Day 2, Family

(Sunday, the 10th of January, 2016)
Day 2 here we go, after a beautiful long sleep last night I was faced with a frugal yet delicious breakfast of coffee and toast, with some bonus dulce de membrillo (that orange stuff on the toast). We then packed up some stuff and headed for Santiago. I think it's a beautiful drive through valleys and mountains (truly through the mountains, as you have to go through a tunnel to get there) to get to Santiago. Some people in the neighbourhood hitched a ride with us to the capital. I spent the whole trip (granted, it's only 30 min) trying to get pictures from the car. They probably spent the whole trip wondering what I was doing. I fear that I'm on the way to becoming one of the hipsters that takes a picture of absolutely everything. I've been limiting myself to taking only one picture per meal, to avoid becoming a food blogger! (I do seem to have a penchant for graffiti as well.)

The first stop of that day was to a street market. We weren't really looking for anything specific, it seems like the market starts the Sunday routine. This wasn't an ordinary market trip though, because I was there, so my Grandpa hands me a bunch of pesos, (side note, the exchange works out to about 500 pesos per Canadian dollar), he tells me that I'm paying for everything so that I can get used to using the currency. So I'm following him down the street, he's buying nails, buying electrical outlets, buying saw blades, putting them in his bag and telling the shopkeepers to ask me for money. I'm following behind paying out and collecting change, the whole experience was quite hilarious.

We left and ate lunch at a Chinese restaurant which was quite delicious, we then headed off to a house of the family's that has Wi-Fi. This is where I've been doing these updates. We ended up staying there a little bit o get than I expected, we were waiting for my (step-?) Grandma to sell some hares to the locals around the neighbourhood.

At around 5:30, we hit the road for the house that my great grandparents used to live in. It has since been passed down, but no one from the family lives there anymore. Every Sunday, or anytime there is a family party everybody heads for to that house, to play cards, have tea and chat. There's a tiled inner courtyard that acts as a dance floor, also present in the back courtyard is a barbecue with rotating spit, seems like this place knows how to party!

I met about 15 relatives, most I'd never seen before save one family, they were all super friendly and surprised that I'd be doing something crazy like a 4 month trip alone to Chile. One thing that I've noticed in the short time that I've been here, no one really mentions that I'm still learning Spanish, I don't mention it unless someone asks, most people get it once they've heard me speak for a few sentences, except for the kids. Everyone under 10 doesn't clue in, they keep yammering away in rapid fire Spanish at me and I have no idea what they're saying. It has created some weird / awkward situations. But I survived those moments, and the rest of the day. In total, I do believe that today was another great day, it was great to see families get together for no other reason but to chat.

See all my pictures here!

After doing a little digging, it is quite a chore to add mp3 files of your own to Blogger but YouTube links work (of course), so I'll be choosing to feature a video of a live performance from the Congahead YouTube channel. It will mostly focus on Latino music genres, but it fits well with the theme of my blog. So today's featured song is 'No Eres Tu' by 'El Montuno Y La Cimarronada'

Edit: Added Title (Oops), added post music clarification, added pictures link!