Salsa

Last night I went with Mariah, Rob, and Elizabeth to a salsa class at Santa María University. We had some trouble getting there (the story of my life)...but we eventually made it. It was down in this little basement room, packed with people, all Chilean except for us. I really don't know why a lot of the people were in a class of how to LEARN salsa, because they were so incredibly good! So, while everyone else was doing this crazy spins and jumps around and coordinated moves, I was practicing the basic steps, which go like this.
Beat, What You Do
1 Transfer weight onto right foot
2 Step forward on left foot
3 Rock back onto right foot
4 Bring left foot back, without weight transfer
1 Transfer weight onto left foot
2 Step back on right foot
3 Rock forward onto left foot
4 Bring right foot forward, without weight transfer
Hmm well written out it doesn't look that hard. But it is, trust me lol. Especially when the music has all these crazy beats, you've supposed to move your hips in this special suave way, and everyone around you has been dancing like this since they could walk!!! Anyways, I had lots of fun despite my clumsiness and I'm definitely going to keep going to the class. Maybe by the end of the semester I'll be good at it, who knows!

When I got back last night, Christian and Erika wanted to hear all about it. I explained how hard it was and showed them the steps I'd learned. They just burst out laughing. Heh. In general they've been having a blast making fun of me...like how I wear at least three sweaters inside. How I can't dance. Oh and Sunday they all came up with a trick to play on me at the FleaMarket. Apparently there are these little wooden indians that are part of this practical joke that all Chileans know. Anyways, you get some unsuspecting person (me) to go up to them, tell the person to pick them up. And then when you pick them up a pair of wooden legs fall down (they were inside the torso) and a big penis jumps out at you. Of course when this happened I jumped, screetched, and dropped it the statue..and everyone around looked over at me and just started laughing lol.

On a different note, I had the most wonderful evening. It started out in a bad way: I tried to go to my history class in Viña and got way, way lost. It was incredibly stressful and I felt very incompetent and dishearted. Somehow I made it to where I could see the ocean, and then I had the idea to try to walk home just going South/South West. I ended up walking for nearly three hours along the ocean. Being alone, walking along the ocean at sunset, in a strange city, along streets I'd never been before...it was so beautiful and peaceful I didn't want to ever get where I was going!