The Orange Hat

up the hill from Sean Kolk on Vimeo.

# posted by /Sean @ 9:10 AM 0 Comments

I arrived at the airport with about 25 lbs of excess weight and a snow shovel.

I not longer have the snow shovel.

Chris, Nick and I organized my luggage with my parents in toe, followed by the light hearted questioning of the check in attendant. Then I rushed over to the air port atrium area and met the GT representative for the cable network and he spot on interviewed me with all kinda of questions about the project, (Saniavtion.com) how long we'd be there, what our elevator speech was, and how I could inspire other GT students.

The three of us, accompanies by Chris's mother and both my parents, had dinner at Houlohans - and talked about the state of Georgia education, sanivation, how we were going to learn Spanish, and a verity of topics I don't remember. Emily met us after we had eaten, and we headed past security with a few tears, and partied and acted like fools all the way to the E terminal (international) where we danced, sang (Nick does that a lot) and enjoyed our selves.

We believed that we would be in first class, as there were 17 available seats - but when Emily was finally called over, and Nick, Chris, and I eagerly waited for her to come back with the good news (we were calling friends and bragging about the theoretical first class) when Emily came back with some good news, and some bad news: Emily had to sit next to Nick ... the good news is that we're all in first class!

The Flight down filled with hopes, dreams, lots of wine, and the other plane guests complimenting Emily and Nick on their wedding or something ... hey were giggling and drinking lots of wine, and being cute. Chris and I had a slightly less romantic time (note: it was still somewhat romantic as the sun came up over the Andes)

We landed, and were ... generally cold, they took both of our visa paper, which we think is bad, but still don't know, and a drug dog sniffed Emily's bag, and the nice army lady ask if Emily had any food in there, before, she probably had, so nothing happened. We retrieved our luggage, and met Travis (a friend from Georgia tech who agreed to pick us up and take us around town!) We rove around Santiago in the early morning, singing songs, and being probably annoyingly cheery.

We are staying in a hostel right in the middle of historic Santiago - the Plaza de Armas which has been here for something like 400+ years. It was mostly empty in the morning, but the Cathedral and government building line it and our hostel is on the 6t floor of a muti use building. We couldn't check in until 12 or something, so we put our luggage down, Emily went with Travis to see some friends, and Nick, Chris, and myself went to find locks for our lockers. On the way we got cash (which was a little confusing) and Cell phones (I still need to hack my iphone).

Then we went to Cafe Haiti; which is a café con piernas, or Coffee with legs. This one seemed to be relatively miled, and we had heard what they are before we walked in so ... it was like pffffh. Café con piernas are coffee placed (coffee in Chile is either instant or espresso, drip coffee is hard to find) where the waitresses are behind a bar, and either have short skirts or are in bikinis or something less than would be considered appropriate in normal street wear. This location wasn't that lude, (they just had low cut tops with short skirts, but there are places with the windows blacked out and oil is involved.

So after that short adventure, we found Emily and I contacted a local "Clau" who offered to take us around the city. We didn't know much about her ( I didn't stalk on couch surfing) but we got lost a bit, then she found us after 20 minuets. She took us to a bar which was trashy as hell (awesome) and had a much younger flair to it that the business district which we were kinda in. Oh but first we walked to one of the markets, and saw lots of fish, and her friend...Bernice(?) [who's adorable and shorter than emiy]) was there too. the markets are nothing hugely abnormal, but this bar we went to had a drink called Teremordores which are a Chilean brandy wine with a huge hunk of pineapple ice cream. ... yeah ^_^ . We waited for Clau's brother Fernando to show up, and made friends (who spoke no English) at the bar.

When he got there, it was with four of his friends from Hong Kong (were at 11 people now) and we ordered food, which comes with bread and a hot salsa (which is awesome) at every meal, this is good, and fun, because while I was told they don't have spicy food in Chile, that was a lie, they do- and its good. So we had eggs with onions over French fries with roasted pork. I think we drank a lot then, walked through the city to a place about 2 miles away called Bellevista, which is a younger part of town where a law school is, along with some bars. We walked around and I took some amazing pictures of the graffiti and houses, then we left our friends and went to another bar where we were to meet our contact from Start up Chile- Macerana, and her husband Nico while watching the Peru- Chile game for the Americas cup. We met up she was adorable, and a ton of help. We tried pisco sour (not bad) and Pisco cola (think rum and coke ish) again Pisco is white brandy whine. We ate large appetizers of meets and cheeses, and learned about the hiking, rugby, and life in Chile. When Chile Scored in the 87th minuet, the bar went crazy, and we were told that the best place to celebrate was just down the street (there would probably be 1000+'s of people there. So we waited a bit, and sure enough, it was wild. There were flags everywhere, people honking horns in the streets, red flairs going off, shots of "chile chile chile" to the "ole', Ole', Ole' " tune, Nick kissed some random girl, we avoided the riot police who were standing kinda close by, it was our first day in Chile.

The four of us walked back to the hostel around 11:30 - still amazed that it was only that late, to check email’s shower, and prepare for the next day.

Some side notes:

The streets are all paved, and in good condition. The city center has many pedestrian walk ways that are made of stone, so are some of the streets, and the separation between road and side walk might only be a guard posts, not different materials. The cars are relatively new, and not run down, they don't seem to use Combi's (Matatus in Africa) like in Mexico, and the buses and metro are very active. The taxis are all metered so there's not much bargaining (maybe at 4am though)

The schools are in protest right now, so the public schools aren't in session, an the students kinda took over. The plaza marches and the police are everywhere. I'll talk more about this later, but it's an interesting itme to be here.


The people themselves are more Indian than European (not like Buenos areas, I've been told) and foreigners are generally taller (noticeably) Clau is 5'8'' or 9 and she's an exception. They don't speak all that much English or even understand allot of what we're saying, and it's going to be interesting learning Spanish.

All for now, I'll post pictures when I have the change. It's going to be wild

# posted by /Sean @ 10:57 PM 0 Comments