That means:
Hello! I am in the airport. I have to wait for my flight. The airport has wi-fi and I am very happy.
Can you tell I'm bored?
Carlos, Cecilia, and Francisca took me to the airport just now. I'm glad they did, because I was originally planning on taking a taxi until yesterday. They saved me like 30-40 bucks, even though I was willing to pay for it. They are such a sweet family. They all came inside the departure area with me, and stood in line with me to check in. I ended up not needing their help translating at all (yay for me), but I was glad they came. We chatted while waiting. Gotta love Chileans - the people with all the power like to take their time with everything. So the people at the DMV, grocery store clerks, bank clerks, and of course, airport check-in attendants take their sweet time no matter how long the lines are. The line wasn't too long, but it was incredibly slow. Anyway, so that leaves me here and now with about an hour before we take off. I am quite sure that I am in the right place. Yes, I'm looking at my tickets and I'm at the right gate. However, I think that it's for an hour later than I originally thought. This is probably due to the day light savings time catastrophe I have encountered. This is a whole different story.
So remember how I told you that daylight savings time would put Chile in the same time zone as US Eastern? Right - that's what I thought. However the government of Chile had different plans. They up and decided to postpone the daylight savings time until March 29th. Their reasons make sense. There is an "energy crisis" in Chile and the government decided that changing the DST would save energy and money. I see their logic. The only thing is - no one told me about this, so my computer changed time and I thought "Oh it's my computer, it must be right!" Right??? Nope. Wrong. So I was an hour late to class on Monday. So if my e-ticket from Travelocity says 8:55 and my boarding pass from LAN Chile/American Airlines says 21:55 - It must be because of this stupid DST thing. It's a little frustrating. No wonder no one else is sitting in my gate getting ready to take off - I'm now two hours away from boarding, not one. Who knows... I just hope that I can make my connection flight in Miami to Minneapolis. If we arrive one hour later, I'm going to be annoyed.
Well, since I have time, I can catch everyone up on what I have been up to. My weekend was great. I went to school last Friday like normal and got an invite to go to Pichilemu (peachy - lay - moo) for the weekend. My amigas from class had a friend coming in from the states, but her flight was canceled from Dallas because of bad weather. So in case she could get on a flight, some of my friends decided to stay in Santiago - freeing up space in the cabanas for me! So I went spur of the moment to this little coastal town that is world renowned for surfing. There are only about 12,000 people in the actual town, but during the high summer season the town has usually over 50,000 people in it. That's a lot of surfers. We were there the weekend after the town emptied out, so it was nice and peaceful.
Sarah, Erin, and I stayed in a cabin that is owned by a young couple from California who opened up a language school three years ago. Chris and Valerie are both are avid surfers, good business people, and decided to move here after they spent 6(!) months in South America on their honeymoon. They live this really cool green lifestyle taking care of the cabins, teaching English, and surfing. They have two chickens for eggs and even compost their own food! You would think that they would have dread locks and smell bad, but they are very attractive people. They just had a baby who might be the cutest baby in all of Chile. I don't think that I could do everything that they do - however, I would like to walk in their shoes for a couple months before going back to my life. They were just fascinating people. I highly recommend the Buenos Vistas Cabanas in Pichilemu for anyone who travels there. I really want to go back.
We arrived in Pichilemu (we call it 'peachy' for short) on Friday evening, unpacked our stuff and quickly found one of the most delicious meals I have had in all of Chile at this restaurant called Casa Luna. It was a huge salmon filet over spicy mashed potatoes with fresh vegetables sauteed in a thai sauce. I'm not kidding - the best dinner I have had here I'm pretty sure. After dinner we went to the only bar in Pichilemu which was a hole in the wall and wasn't as cool as I wanted it to be. It was small and had a lot of spray paint on the walls. I ordered a drink called a Kahlua Colada (because I like Kahlua) but it was horrible and expensive. We left the bar pretty quickly because it was really smoky and we were all really tired. We got back to the cabin and OMG - I have to tell you - the stars were amazing! I haven't seen that beautiful of a night sky in a super long time. I could have slept outside just to watch the stars if it wasn't so cold at night. I also saw three shooting starts. How awesome, right?
Saturday was a good day. We got up and went to surfing lessons!! We got to wear dry suits and everything. I was ready to try anything. We carried our huge surfboards down to the beach and practiced on land for an hour before going into the water. I was so pumped to stand up on my board and not fall down... however I was not prepared for how nauseous I would be during the whole thing. And how difficult it was to paddle in the water. It is a different kind of paddling movement from swimming and the waves were pretty big at times. I gave it my all, but HATED surfing! Once I was out on the water - I realized how hard it was to stand up on the surfboard. They are a lot more unstable than I was ready for. It was really hard to paddle in the water and the waves push you sideways, not towards the beach. When you are out, far from the beach, where the waves haven't started to crash yet, it is like a bad carnival ride. I was soooo incredibly queasy. Then of course, my mind wanders, so I started imagining sharks and jellyfish underneath me. After about 45 minutes, I told the instructor I couldn't do it anymore - so he helped me paddle in. I figure I tried my hardest to like it. My only regret is that I didn't get one picture of me in a dry suit... so their is no record of my attempt.
After surfing, we ran into Chris on the beach who offered to give us a ride back to the cabins after we went grocery shopping. He was so nice! So we picked up a bunch of food to make guacamole, spaghetti, garlic bread, and breakfast for Sunday. I was so excited to cook! It was the first time that I had prepared any food since being in Chile. The girls didn't like cooking so it was even better for me. We spent the afternoon recovering from surfing, reading, and eating guacamole. We decided to take a collectivo (which is a cab that only goes to certain places) to this place called Los Lobos, to watch the sunset. It is this very small peninsula that juts out into the ocean and is basically a big cliff. The waves are HUGE here and so it's a big surfing spot. It was beautiful. 
These are the Los Lobos - The Wolves. After the sunset, I got to make dinner and it was so delicious. Erin promised that she was going to call James to let him know what a great cook I am - and how lucky he is. Ha.
Sunday morning we slept in, went shopping, had lunch, and went back to Santiago which brings me to this week. Monday was pretty boring and yesterday I found out that I got an A- on my last final. So I am halfway through my Spanish class, but more than halfway through my trip. It's an interesting time to be on spring break. I only have 5 more weeks left of class, but still have 2 out of 4 sections of my class left. I know I will miss this place when I'm done. Chile is pretty awesome and I'm glad that I have had the opportunity to be here. I've started a mental list of things that I would tell anyone who plans to live here for a while. University of Iowa put a link to my blog up on their website, so I feel as though I need to give out advice to anyone who is traveling here.
Ok, I'm going to go get a drink and kill some more time in the aeropuerto. Chao for now! Love you all and miss you! Wish me luck on the flights! Emily
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