A birthday and bye to Hostel Providencia

We're doing two blog posts this week as it's been fairly eventful and we've got plenty of pics...

As we said last post, we've moved out of the hostel into our new apartment. We had a great time in the hostel so we wanted to say goodbye to it with some pics:

Anna and Heather in the hostel breakfast room

Our room during the day, in a mess, sort of bleak in this light

Our room at night, packed up - a warmer more colourful and pleasant aspect

The room was small, and with the bunk beds felt really cramped - but there was plenty of communal space to sit and chillax. Heather, in the photo above, is an American teacher who has come to Chile via the same agency as us but to teach in another institution. A few others have been arriving, and our group is slowly all moving out into permanent accommodation so, as nice as all the new guys are, it was definitely the right time to leave. Felt like the new shift was arriving.

The living room in the hostel has this huge map on the wall - it's not easy to make out but we now live just to the south-west of the sort of pink-shaded area:

The staff in the hostel were brilliant, so to end that period on a high, here's the lovely Noelia and Susana:

Noelia y Susana Chilenas extraordinaire

We mentioned before that it's really cold here at the moment. There are loads of stray dogs in Santiago and someone has been going around giving them all coats, usually made from a modified piece of human attire. Check out this chap:

Today I am wearing my grey jumper

This critter was on the move so a little blurred, but he's sporting a sort of tartan effect

More of those soon, though they're difficult to catch because these dogs tend to scarper if you point something at them. On animal pics, we saw our first llama on saturday, in Santiago... this pic was taken outside Museo Bellas Artes (the Museum of Fine Art), which is the building which gives our barrio its name:

Man with his llama, a Chilean's best friend

More pics of our 'hood soon, but here's one of Providencia, the area just east of where we live, and where the hostel is located. We included this because it shows a different side of Santiago, much older and more colourful - these kinds of streets are hidden away all over the city:

un calle muy bonito

We discussed coffee in our last post. It can be a little difficult to get exactly what you want even when you've avoided getting instant - you know where you are with a cortado chico/ grande though - basically what we'd probably call a latte in the UK. Here's a good example:

See the stratification

While posting random food photos, we've fully bought into the avocado diet here. Here's breakfast, tostado con palta:

Oh yeah, green delight!

It was Struan's birthday on Saturday, and our friend Jessica's on sunday. What with the moving and starting school on monday it wasn't ideal timing, but we decided to have a go anyway.

Birthday breakfast in Cafe Soho, Bellas Artes

 In Chile lunch is generally the main meal of the day, but this isn't a rigid cultural thing, people do whatever. An oddity is that in Chile they have onces, which translates as "elevenses", but actually refers to a kind of afternoon tea taken at about 5pm. So if you eat like Chileans you have breakfast (bread), big lunch between 1-3pm, onces around 5pm (cake, sandwiches, coffee/ tea), then a light meal around 9pm or later. We had a late breakfast on saturday so moved straight onto onces before meeting the team in the evening:

Coffee and cake for onces at Cafe Flores Mesquita, Bellas Artes - awesome dulce de leche and meringue goodness!

Deciding that birthday night was not the time to experiment, we planned to go back to La Piojera for some more terremotos (see first post) - and the rest of the team apart from Alison hadn't felt the earthquake yet. When we got there they wouldn't let us in as a huge brawl had apparently kicked off inside. We hung around for a bit watching various bruised chilenos lurch out - one guy, with his equally sh*tfaced girlfriend, almost crawled out of the bar straight into his car and slowly trundled off. We have no immediate plans to get wheels.

La Piojera is not located in the best part of Santiago - it's near the fish market Mercado Central which we mentioned before. These market areas are fine during the day but feel really dodgy at night. We decided to stay brave and wait in another bar nearby to see if things calmed down in La Piojera. So we went into a bar - we should have been worried when the staff shifted the entire place around to fit us all in. The picture below gives no real idea of the scene - basically cat calling, constant staring, old drunks staggering up and blowing kisses at Anna... one old boy shuffled over and tried to sell us rosary beads and tins of incense. We would say that it was okay in the end once the initial excitement had blown over (which it was, and the truth is parties of 6 gringa women and 2 gringo men don't drink here that often) - but we got stung badly for our pisco sours. It's the first time it's happened since we've been here but basically the bill was much bigger than it should have been and arguing was not an option. Also WW3 had apparently erupted in La Piojera because they shut for the night! 

They saw us coming

Anyway things improved back in Bellavista where we headed again to introduce the rest of the team to Galindo.  Beers and cazuela all round - woop!

Cazuela heaven!

We hadn't noticed last time we went to Galindo that next to the loo there is the most strikingly literal, yet wholly inaccurate, condom machine ever:

The gist, at least, is obvious

Anyway, after that excitement Sunday has been spent mainly trying to prep our first classes for our first day of teaching tomorrow. It's good fun, lots of room for creativity, but we have to try hard at it for now. Looking forward to meeting our students though! Here's Anna making something:

A teacher at work