The Hangover

Eating seafood soup -- Chilean hangover cure

Creamfields!!!!!!!!!
Our "Conversation Exchange" group!

Conversing
My dance partner

Most of my friends and I are members of a conversation exchange website here in Chile. The website is great because you can really make of it what you want. The website pairs strangers who speak different languages together, so that both people can practice a language they are learning with a native speaker. A standard conversation exchange takes place at a park or a café, lasts for about 2 hours, and is organized so that the first hour is completely in one language and the second hour is completely in the other. As you can imagine, people veer from these unspoken regulations quite frequently. Take for example Miguel, who clearly thought this was a dating website. We spoke absolutely no English, he repeatedly asked me about my dating life here, and then proceeded to pay for my meal and escort me to the metro despite my best efforts to explain to him that he REALLY didn’t have to do that. Needless to say we won’t be meeting up again. But for every weirdo out there, there are an equal amount of conversation exchange mavericks. People who just throw the unspoken rules aside and say, “Who cares that we are complete strangers? Lets just get drunk, learn a little something about languages, get crazy and dance?!”

Carly happened to come across one of these so-called mavericks about a week ago. He boldly suggested that she get some of her friends together, he get some of his friends together and we do this conversation exchange the fun way. Our group conversation exchange took place Thursday night. Fro, Carly, and I dragged ourselves down to El Centro to meet our potential new friends at a dive bar. As soon as we walked in, we were warmly greeted by our “new friends”. We knew it was them because they were pointing at us and motioning for us to come sit down. They even saved us seats. Hugs and kisses were exchanged and we were about to sit down when we were awkwardly informed that the group we had friendlied up to was actually not at all who we were supposed to meet up with, but instead, a group of strangers who had simply never seen someone with blond hair before and didn’t know how to react. Not to worry. Our actual new group of conversation friends turned out to be awesome. After having a couple of beers, we went to see a traditional Chilean dance band a couple blocks away. Another friend of the group, Adrian, met us there. Let me tell you a little about Adrian. If I could invent the perfect friend …he wouldn’t hold a candle to Adrian. He is a speech pathologist by day, traditional Chilean dancer by night. Speaks very minimal English. And to top it all off he has a very serious mustache. Friend of my dreams. Anyways, when we got to the concert, we put our Spanish and English aside and started communicating in the one language we all spoke fluently…ridiculous dance moves. Unfortunately for me, this bar happened to serve terremotos. As I’ve mentioned before these drinks are a deadly combination of fermented wine, hard alcohol, and sugar. My limit is 2, but I am all about pushing myself these days. I had a record breaking 3 ½… which would explain the video of me dancing with a toothless homeless man. I woke up the following morning with the worst hangover I’ve had here, although it was definitely one of the most worth it. If loving terremotos is wrong…then I don’t want to be right.