its a small world afterall...sing it wit me

i´ll start the blog entry with the bad news first, because frankly, it can only get better from there...
i had a rough week in Valparaiso this past few days. I took off thursday from work and decided to have a day to myself, walking around the city, taking a boat tour in the port, going to beach, etc. I decided to go back to the Y for lunch, since i eat free, and why pay the money. Unfortunately, i became a bit too comfortable in the cafeteria because i know about 70 percent of the people that eat there for lunch, and ilet down my guar,d and placed my purse on the ground. When i looked down, Mi bolsa no estuvò. Someone snatched my purse directly next to me while i sat with 4 friends, and no one noticed...totally unbelievable. Nothing too valuable, but lots of frustration, no keys, cell phone, or little notebook with personal notes.

FRIDAY, we had this terrific dinner for all our chilean friends. (the americans cooked, it was great). One of the girls waslooking at my camera and all of a sudden, i heard a yell. She deleted ALL 200 pics that i recently took from the past month while living in Chile. All my pictures from camp, sleepaway camp in the mountains, scenic-city-and beach pics...ALL deleted. That was a bummer. (So, the 8 pictures I posted last week on my previous blog, is all we have left to remember from 200 pictures, so i expect everyone who reads this to look and appreciate those pictres, because thats it folks for now...)

So...sunday, i decided to leave Valpo before the third bad thing kicked in and ruined my weekend. I took a 4.5 hour plane ride south (I contemplated the bus, but 45 hours just didn´t have quite the same ring to it) and I am now in patagonia baby. Tomorrow morning, I start my 5 day trek in the National Park, Torres Del Paine. We have our tent, cooking gear, rain gear, and food for 5 days (So lets pray it doesn´t take longer to finish or else we starve). We´re super excited to start the trek. Today, we were renting some gear at the hostel, (tent, stove, etc) and the guide was chatting away. I asked him where hes from, and he tells me NY. Oh, funny, me too. Where in NY? He tells me BINGHAMTON. No way, me too! than he says, actually, Im from Vestal.... Youre kidding me, right?
Here I am, in the southern part of chile, where the Magellan Straight lies, where the navagable pass for sailors was discovered years and years ago when travelling by boat around south america. Here I am, in Patagonia, in the Southern Hemisphere, thousands of miles from home, and probably almost 2000 miles from where I live in Valparaiso, central chile. And the guy who works at the hostel here and leads tours went to the same highschool as me. What a small frickin world.... (i asked him if i could have a job...he laughed, but i was serious)

Need to get some quality ZZZ´s tonight as we leave at 7am tomorrow for the park, and will be sleeping little, freezing a lot, and working our legs like they´ve never been worked before. Buena Suerte to us. Upon our return, I´ll be crossing the border to argentina to renew my visa, and to visit El Calafate, where Perito Moreno, the massive glaciers are. Hopefully by the end of this trip I will have 200 new pictures to replaced the deleted ones.
chau chau