I slept decently last night, and this morning we got up, took a shower, and had breakfast before our first orientation meeting. Breakfast in Chile consists of smaller breads, boiled eggs, a little cereal, yogurt and such--no bacon and sausage or anything heavy at all....oh also, they don't refrigerate their milk or eggs here. After breakfast we had the meeting where our director told us more about our home cities and different cultural things to be aware of.
After the meeting we had lunch in the mercado. Totally forgot it was Lent and had fried chicken, totally bad Catholic, but the chicken was great! The mercado was indoors with a couple of restaurants all in the same place and then a fish market on the east side, so the whole place smelled like fish. There were also two men playing guitars who came to us and played. It's hilarious though, because the street musicians will be playing their music and then once they see our group of gringos they immediately start playing some song widely known in America--yesterday at the hill it was "Amazing Grace", today it was "Stand By Me." After lunch we went to the first bathroom that I have had to pay for so far--the restaurant took care of it, but still, it's weird to pay to go pee to me; however, my after this past semester at college my roommate probably thinks it's a good thing and I'll be learning more self control with my peanut sized bladder.
Side-note: I know I had said I was going to Pablo Neruda's house today, but I was mistaken and that is tomorrow; therefore, my pictures still aren't that great because I have yet to purchase the adapter for my camera and don't want to miss out on any photo opportunities that day. I should hopefully be able to purchase the adapter soon.
We left the market and went to the plaza where the Cathedral was conveniently located, Jesus was obviously being funny about the Lent thing. It was gorgeous and super cool. This is a statue of the first saint from Chile to be canonized, St. Teresa:
She was nineteen when she died from helping the sick overcome typhoid. Also, they don't mess around with their altars:
Then came the really funny part...confessionals were all around the church--old school style. In Chile, confession is still a super public thing, there wasn't a priest in the booth, so I took it as Jesus just making a joke rather than condemning me for forgetting it was Lent.
They also don't mess around about adoration here. There was a side chapel for adoration:
We then left the plaza and went to the Presidential Palace--the equivalent to our White House. Right outside the palace was probably my first Texas pride moment of this trip. A girl from Washington looked at me and said I don't think I have ever met anyone from Texas, you guys must be serious about state pride--I smiled and said yeah, and compared to some of the kids I go to school with mine is very mild. I mean but when you see this, can you blame me?
The picture doesn't even do it justice...it was huge--the biggest in all of Chile. A guy I was with said he doubted that there was a flag bigger than that anywhere and I laughed and said, oh yeah for sure...in Texas, which is totally true.
Leaving there we stopped to exchange currency and saw two guys get into a huge fight! This older gentleman and his wife were trying to steal something from a vendor and the vendor punched the guy in the head, the police threw the man and his wife into their truck and drove off. I asked the director what would happen to them, she said nothing.
After the palace we came back to the hotel where me and one of my roommates decided we wanted to go to the super mercado to get water and then to a produce stand. Going to the grocery store was easy...the price was on a screen in front of us, at the produce stand we definitely had a learning experience interacting with the Chilean women who were super sweet helping us pick out our fruit.
Now we are back in the hotel just hanging out. I"m still pretty tired and not yet adjusted to the time, but I know that will come soon enough.
Ciao po!
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