highlights, lowlights and whatever is in between

After a frustrating week (from a making-chilean-friends perspective, which seems to be my go-to right now) this weekend was awesome.
Friday it rained all day, but since I didn't have class I slept in late, curled up in my bed and watched How I Met Your Mother and Entourage episodes on semi-bootleg websites (megavideo and surfthechannel, if you were wondering...)
However, since my family is Chilean they expect me, as any young person in Chile, to be out partying all weekend and so as nightfell they asked me when I was going out to party. Partly because I was getting stir-crazy and partly because of "peer pressure" (but really, is a 50year old maid a peer?!) I called up my friend Grace and we went out for sushi. I think I mentioned before, but sushi is really the hip food right now in Santiago, and there are dozens of sushi places just in my little neighborhood! We managed to find a really delicious place nearby, packed with Chileans, that had a 50% discount if you paid with cash--I tried not to think about what sort of salmon you can buy with only $4--and then at the barely respectable 12:30am I went to bed. (As a bit of context, that night my host mom went to bed at 2am and my host sister who is 17 came home at 3:30am)

The next day, I had this major urge to explore the city and get out of the house so I went online and searched for interesting museums in Santiago. Being the capitol city there are a million, and I just randomly chose the Museum of natural history an and an interactive art museum called Artequin. Although I would've been content exploring alone, its always more fun with a friend, so again I called up Grace and thank goodness she was game. I really appreciate having friends who don't mind wandering strange streets in the rain just to "explore" a natural history musueum. and actually enjoy it as much as I do.

The musuem turned out to be wonderful, first it was free, and in a massive stone building very similar to the natural history museum in Chicago, but smaller. Half the exhibits were wood paneling, with random sentences written in white paint on the walls and crumbling fossils showing the wear of thousands of little hands. I wish we had brought our cameras b/c the exhibits were just so anachronistic, they literally had timelines that ended in the 1970s. Jars of creepy looking fish were filled half-way with embalming fluid, leaving half the head to decompose at will. Other exhibits included stuffed animals so decrepit, dusty and disfigured we decided they must have been done not by professional taxidermists, but some 1920s Chilean with a penchant for weekend taxidermy. The other museum was in this gorgeous, whimsical, Lemony Snicket looking mansion modeled after the Chilean contribution to the Paris Worlds Fair and turned out to be full of pictures of famous works of art.
Artequin=Quirky, but entertaining on a rainy day, and good for a few laughs.

That night I met up with some other American girls, and one Chilean, for drinks and then I dragged them to a local club. Like many aspects of Chile, and most Latin American countries, the music industry is primarily focused on importing other country's successes and imitating them (favoring imports at the expense of domestic industries is obviously a problem in other areas besides music). This means that there are no less than 3 ACDC cover bands, tons of depeche mode imitators, and on any given weekend you can watch "Jimi hendrix", "U2", "Nirvana" and dozens of other greats perform in Santiago, with only the slightest hint of a Chilean accent. These cover bands are called "tributos", and my host mom showed me this awesome club near our house that has tons of tributos every weekend. This weekend I had marked on my calendar because not one, but TWO Red Hot Chili Pepper bands were playing, facing off to see who was the best cover band. OF course, I had to go-who knows if I'll ever get to see the real Chilis perform. Honestly, I wasn't expecting too much, but both bands were amazing and the club was packed! We danced and danced and head-banged and generally rocked out. I felt so happy and free and relaxed, and it was just what I needed to shake off my frustrations of the week. I would go to concerts every night if I could, so I think I will! Or at least, aim for one a week. The great things about Chile's fledgling music bizz are that concerts are cheap, the venues are intimate, and tickets plentiful since most people would still rather hear a new American band than a Chilean one. Maybe I'll try to post some songs/bands next time...