A visit from Gringolandia

So for those of you that don't know, I am dating a beautiful girl named April. For those keeping up with the life of Wayne, you may recognize her from an earlier photo of the 'rents, her and myself.
Well, she came to visit.
No, I did not piggy back her all the way back from the airport. Believe it or not, Chile has cars which can be used for transportation.
We went to La Vega Central with Francis, and had some Pastel de Choclo.


I tortured April with one day of classes, this is lunch of that day.


We got the opportunity to meet up with the family she stayed with when she did "Un Techo Para Chile" which is like a Chilean version of Habitat for Humanity.
Ok, this is the appartment that we rented for the time she was here, and yes, I did find that shopping cart in the elevator.

One night we threw a sort of party.
This is Will trying the mystery fruit that I bought at the grocery store.
This is some of the crew.
More of the crew.
It was a light night, we just shared a bottle of wine, and ate some caviar, and talked about finances, and our futures.

The next day we hit the town for some more exploring.
This is on top of Cerro Santa Isabel.

We went out for a nice dinner, in Bellavista.
Yes that's right, "Los Beetles", and they sang in English. ...and yes EVERY chilean that was within earshot was singing along, but not in English, not in Spanish either, it was just this sort of noise making to the beet of the music.

The next day we hit Valpariso, a town on the Chilean coast, close to Santiago.
This is April with a whole plate of death in front of her. I'm not saying that because I'm afraid that those clams, shrimp, urchins, muscles, or whatever else had feelings. I'm just allergic.

This section is called "Fun With Poets". Just down the street from "La Sebastiana" (one of Pablo Neruda's 3 houses in Chile) was the Plaza of Poets, where they had these metal statues of some famous Chilean poets.

This is April hanging out with Vincent Huidobro. He's a pretty friendly guy.

Or so we thought...

A swift backhand from Huidobro.


As for friendly poets, Pablo Neruda... who knew?


Now Gabriela Mistral looks all calm, and tranquil, but a bottle of wine or two, and she's a party animal.

April in front of the Neruda House.
Outside of the Neruda house.

OK, you want to play game now?


Now that you know the rules...
I know, "This is hard, even for a monster"
I'll give you a hint, it's the one in the middle.

Now I wasn't going to put anything too mushy up here, but I have good reason for this one. Whenever you're out in public, anywhere in Santiago, you ALWAYS see Chileans just making out like no one was watching, in the busses, in the parks, in the streets, in the classrooms, but most commonly the metros. So...
It's just a little taste of their own medicine. If this photo shocks you at all, I had to break it to you some time. Me and my girlfriend... we kiss.


That night, we had dinner at my host family's house. We took a group photo.
Staging for the group photo.

The group photo. April, the host family, and myself.

The next day April headed back to the land of change.