Dear world

Hello to all my many readers (cough...)

I have been quite busy lately, writing a lot in the I Love Chile website, but also searching to get myself a "proper job" in order to survive. I interviewed a TV star for the cover story of the next print issue, which will, um, not be printed (digital only copy...)

Bron left us a few days ago to go to Argentina and Antarctica. I think we showed her a pretty good time. Hopefully she will return to Chile sometime again :) The next visitors we have lined up are Viv and Bret, who will come in June.

Here is a quick little video of me playing Footbag by the pool that Bron took.

Hopefully by the time our next guests come, we will have our own place, and that is looking more and more likely. I won't say too much on that one, but fingers crossed for next week.

We had a good chat on Skype with Jonathan today. It was good to catch up with him. He is in Belgium at the moment. It was funny how we would spend Raiders games about our plans to travel the world, and after all that build up, here we are, and easily able to connect with each other.

Speaking of the mighty green machine, they begin their first trial in just a couple of hours. That means around this time last year, we would have been heading down to Bega with Jonathan to watch the first trial, also against the Storm, without Slater/Smith/Cronk.

My mum described the Raiders as "playing like a pack of girls", although the Bega Roosters women's League Tag team probably put in a better effort in the pre-match. Hopefully things will be better this year. I don't think I will be staying up too often to tune in to a live stream or radio broadcast in the middle of the night, though when I get the chance it would be great to watch.

I don't think it is possible to see it on TV here in Chile - maybe things like State of Origin on DirectTV...I'm not too sure. I just hope that the Raiders are better than the rabble that turned out last year.

Not too much planned for this coming weekend, just going to take things easy. I will probably keep an eye out for jobs as well as conjuring up other money making schemes as well. Let's see how that goes...

Quinta Normal and the Santiago Navy

Got up to some more adventures today with Bron. We're going to get up early and go for a day trip down to the coast, so I won't write too much about it, but I added a few pictures.

This was our basic day:

Bron slept until late and I wrote a couple of articles.

We ate lunch at a place selling empanadas. It was Bron's first experience with them. The ones wer had were ok, but I have definitely had better.

Considering each one cost about 600 pesos ($1.20), it wasn't really a big deal.

After lunch we just went to the park across from Bellas Artes and sat down in the grass and drank a couple of beers. It was good to just while away the afternoon in the shade. Our original plan had been to head to Parque Quinta Normal. The park itself has just been redone and there are also a whole lot of museums within the park.

A whole lot of people were making use of the water fountains that have just been redone. Apparently they light up at night too. One of the really noticable things here in Santiago is the waste of water - particularly considering there is a drought at the moment.

So many people (particularly those who are most likely employed by the municipality) spend hours watering, well they probably water more dirt and concrete than the actual grass. We didn't go into any of the museums, I think we were just content to wander around the park itself. Inside the park there is the National Museum, Natural History Museum, Science and Technology Museum and a few more.

Our wandering took us to the church - Gruta de Lourdes. It seems the church is not used anymore, there is barbed wire all around it and nobody was going in, it also seemed an outdoor altar had been set up directly across the road.

We wandered on from there, came into a kind of industrial area, then made our way back to what we expected to be the park, however it was part of a Navy base. I'm not sure if the guy on either gate should have checked us out, we could have been spies or something, but we had a wander through there.

Considering Bron spent much of her childhood as a Navy Brat, maybe she had the look, so they let us pass without worry. Who knows really, the bigger question is what is the point of a naval force hundreds of metres above sea level.

That I don't know. Once outside the navy area, we walked back into the park, and had no troubles getting back to the metro stop. Of course though, we entered on the wrong side, so we just took a bit of a detour to some of the outer suburbs of Santiago. We got off at Lo Prado and had a walk around there. We came across a nice park which had some slippery dips as well as a skatepark. From there we walked to San Pablo, where we could take the metro all the way back home.

We cooked up some burritos for dinner, which always goes down well. Tomorrow the plan is to head down to Valpo, though we have spent a lot of time in the Region V lately, so the next time maybe we will go somewhere else.

It's definitely worth a visit for a first time visitor though, and of course, it's a part of Australian history. I think I'm going to try and write something based on old mate Watson for my next uni project, the next subject I do will kick off at the end of the month.

Top day in Santiago

As I mentioned in the last post, our friend Bron has been visiting us here in Santiago, which has been great to see a familiar face. She also brought Chicken Crimpy shapes and Tim Tams, that was good too!

Anyhow, yesterday I was feeling pretty good right through the day, I got a lot of things done and then we had a great afternoon. I woke up with a pretty mean headache, which could have really ruined the whole mood of the day.

However, I decided to have a footbag session and a swim. I played with a new footbag from the company Phat Tyre, which they sent me for free - that was pretty nice of them. It's a much bigger bag than I'm used to, but it will be great for doing performances.

Like when I go to the TV station next week... (that one might be a story for another time). I hit a lot of harder tricks, even things like double spinning clipper, which I only learned recently. After the session, I jumped into the pool, which is a great way to finish things up.

So once Bron woke up we went and met Francisca, she has just started working a new job. Once we met, we went to get a completo at Dominó. That sure is an experience for a foreigner. Even for myself, it's a bit of a whirlwind, as everyone wants your place to stand and eat a completo of their own.

Once we finished our lunch, which of course doesn't seem like that much - after all, it's just a hot dog with some extra flavours added, it still makes you very full though. We took a walk and sat by the fountain in the shade. We actually sate there for ages, as it was quite hot yesterday, and there was a slight breeze which made things quite pleasant there.

We walked down through Bellavista and to the funicular to head up to Cerro San Cristobal. Of course, every visitor that comes here we will probably end up taking there, as there is such a big view of the city from there.

Unfortunately the big statue of Mary was having some renovations done, so you couldn't really see it. It was almost like Mary was in jail. I was telling Bron about how enthusiastic Chileans are about Catholicism (sometimes...) and that most big days on the Catholic calendar have their own public holiday. Since we have arrived there have already been holidays for All Saints Day in November and the day of the Immaculate Conception in December.

Up on the hill we had some Mote con Huesillo, a very traditional Chilean drink - apparently drinking it up on the hill is the place to drink it as well. It is kind of like a peach iced tea with wheat inside it as well. It is very sweet, but very nice on a hot day. Which yesterday definitely was.

We went back down in the funicular, then we stopped by the Picasso exhibition at Fundación Telefonica. I have walked past that building a number of times but never gone inside. The exhibition was free, though it was only a fairly small room of mainly drawings, done with pen or pencil. We weren't really in there for so long, but it was nice to be out of the sun.

Bron and I wandered around a bit more, then decided it was time for a beer. We saw a place in the shade, so that looked like a good option. The people on the next table were talking in English and by my excellent perception skills, or what some may call eavesdropping, I gathered they were here in Chile for the Start Up Chile program, and that one of them was talking about Jogabo, the pick up soccer thing I play in sometimes.

Something else came up, they were saying something about telephone numbers and whether you could change them, so I butted in to their conversation and told them a new law had just come through so you could do exactly that. We got talking after that, and made some new mates.

Francisca came along, and we switched from Cristal (the cheapest beer), to a German beer that came served in a boot. The Botín de Oro... We farewelled our new friends, who are working on a pretty cool science project which I may also talk about another time.

We took a bit of a walk and went to a Peruvian restaurant. I had been craving a steak for a while, so when I saw filete mar y tierra (basically a surf and turf), I knew what I was after. We drank some pisco sour there, and of course had to finish the meal with dessert.

Aside from all the sight seeing activities and a bit of fun, I also made a couple of good contacts, and may have even picked up a bit more work. As well as getting a couple of new additions for the I Love Chile website.