Mexicans in Chile: Part 2

After Michael and Jennifer left, my parents were still here for another week. They saw some more of the city, and I got to see some new places with them!

Beautiful church at Los Dominicos.

One morning we headed over to an area called Los Dominicos in Santiago, where there was an old, colonial-looking church and a really cool artisan market where we bought some souvenirs. But our favorite part of the trip wasn't looking at the crafts, or buying random harp CD's (I know what you're thinking, how could that not be my favorite part?!)...................but finding an empty room with plain white walls that provided a perfect background for doing hieroglyph poses like the indigenous paintings!!! The simple things in life...haha.

HE ALWAYS HAS TO BUY EVERYTHING.

Artisan fair!

Lots of birds and animals at the artisan fair...for sale and just walkin' around.

She found a bonsai gingko!!! So happy haha.

Being hieroglyphs!

The next day (Monday), we decided to take a bus over to Pomaire, a small village about 45 minutes outside Santiago known for its pottery. There weren't any direct buses that day, so we got one to the next town over and planned to take a taxi. Along the way, the ticket-taker man told us that it would be better if we got off right then so that we wouldn't have to back-track to get to Pomaire. We stepped off the bus...and found ourselves on the side of a highway in the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. The man from the bus pointed to a red billboard (if you could call it that) across the highway and told us to go stand under it and wait til a bus came along. At that moment, I was fairly positive that we would be stranded in the desert for days and have to learn how to survive on roots and the occasional animal (we would have to fashion our own traps, of course). But then, HAAAAAALLELUJAH!!! A BUS! A tiny red one, probably built sometime in the early days of the automobile, with fringe on the sides. Since there were very few seats left (out of maybe 15 or so), I stood next to my mom and my dad took the seat up front right next to the driver hahaha. 10 minutes later, we were in Pomaire!!! And by the looks of it, we were the only ones. Completely deserted. No one. Apparently, Monday is their day of rest and EVERYTHING is closed. We stopped at the few shops that happened to be open, which all sold the exact same things, and ended up with a bag of chanchitos (tiny clay pigs with 3 legs...they're supposed to be good luck) and a good story:

Stranded, not a hope in the world.

SHOTGUN!!!

Which one should we check out first??? SO MANY OPTIONS.

The next day, I took my parents to school with me, and they had some fun around campus while I sat in class and pretended to understand Spanish:

The next day, we went to La Biblioteca Nacional. My friend had just visited it and said it was beautiful, so we decided to check it out. As we walked up one of the giant marble staircases, an old woman told us something about the president, but we didn't quite understand what she said. At the top, there lots of men in suits walking around, and press people heading into a room with cameras. President, you said...? My mom asked a woman what was going on, and she told us that President Piñera was having a press conference with the Minister of Education. One of the men standing outside the door told us we could take a peek in the room, but no pictures and we needed to be quick. Being the celebrity chasers that we are, we decided to wait near the room until he came out, no matter how long it took. A girl approached us and we started talking...turns out she was on Piñera's staff and worked for the last president too! Connectionsss! She hung out with us for awhile and told us we could try to snap a picture when he walked out, which didn't work out too well since there were a ton of people surrounding him. Everyone rushed down the stairs to meet the president, and we stood at the top watching until the girl ran back and motioned for us to come with her. Ummm...what? We ran down the stairs after her and all of a sudden, we were being introduced to the president, talking to him about where we were from and what we were doing in Chile, and posing for photos. UNBELIEVABLE. So surreal. STILL CANNOT BELIEVE WE MET THE PRESIDENT OF CHILE!!! All because my friend Lara told me the library was pretty! Unfortunately, the people who took our picture never put it up on the website, so we'll never have photo evidence of our crazy encounter (maybe they decided we were too ugly, maybe the El Presi had a booger), but I know it happened!!! Here's the one picture I got:

Love the pink tie, who says the president can't be a fashionisto???

After our brush with royalty, we walked with huge, cheesy smiles on our faces over to the Museo de Bellas Artes, where we posed some more:

And finallyyyyy, VALDIVIA! For the last few days of my parents' visit, we flew down to Valdivia, a city in the Lake District (about 1/2-way between Santiago and Patagonia). The city itself wasn't anything spectacular, but the area around it was absolutely gorgeous. Here's just a little bit of our trip:

The view from the backyard of our hotel.

Niebla! So pretty.

We found puppies!!!!!!!

Kunstmann Brewery.

She's so blind that she took a picture of the wrong face hole...I WAS SMILING AND I'M NOT EVEN IN THE PICTURE.

Family portrait.

Volcán Villarrica! Constantly smoking.

Takin' a dip in the lake.

Mercado Fluvial in Valdivia.

VULTURES.

These people row into town to sell their flowers every single day, even though they live far upstream. There are no roads to their house. They couldn't row against the current so our tour boat pulled them home!

Our boat dropped us off at a tiny village called Punucapa for lunch. A little old lady in slippers shooed all of the strays out of her house/restaurant and made us delicious empanadas, with shots of brandy and beer brewed right in the village.

Another poopy!

Heart rock for Grandma :)

Just around the river benddddddd!!!

Nothing like a little mutant taxidermy to brighten up your day!

My parents left the same day we got back, and I started to miss them as soon as their taxi drove away! Great 2 weeks, THANKS FOR COMING TO VISIT ME!!!

Going to Peru tomorrow!!! SO EXCITED!