Friday, Saturday, Saturday, Monday

I decided to not set an alarm and just wake up when my body does. I thought I would at least get some hint when my roommate got up to go snowboarding, but I slept hard all through the night. I woke up at the perfect time. I was able to get ready, eat breakfast, and meet the others for church all without being rushed. Two guys met up with an old mission companion who took them to El Colorado ski resort to snowboard. Two stayed here at the hotel: one because she is not LDS and the other because he slept in, even past breakfast. The rest of us walked a couple of cobble-paved blocks to the meetinghouse.

The ward was huge, especially from what I was expecting; they were probably the size of my singles ward. We filled up a couple of side rows up front and were greeted by a very kind and seemingly competent bishop and an old missionary couple who spoke little to no Spanish. The little old lady who was conducting asked if any of us could play the piano, and I volunteered. They don’t have grand pianos or organs down here; there was a crappy little keyboard plugged into the wall on the stand. They weren’t used to having a pianist to accompany them. I played some intro for the hymn, like normal, and the lady conducting gave me weird looks. But we were actually able to communicate well during the music, which was good because I knew there would be some musical differences in the himnos. It was fast Sunday, and everybody got up and spoke really fast, bearing their testimony. I only was able to follow a little, until one of our guys got up to speak. Alex is 27, married, and very peculiar. He doesn’t speak Spanish, so we were all bracing ourselves for an awkward couple of minutes, but he spoke very well and was well received.

After church we changed out of our Sunday clothes and put on our giant tourist signs and went to Cerro San Cristobal Hill, which is a hill in the middle of the city. There is a tram you pay to go up and down; once you get to the top, you can hike a little ways and reach a statue of the Virgin Mary (but I’m not thoroughly convinced it wasn’t Jesus). There were also many small shops and restaurants, but they were semi over priced.

The view on top was magnificent though. The city wraps almost all the way around the statue, and you couldn’t see the boundaries of the city (partly because of the smog). The Andes Mountains lined the horizon with their white peaks (remember it’s almost winter here).  Dave said that there hasn’t been a time he could see the mountains because of the thick smog, so we were grateful that yesterday had been completely clear and that today the smog was only partially covering the edges.

After descending on the same tram, we walked a couple blocks down and found a nice area for eating. Everybody ate at some Colombian restaurant, but the food was only ok, and the service was horrible; the poor girls at the other table waited almost an hour and a half for their food. There were also tiendas here, but they were way more expensive, especially for dumb trinkets that would just double as dust collectors in my bedroom.

We returned to the hotel the same time as our amigos who went snowboarding. We burned an hour ish, then four of us- Nate, Aniko, Natalie, and myself- buddied up with another one of Nate’s mission friends and had dinner. I was expecting that he would take us to a different part of Santiago, but I think he said that it was dangerous to drive in the city at night, so he just took the metro. So we just went on another walk, mostly to enjoy each other’s company. I had a churrasco italiano sandwich (which was just carne with tomates, lechuga, y mayonesa. A LOT OF MAYONESA. I got more fat from the mayo then from the meat).

I really enjoyed the company of Nate’s amigo, Filipe. He and Nate talked most of the time, but he was fun to talk to. Natalie impressed me with her Spanish; she definitely knows more than I do. But I knew what they were saying most of the time. We came back to the hotel when we finished dinner, and Nate, Filipe, y yo sat in our room and chatted with out the girls. Filipe started using some of the special vocabulary he learned from misionarios gringos, and it was semi-funny, semi-strange to have all meaning stripped from usually vulgar words. It was more funny though, especially with his thick Chilean accent.

The girls came back and we conversed for a while longer.  I still can’t tell if Nate and Natalie aren’t dating. Weirdos. Filipe left, the conversation died, and we all decided to go to bed. We have an early bus ride tomorrow (a las ocho en la manana).

Update on Luribel: She received tickets to Peru. Apparently, the rules for visas changed two months ago, and we were mostly ready to go then, so nobody checked. We’ll miss her here, but we are so glad she can come to Peru!