Nights on the Town: ¡Carrete!

Hello my followers! I am sorry it has been so long since my last post, but my computer has been MIA. Now that I temporarily have a functioning computer, I can update you all on my adventures of the last 2 weeks. 

Boys being silly

Needless to say, the nightlife here in Santiago is a bit more loca than I'm used to at home. The lack of classes and responsibilities definitely makes for too many opportunities to go out with the friends. It's been super fun discovering new places to go. I like planning out places to go, even though some of my compatriots don't always agree with my choices. One of the evenings that we went out, my host mother gave me a suggestion for a dance club that was pretty close to where I live. I gave everyone the heads up and we met up in Parque Ñuñoa, found the club, and decided to wait at a sushi bar and have a few drinks before our whole group showed up. We had the usual Pisco Sours, Escudos, and some people got adventurous and had Fanschop's which are beer and Fanta mixed. Yum! After spending a little too long in the sushi bar, where incidentally we were the only people in the whole place, and after listening to the endless, bass pumping weird techno music that nobody liked, we moved on to La Batuta, the supposed "discotech." While dancing did occur at this club, the night we went there happened to be an 80's, christian, hair, metal, and who knows what else band called Jesus Cristo Metal Star. 

Jesus Cristo Metal Star

Friends having fun

While at first we were all pretty apprehensive about staying at the concert, we ended up having a great time and just went with it. It was refreshing to let go of any kind of judgements, preconceptions, or fears and experience something totally new and different. It was a blast and I was there with good friends. What more can you need? It was so crazy and hilarious all you could do was shrug your shoulders and rock out. The atmosphere was fantastic. The entire crowd was singing along and was obviously full of dedicated fans. While it wasn't the night any of us expected, we were all happy to have a new and unexpected experience. 

SHOTS!

Another night we all, almost literally ALL of us met up and went to get drinks. It was fun, albeit a bit difficult, to get all of our group into one place. After we had some laughs, our group split up and went to different places. The bar that I ended up at turned out to be quite interesting. I don't know if I've explained this to all of you, but pololos (couples) are very very into PDA in Chile. They all make out all over the place in all public locations. It's pretty weird. So one couple at this bar was just going at it and we were all pretty weirded out. To take the edge off the strange situation, my friend decided we should do a shot and ordered one that looked tasty. We realized after she ordered that the shots were flaming and we had to take them through straw. They were good and fun anyways. Don't get any bad ideas about me, friends and family, I'm just living it up here in a FUN and Responsible manner. 

When we're not going out on the town, we usually spend a few hours a day in the IES center just hanging out, catching up on the latest stories we all have to share, and sipping tea and instant coffee. It's a comfortable and relaxing environment, with people coming in and out, hanging out on couches and chatting with all the IES staff. It's a great home base. Alrighty! On to the next update! Look forward to lots of pictures from Valparaíso!