Monday, September 16

 

Today I woke up early, packed up my suitcase again, and was ready to go. Then Nancy came out of her room and told me that we wouldn’t be able to go to Argentina after all. The place where we needed to pay the tax is currently on strike and is closed indefinitely. I was kind of sad not to be going to Argentina, but they said that we would go another time next month, so I was fine with it. Instead, we left our suitcases packed and decided to drive south to Talca to stay at the house of my grandparents.

We left around noon, and then we stopped at Papa John’s for lunch. Then we drove for about an hour before we stopped in a little artists’ village called Chimbarongo to look at the weavings and furniture.

We drove the rest of the way to Talca and finally got to our grandparents house. There were about 10 people already there, whom I didn’t know, but were all very nice. We talked for a while, baked bread, and Maxi and I talked with our cousin Vale, who is really nice and super willing to talk and laugh with me. I went outside for a little while later that night with Maxi to meet his friends Gonzalo and Sergio. The meeting was kind of awkward, but they were nice enough, and they taught me some new bad words in Spanish. I came back inside and played cards with some of the adults because they all wanted to see the gringa playing traditional Chilean card games. I’m actually not half bad at Escoba, so I was more than willing to play. All of the other visitors left around 11. After that, we got in the car and took a quick tour of the city by night, and then we came back, unloaded the car, and I got ready for bed. We went into the kitchen to drink some tea and talk for a while, and then around 2 I got tired and decided to go to sleep.