There were also tons of signs and diagrams without any explination as to what it represented. It was still really cool because it was set up so that as you were going through the museum, you were walking through the different regions in Chile. It was a great introduction to the country. They also had this huge whale skelton set up in the middle.

The second museum was this art museum called Artequin which doesn't have any orignial pieces of art, but focuses more on the using art to express yourself and create. They have several workshops and classes where kids and adults alike learn about art by creating thier own masterpieces influenced by the great works of art.

That about catches you up. Tonight I'm going to a Kareoke bar to sing some wonderful 80s pop songs. Wish me luck!