Vino y Futbol

The past couple days haven't exactly seen a whirlwind of activity from either Erin or I. We did however, as promised, have an international futbol (that's soccer to you) extravaganza. The game primarily consisted of Erin, me, and a handful of other rag-tag foreigners valiantly defending our respective nations' honors against the mighty Chileno force of Javier and three or four other 10-year-olds. But what we foreigners lacked in raw soccer skill, we made up for in heart (and height). The Chilenos got off to an early lead, but we fought back and tromped them soundly, proving once and for all that the mighty USA can stand up to and defeat any elementary schooler anywhere. Having tasted our might, they begged we reorganize the teams to a more evenly matched big people vs. little people arrangement. The teams were essentially the same, but we got the only player from their team who was over five feet tall. They in turn received a couple of other grade-school kids who happened to be milling around the soccer field. The result was another stunning victory for our team. Afterwards, we received juice boxes and orange slices (although both were largely imagined...by me...just a second ago).

After a night to savor our victory, we decided the next day to do the most touristy thing we could think of. We put on our finest clothes and headed off to La Vina Concha y Toro, which for those of you who aren't oenologists is the largest producer of non-boxed wine anywhere in Chile. It was an impressive place, but in terms of excitement, it had nothing on the bus ride we took to get there. In Chile, busses don't stop to let you on. They pretty much speed around the city at an insane speed and slow down just enough to let you read the sign that says where they're headed and dive on. Afterwards, the driver takes your money and counts change while he dodges pedestrians and other vehicles in an effort to get back up to speed. It was a pretty exciting experience all in all. Erin saw two women praying as we crossed bridges, and I'm not sure whether that was to get us all safely across or what. Getting off the bus was the same process in reverse, and I actually got clipped with the door when I didn't move fast enough.

The nice thing was that we got dropped off right in front of the vineyard. It was a pretty large place with lots of old or old-looking buidlings. We got taken through the actual vineyards, where they explained how awesome their grapes are, then we tasted some of the finished product. They even showed us how to inspect, swirl, sniff, hold, and eventually drink it. Then we saw the gigantic storehouses where casks of wine aged. This included the apparently world famous Devil's Cellar, where there were some county-fair-haunted-house-style lighting effects. The whole thing ended a little anti-climacticly when the voice recording told us the devil did not actually live in the cellar and the lights came back on. We did one more wine tasting and then the tour was over.

This morning we went to the Santiago public library to see a photo exhibit done by local artists between the ages of 20 and 35. Some of the pictures were pretty interesting, but most of them had been heavily digitally edited and after a while that started to seem old. The library itself was amazing both in the incredibly large, interesting architecture way and in the lacking books almost entirely kind of way. The place had apparently benefitted from a grant by the Bill and Linda Gates Foundation, which had obviously bought it a lot of remodeling and computers (seriously, tons of computers), but not many books. It's now a city-wide hub for email, unfiltered internet pornography, and instant messaging. The future is here.

We have an address as it turns out. You may begin sending packages....now:

0251 Claudio Arrau
Providencia, Santiago, Chile

(You do not need a postal code)