Not better, not worse, just different

Ok, so this weekend was a little crazy. On Saturday, our group took a tour of Valparaíso, the city that my school is in, and we got to visit one of Pablo Neruda's houses. He's a famous poet that won the Nobel Prize, so it's a really big deal down here. Then we got to go out on a boat around the port, and we saw a whole bunch of sea lions lying on the boats that were in the bay. At first I thought it was really cool, but then I watched one of the huge sea lions (they looked like walrus' to me) jump onto one of the boats and I thought to myself "Hmmm, that boat is the exact same size as the one I'M on" and from that point on I was terrified of being crushed by a giant sea mammal. But it was really fun though. And as we were getting onto the boat, one of the Chilean guys that was helping us board decided to practice his English, and he kept saying "West Side!" really loud and with a really heavy accent, which was hilarious. Then on Saturday night one of my friends got robbed by a guy with a knife, which pretty much freaked us all out. He stole EVERYTHING that she had, including her money, credit cards, ID, phone, camara, everything. Luckily she didn't get hurt, but still it was really scary. And another one of my friends got robbed at a club, but luckily all they stole was her cell phone. Like I said, crime is REALLY bad down here, and people will steal from anyone. I refuse to walk alone at night here, and sometimes even during the day it's a little sketchy. All of us are sort of freaking out now, a lot of people are starting to get really homesick, and yes, we still have four months to go. The last couple days here have been a little cold and cloudy, so maybe that's why everyone is so down. Hopefully it'll get a little better soon. My sister gets here this weekend, and I get to see her on Tuesday! And then next Thursday we're heading to Mendoza, Argentina, so that should be cool. Oh, I have to mention some of the things I've noticed since I've been down here. First of all, the micro (bus) drivers are out to kill us all. They all drive incredibly fast--and by fast I mean we seriously FLY by all the cars on the road--and, honest to God, they RACE each other! They're all individually owned buses, so the drivers compete for people to ride on THEIR bus and then they have to be the first bus at each stop, so they all drive past each other and honk really loud, and then it becomes a flat out race to the next stop! And sometimes, the buses will pause at your stop instead of actually stopping, and you have to just sort of jump off. And another thing I've noticed is that the shirts that they wear down here that have English writing on them don't make any sense. And other ones are completely inappropriate, and I really don't think that the people wearing them know what they say. No joke, the other day my friend Heather and I were at the beach, and a guy walked by with a shirt that said, "Caution: I fuck for fun." And then we were at the mall the other day, and there was this really nice-looking store that had shirts in the front window that were really nice, but across the front it just said "Jackass." Nice. And then Heather and I went to the music store, and we were looking at all the music, and we looked over and there was actually a section labeled "Black Music." Wow. Anyways, I actually have homework to do now--lame--so I better get started. ¡Chao!