Saturday, October 24

This morning Kristen and I woke up and decided to explore our surroundings a little more. The weather finally warmed up a little after several days of 50 degree weather, so it was a great opportunity to get out and walk around the city a little bit more.

We decided to walk the route to our assigned ward so we could get there quickly in the morning without getting lost. Upon approaching the address we realized our ward is literally next door to the Santiago temple! We met a very nice couple from Vina del Mar whose names were Christian and Carol. We thought it was funny since our names are Karl and Kristen. They were so nice and talked to us for a few minutes. They even gave us their email address and offered us a place to stay when we go to Vina del Mar in a few weeks.

We took a few pictures of the temple and walked the grounds for a bit. A lot of people had come up from Concepcion in groups via bus and stayed in the LDS hostel on site. We then started walking through more of Providencia.

We stopped for a quick bite to eat at our new favorite place, Castano. It's a chain bakery that has very good food, from muffins and rolls to empanadas and juices. We tried some empanadas de pino. They were alright, not as good as the empanadas de pollo, though (chicken).

After lunch we continued walking and found an arts and crafts fair that was going on at the Providencia City Hall. We perused the different crafts people were selling and took some pictures of the grounds. The building is a mansion that's been converted to a city hall. We walked around inside and a nice woman named Victoria started telling us all about the different features of the buidling. Even though she didn't speak any english and our spanish was broken at times, we were able to understand quite a bit, a testament to our Spanish classes this week over at BridgeLinguatec. Kristen and I both really enjoyed the tour and got to practice our spanish quite a bit.

We then walked over to the Santiago Municipal Park and walked around for a bit. It is a large park situated on a hill in the city. We hiked up the mountain a small distance to get to a Japanese Garden on the hill. It was beautiful and offered fantastic views of downtown Santiago and the Andes mountains in the distance. Because the weather hasn't been so great lately, there has been an inversion that obscured the view, but it was still beautiful.
We then joined our friends from Notre Dame at a sports bar called California.

They had the Notre Dame vs. Boston College game in HD, so all of our classmates were there cheering on the Irish! There were even a few Boston College fans there. We had an amazing BBQ chicken pizza with pineapple. It was so tasty!

Tomorrow we are going to go to a place outside of Santiago called Cascada de las Animas. It is in the mountains and has small cabins. A group of us are going there for a few days to enjoy the mountains and the outdoor opportunities Santiago has to offer. More pictures and stories to follow for sure!