Antofagasta: where they like their spanish like they like their quads...FAST

So for those of you who don't know, when I was a Junior in high school I had a friend, Kevin, who was an exchange student from Chile..... flash forward 3 years and now I'm the exchange student in Chile! So this past week I went to visit Kevin in Antofagasta which is in northern Chile, about a 2 hour  plane from Santiago. Antofagasta is a really interesting place because the desert there comes right up to the beach and theres just enough room between the 2 landscapes to fit the main road and some houses, its a long and thin city much like the country.

 Kevin left out some details about the view from his house! I mean wow!!

my "the desert's so windy!!" face

I guess I am starting to realize how spoiled I was in Santa Barbara getting to live right on the coast because all of the 3 trips I've taken from Santiago have been to the coast, a little bit of salty air withdrawal I suppose. Anyways the past 5 days have consisted of walking around in the not too cold weather (much preferred over the weather in Santiago) and going out on the quads into the desert which is a lot of fun because I had never even been to the desert in the US! It was pretty extraordinary how the hills just went on and on way beyond where I could see. Kevin and his brothers took me on the quad and I was pretty surprised I wasn't as scared as I thought I would be (even when Kevin started doing wheelies with me in the back).

I also had the pleasure of meeting Kevin's family which was very fun. I take back everything that I've said about people being difficult to understand in Santiago because listening to Kevin talk with his brothers in Spanish stopped me in my tracks for the past 5 days. I swear they talk faster than anyone I have ever heard even in English! The only things I could catch in their conversations was how they ended every sentence with -po' weeoooon. cachai?- Spanish Slang Submersion 101. My best translation of this would be -duuuuude ya know?- Anyways this made for a pretty silent Faithy when no one was actively conversing with me because there's no way I could try to keep up with them, but I had a lot of fun nonetheless. Also, of all the places we went there was usually at least one person who would be patient enough to try to talk with me in Spanish or Kevin's brothers who could speak English would sometimes switch to talk with me because to be honest I don't think a lot of them know how to talk slower haha.

Although it was exhausting listening to conversations that I didn't have much clue were about, it was pretty awesome to get out of Santiago and get to see another city not just from a touristy perspective but more of a local every day life (for the boys this means staying up until at least 4 AM and sleeping until at least 1 PM... I could barely keep up with this too). Today I had a flight at 11 AM so you can imagine it was a struggle getting up but Kevin and I stopped by La Portada which is a protected natural monument. It was pretty cool to see and good to have one last stop before I was on my way.

All in all, vacation was great even if it was only 5 days long.... Now to start school and everything else! Chao!