pues, what?

Sunset in Santiago

So, last weekend Cortney and I had the opportunity to have an amazing almuerzo with a Chilean family (a friend of Cort's grandpa). Rodrigo is a longtime friend and business partner with Cortney's grandfather. Cort's g-pa emailed Rodrigo suggesting that we meet up because it would be nice to get some Chilean advice from Chileans! He wrote a couple of emails back and forth confirming then he forwarded them to Cortney and her mom. The last email said: Rodrigo would love to meet you. Here is his contact information so you two can meet up. He loves meeting young girls! ........um. wait. what? Cortney and I were laughing at that part because huh!? Cort's mom actually ended up emailing her G-pa being like WHAT>! turns out he was just being funny but he teased Cortney to death when we met up! hahahaha. He has four kids (and one grandchild!) and his longterm girlfriend also has four kids!! Luckily they are all around our age! So when they invited us over for lunch we were really excited to meet some our age Chileans! They live in Los Condes an area off the end of one of the metro lines. He has a really beautiful apartment on the top of a building that overlooks all of Santiago. Really Baller. We ate delicious paella and met allll of the children (including two really hot 21 year old twin guys!). They were so sweet and helpful. Providing us with advice on everything from where to go out clubbing to what food is good. All of them were studying different things and were all interesting people. It was a really lovely family and it felt nice to get some homemade food and family time.

They asked us about America and we asked them tons about Chile. I've been particularly interested in their politics here because it seems crazy that 1. Chile became a democracy in 1990! (CHUB your BIRTH YEAR!) 2. They have a women president 3. Pinochet--the dictator who ruled for 16 years! was voted out of office but got 40% of the vote! (more than what he was elected for)...the United States also has an interesting relationship with Pinochet.. anyway I decided to take a gamble and bring up politics to see what typical Chileans think of Michelle Bachelet. I asked them about Obama of course first. They said that they like him..they just don't know what he has done yet (cue Nobel Peace Prize jokes). Overall, they seemed to have a positive opinion of him. I asked if they liked Michelle and Rodrigo (who is def in the upper class) talked about how she is contradictory because she claims to be leftist yet many policies remain rightist and that they are ready for a change. Their election is this December..should be interesting to see how it plays out..He went on to say that he thought life was better when Pinochet was in office because he built the economy to what it is today..Chile has the best economy throughout South America currently. His nostalgia for Pinochet's term was met with silence from the rest of the family...Afterwards one of the daughters drove us home..she said that she didn't agree with her father but she didn't say anything to keep the peace (something I can definitely understand) but that thousands of people disappeared during Pinochet's reign and that she believed him to be a dictator.

Anyway, it was pretty interesting talking to them. I really liked them. So helpful, cute and generous! Hopefully we will see them again. :) Other than that we passed TEFL yayyy! and We got jobs! Our FIRST! Exciting!! We start in two weeks or so after our intensive spanish classes. It's beautiful here now and we have been enjoying our freedom by exploring and partying mucho!
Besos!

ps. good article to read!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/world/americas/29bachelet.html?scp=3&sq=chile&st=cse