Friday, February 14

Today I woke up at like noon, but I was still the first one awake, so I watched TV for a while and waited for everyone else. Around 2, Javi, Oscar, Maxi, and I walked down to the beach to go kayaking. We probably splashed more water at each other than we actually kayaked, and by the time we finished I was absolutely soaking wet. I was wearing shorts that were way too big for me, and I ended up having to walk all the way home holding my shorts up with my hand so the weight of the water wouldn’t pull them completely off. We all quickly showered and then walked over to the fiesta custombrista, which was a bunch of kiosks selling typical Chilote food and a stage playing music and featuring dance groups. I tried typical food—empanadas de manzana, navegado, curanto en hoyo, harina molida, and chicha.

Then after lunch, some more of Javi’s friends showed up and we all decided to play cards together. I thought them all how to play ERS and we played for a long time (I won hahaha I can’t beat anyone in the US but here I actually have an advantage in ERS and I love it). One of Javi’s friends Pipe, showed up with his face all black from dirt, and when I asked him why he said it was because he’s a fireman and there was a fire in the morning. That’s another big difference in Chile—the fire department here is completely made up of volunteers. They are normal people with normal jobs who carry radios with them and when they hear a fire call they stop what they are doing (the job gives them special permission because they are fire fighters) and go to the fire if they are close enough. They don’t go to school to train, but they have workshops on the weekends where they learn the science of fighting fires, first aid, and everything else they need to be well prepared. Anyway, after a while we got bored and went back to the house for a while to watch animal planet. Then Javi, Maxi, and I walked along this gorgeous trail to the beach. The tide was super low and we could walk really far out.

The only thing that was kind of gross is that we went right at sunset and all of the mosquitoes were out. I think I have like 30 bites now. After we got back to the house, Maxi and I walked up to the fiesta again. We sat on the fence next to the soccer field all alone and had a really nice talk about our love lives. It felt nice being able to open up with Maxi and have him open up with me because although we try a lot harder in our relationship now, we still aren’t as close as we could be because we’re just really different people. Then Javi, Oscar, and their friends showed up and we walked around and hung out with them for a while. Nancy, who had been helping Julia with her food stand all day, came to introduce me to her friends from the food stand, which by that time was all drunk and just wanted to dedicate poems to me in broken English. Later, while we were all standing around watching the dancers, this super creepy old lady walked over to Maxi and kept asking him to dance and wouldn’t leave him alone. She even went so far as to kiss him on the cheek before we all got her to back off. I swear she looked like a witch! We went home from the fiesta around 3 in the morning, and it was a really nice time although it was a little uncomfortable hanging out with a bunch of Javi and Oscar’s friends whom we didn’t know.