Friends with Benefits

Rafa, Kike, Jackie, Carly, and Christian
Leo and I after the race. I have hung out with this exact dog both times I have been to Viña.
No clue
Kooch sporting a serious mustache
Carly and I after the race!

Student/teacher friendships are dangerous territory here at BridgeLinguatec given our strict policies regarding handing out personal information to students. I, however, like to live dangerously. My student, Carlos, and I realized that his friend, Pablo, has been taking English lessons from Carly. From there, we discovered that the 4 of us so happen to all love eating and drinking, And even better…Carlos and Pablo love to pay for things, while Carly and I love to get things for free. Friendships made in heaven. Thursday night, the 4 of us went to a vegetarian restaurant for pizza, Mexican food, and all the tequila sunrises we could handle. 3 ½ hours, quite a few drinks, and several requests from Carlos that I “not judge him” later, a friendship had been born. As a first order of business in our new friendship, Carlos and I came to an agreement on how our classes would be run from now on. In exchange for me “being less responsible” (direct quote from Carlos) and doing less work from the company mandated books, we will speak a little Spanish in each class. In other words, in return for doing less work, I get to learn Spanish. Sure Carlos. Whatever you say. We have since had our first class, and I can assure you it went as promised. I even took the liberty of ending class significantly early so that we could grab coffee. Second order of business in our newfound friendship? Translate as many inappropriate things as possible from Spanish into English and vice versa. Listening to Carlos describe his boss in language far too crude for this blog in perfect English…I’ve never been a prouder ESL teacher. After dinner, completely disregarding the fact that I had an 8 am class the next morning, Carly and I decided to meet up with Jackie and the Bicentenario crew. As usual, this was a terrible decision that resulted in dancing until way too late and getting roughly 3 hours of sleep. Thankfully, all I had to do after class the next morning was pack for my weekend trip to the beach. As an interesting sidenote to our evening/testament to the quality of men in this country: someone we were out with attempted to hit on Jackie by telling her that he was amazed at how bad her Spanish was (for the record Jackie speaks great Spanish). In an attempt to recover from what was obviously very offensive to Jackie he followed her out of the bar and said “No…really. I’m confused. How is it so bad?” Immediately following this comment he asked for her number so they "could see eachother again". Wow Chilean men. You’ve done it again.

Friday afternoon, Carly, Fro, Nico & some friends from work, and I headed to Viña del Mar for the weekend. We rented a condo that had 2 pools and was 2 steps away from the beach. Not exactly roughing it. Elias and Zach were in Viña for the weekend too. The entire weekend was spent relaxing beachside and eating empanadas and avocado. This was well needed given that I worked a record breaking 14 hours the week before. It’s a rough life but someone has got to do it. Just incase you were thinking that I have gotten lazy, I will have you all know that Carly and I ran a 10K Sunday. Fro was unable to run due to the near 3^rd degree burns has on her lower legs from trekking without suntan lotion last weekend. Apparently there is a hole in the ozone layer over Chile right now? Anyone who knows Fro’s pigmentation knows that this is not good news. Last, but definitely not least…I locked myself out of my room this morning only to find out that I do not own the key for my door. The silver lining? I can now efficiently break into any locked door using nothing but a credit card. Na ha.