Single Ladies and Christmas time in Virginia

Ok, I should be kicked out of the blogging community for being so neglectful of my blog. It has been well over a month since I last posted and I have no excuse. I had plenty of exciting things happen, but I just didn't feel like blogging them. Now that I'm home in Virginia for Christmas with my family and my Chilean love, I feel like sharing.

Italo and I flew to Buenos Aires on Friday and spent about 22 hours in the city trying to find great Christmas gifts for my family with the small amount of money we have, but were not very successful. Then, we flew to Virginia and got in at 6:30am yesterday morning. Italo's airport experience was a nightmare and there was one point where I was hysterical outside of customs thinking my boyfriend wouldn't be let out of the airport. He was sent quickly to "C area" which ended up being a room of foreigners waiting to be inspected thoroughly. All in all, Italo spent 2 hours with Dulles Airport security proving he would go back to Chile at the end of the month. It ended up not being so bad since he's here in my house, but for a while I was terrified he would be treated horribly and would understandably never want to come back here again. Luckily, he was very relaxed and calm unlike me and we made it home by around 9:30am.

Now that we're both here, I'm enjoying everything. This is the first time in a long time my parents, my sister, our boyfriends and I have all been together. This will be our first Christmas all together and it's shaping up to be wonderful. It is so nice to come up to cold weather and Christmas decorations all over the town. My mom really outdid herself with the decorations this year because she was so excited to have us all home. The house looks amazing and feels like home. Our kitchen is stocked with delicious food you can't find in Chile and my parents even froze part of Thanksgiving dinner so Italo and I could make the yummiest sandwiches in the world.

Another thing I love about being home is watching movies and playing games. Last night, we all watched Love Actually which has become sort of a tradition for us and then Italo, my best friend A. and I kicked butt in a game of Cranium against my sister, her boyfriend, and my mother.

After dinner every night we always have champagne or more wine and inevitably sit around and quote movies and look up videos on youtube. As I mentioned in a previous blog about my sister C., she and I are master movie quoters, but we also love sharing funny youtube videos so last night turned into watching wedding dance videos to famous movie dances. The best one was a wedding where the couple did the Dirty Dancing final dance. They were AMAZING and Italo and I along with C. and her boyfriend T. are already practicing it (or, C. and I are practicing while the boys try to ignore the fact that we're already planning choreographed wedding dances). BUT, the best part of last night was another video.

Living in Chile, regardless of how much I love it, always means that I will miss out on some popular song or video or current event. This time, it means I lived in ignorance for about a month and missed the best new pop song and video plus the funniest parodies. I'm sure most people have heard the Beyonce song "Single Ladies", but I hadn't. It is such a fun and just all around great pop song. The video is great and Beyonce looks the hottest she ever has and the dancing makes you want to get up and dance (and possibly learn the dance for your wedding, haha). Now, you have to watch the original video first to appreciate the two, erm "interpretations"



ok, after watching that one, watch this guy dancing to the video:



and NOW watch Justin Timberlake backing up Beyonce on SNL (you can't see the whole thing because NBC won't allow it on youtube, but you get the idea:




So, I'm not sure anyone else will enjoy these as much as I do, but I cannot stop watching them and for anyone else who misses pop culture when living abroad, this is for you!

I probably won't blog much while I'm home (surprise, surprise), but I will post pictures of our awesome Christmas Eve party. I'll be wearing my House of Dereon shoes and my sister will be debuting her Chirstian Louboutin's (an early Christmas gift from her boyfriend T.) I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas (or Hanukkah or anything else).

Visa things, Sunday things

So, today is the last day I'll get to sleep past 7:00am since I'm getting another class.  I can't complain about that since it's a normal time to wake up, but I LOVE sleep. I absolutely cherish it and I seem to be getting worse and worse about it.  Today, I slept blissfully until I. called me at 10:30am which made me feel so guilty since he has to get up at 7:30am everyday to go to a job he's not that interested in.  So, I jumped up after an amazing dream that I met Oprah at the Emmy's and got to tell her about one of my friends who is her protege, and decided to check on my visa status with extranjería.

 The last I checked, they claimed my paperwork hadn't arrived and after going to correos de chile and seeing the high-tech, classified mail system they have that I paid for (come on, have you ever heard of COMPUTERS???!!!!), they wrote in pen a confirmation that it had been delivered.  My logical question was, "is there a more official document I can bring to extranjería to show that it was delivered".  The response I got, "No, no.  This is the official time.  If you want a copy you'll have to go to Plaza de Armas and see if they'll let you have a copy, but I don't think they will".  So, I'm thinking "alright, where the hell in Plaza de Armas do I go?"  And the nice, but dense man tells me that I'll know it when I see it.  I was late to meet my cuñi so I just left it at that.

So, back to this morning. I call and the woman actually finds me in the system this time and says that I was missing a piece of paper in the envelope and that they had sent it back.  Even though the woman at my institute supposedly put my envelope together the way it should have been and just handed it to me to send, That's an OK answer for me.  The woman at my institute is relatively friendly and everyone makes mistakes.  I don't even mind using the mail that takes at least a week when I could drop it off by hand in 10 minutes.  I think I've always been pretty patient with Chilean bureaucracy as long as the last person I'm sent to actually gives me a useful answer (it's normally an address on the other side of the city).  The people at extranjería have been surprisingly helpful and friendly to me, but my problem is that I really need to get that visa in the mail ASAP, If for nothing else than not to give the new guy at Ekono a heart attack when I use my passport number and not my carnet number when I pay with a credit card.  But seriously, I need you visa, I want you visa, so hurry up!

On a totally different note, yesterday was election day.  And the craziest thing about it to me is that men and women vote in different colegios.  That just seems way too old-fashioned even for Chile, but as my suegra said (and I couldn't help but laugh), laws are just too hard to change here so most of Pinochet's legacy is the same because it's next to impossible to change.  That to me just sums up most Chileans and their views on politics, but that's another post in general.  

But my point in mentioning elections was to talk about my Sunday.  My suegra actually warned me not to go out. Or rather said it would be better if we didn't go out.  I'm still not sure why, but I have a feeling it had nothing to do with elections and everything to do with the fact that she wanted us to go to her house for the day, but we already had plans.  And it seems like everyone else had those same plans: Parque Forrestal.  I. and I had a picnic there and let Olive run crazy for a few hours while half of Santiago walked by.  I have never seen the park this crowded and we are there almost every weekend.  There were more shows and people selling things than ever.  I love to watch all of the circus talent there.  There were a group of people climbing and swinging off two rope-type thingies that seem to be all the rage (when I saw Justin Timberlake in concert, Pink opened for him and was swinging all around the stage on them).   Even though it was incredibly crowded, we still had a really nice, quiet place to eat the yummy potato salad I made,  sneak-drink a bottle of wine, and play cards.  And now it's back to work...

P.S. I've been thinking about my group post and am having a hard time narrowing down my post so it may not be until tomorrow or later tonight...