A post about the World Cup is definitely overdue. I just keep forgetting to write one, sorry! So Chile just won against Switzerland. This, with their win last week against Honduras puts them in first place in their group! With a bit of luck and good playing Chile could move on to the elimination round, yay!
The fans are all pretty pumped about Chile being in the World Cup and all, and the wins just keep the fire going. Last week I had to head to campus early in order to watch the game before class. On my way to the metro the roads were packed and all of the cars were honking their horns in a fun, cheering kind of way. There were painted men wearing wigs rushing to pick up food for the game. Everyone on the metro was wearing some sort of red in support of La Roja. By the way, the nickname for the fans is "Marea Roja" or red tide. Oddly, this is the same name as an disease in fish in the south of the country which makes them inedible. Well, I suppose calling yourselves the same name as a disastrous natural occurence isn't that bad.
Speaking of natural disasters, I've seen some shots from South Africa of Chilean flags with the motto "Chile is stronger than an 8.8". Oh yeah!
Friday is the last game, it's against Spain, and I hope the weather is nice. If it is, I'm going to the Alameda to watch outside with thousands of fans.
Chi-Chi-Chi! Le-Le-Le! Viva Chile!
Monday, June 21, 2010
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
More day to day stuff...
Last weekend almost everyone went to Buenos Aires or the Atacama desert, so I've been gettting the experience secondhand. A few of my friends and I have started seriously planning our Macchu Piccu trip, and it's going to be awesome! We looked into doing the Inca Trail, a three to four day hike that ends watching the sun rise from Macchu Piccu. Unfortunately it's now mandatory to hire a guide, cook, and porters to do the trail. So that's out.
On Sunday I got to go hiking near Santiago with another Notre Dame student and his host family. We climbed Cerro Manquehue, a small mountain (about 1600 meters above sea level) to the north of Santiago. It's the tallest cerro in the Santiago Valley and has a great view of... pretty much everything. At least it would if it weren't for the smog. Since it didn't rain this weekend the pollution has been building up and Santiago is under a smog alert right now. But the view from the top was still amazing, you can see just how sprawled out and huge Santiago is.
Language note: cerro is Spanish for "hill" and Manquehue is the Mapuche word for "place of the condors".
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