sorry for not posting this week

I've been pretty busy and also every time I've sat down to write a post I've gotten distracted by something or other. But anyhow, continuing in the theme of the past couple of weeks, I'm feeling good these days. Classes and readings are still all very interesting, although the latter are high in volume and appear to be getting more so. But that's all right, I can't really complain. On Thursday night, we (me, Vale, Lindsay U, Matt and Kelly D) went to Miles for the birthday of its owner, Moncho Romero. It was a fantastic show, including the best jazz I've seen in Chile, hands down. There were 15 or 20 musicians in all, playing in different configurations throughout the night, which lasted more than four hours, but the best was the first, the Cristian Cuturrufo quintet plus Moncho on piano and Monchito Romero on clarinet. Cuturrufo is Chile's best trumpet player, has recorded with all the best Chilean jazzistas (Pancho Molina, Angel Parra, Valentin Trujillo) and he and his group were absolutely fantastic. And at the end everyone in the packed house got cake.

Earlier on Thursday, classes ended at PUC at 1, so instead of going to my afternoon class (Armed Conflict), I went up to the Centro Cultural Matucana 100, which has ads all over the metro for this video exhibit called "Repeat/All" with artists from Afghanistan, Iran, Finland, the States and Spain, among others. When I got there it was closed for lunch break, so I went across the street to the Santiago Public Library, which I guess I must have known existed but never really thought anything of. The book culture here is nonexistent because books are so, so expensive, as I've complained about before, so I was surprised first of all by the size of the building's facade (huge). I was even more surprised--floored, even--when I went inside and discovered that the collection is huge, the building is beautifully designed and easy to use, there are computers and free wi-fi everywhere and tons of people, even in the middle of the day on a Thursday, walking in and out. I didn't get a look at the stacks, but I'll be back. I sat down there and tried to write a post about it because I'd lugged my laptop around all day thinking to get it set up to use at PUC (hah!) and figured I might as well use it. Obviously I was not successful. Anyhow, around 2:15 I walked back across the street and really liked the exhibit. Hungry as I was, I only stayed about 45 minutes, but I'll definitely be back to check it out with some more time and a full stomach. Maybe above how much I liked Matucana 100 and the library, it felt really good to be exploring a part of Santiago I don't know at all, namely, Quinta Normal. I suppose I've been surprised to find, more and more since my solo expedition to Puno in Peru, that I really like exploring and finding out new places on my own. You can't learn something for someone else, I suppose, and while it's definitely fun and rewarding and all that to share new experiences, sometimes it's better for me to just go alone, at my own pace, seeing what I want to see, with no schedule or obligation to anyone else.

Friday was Good Friday, and as a result there was absolutely no one on the street. No one, at 1:30 in the afternoon it felt like 4 in the morning on a weeknight. But Katy and April called and I went to go hang out with them and their friends Taylor and Kelly (I think that's her name). We met up at Baquedano, walked through Parque Forestal to Lastarria, hung out in Cafe Utopia for a while drinking coffee and tea and things, and then went up Santa Lucia. It was a nice afternoon. Around 7, we met up with a friend of April's from high school, who's apparently studying here, too, bought a few bottles of wine and went back to his house in Pedro de Valdivia. I just realized how many names of places there are in the past two sentences. Six. Five in the first one. That's quite a few. Whatever. I'd give a play-by-play of the rest of the night, but it really wasn't that interesting and involved a lot of different places and movements. The one overwhelmingly cool fact of the night was that I met a girl studying here who was one of the childhood best friends--and still neighbors--of...drumroll...Judy Wexler. OooooWHAAAAT?!?! And, as if that wasn't a freakish enough coincidence, just as she was starting to tell me about the video she and Judy and some other of their friends made to "Tell Me What You Want" by the Spice Girls, that song came on whatever mix was playing at the house we were at. Insane.

Today has been very laid back. I got up, ate breakfast, read a bit of European Political Economy (Polani's The Great Transformation), took a shower, shaved, read some more, ate lunch, watched the end of the Chelsea-Tottenham game (1-0, Chelsea), read some more, did a few yoga exercises that I'm learning, and came down to this here internet cafe. Good times. Vale's mom is visiting and Vale called to invite me to dinner with the two of them at 8, but it's not quite five now and I've got nothing to do but read or something. I'll run when it cools off a little more, maybe around six. Tomorrow there's frisbee and more reading, and maybe calling home. I'm gonna call that a post, and I promise to try and write a little more regularly.