feliz nuevue 2008

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hi all

new years eve was really great.
we had an english guy (who spoke spanish really well), australian guy and american guy staying at our hostel and so we organised with them to go to see the fireworks with them and four other australian girls they had met in bolivia.

the fireworks were fantastic - going off all around the bay and the atmophere was buzzing. we left the other guys and headed back to our hostel, where we were really welcomed by Victoria (our hostel owner - Casa Victoria) and her friends and family.

i lost my camera to small boy for a while, who was hillarious - putting us into position to take photos and bossing us around to get the best shot. he even stood on a chair to get us all in - totally upstaged me.

it was really nice to be part of a local party, and the more drinks the younger girls had the better their english got. Carolina, (staying with victoria from santiago) took us to a lookout point at about 2am where a huge street party was going on (because evidentaly it is really uncool to go before then). it was an absolute privalige to be taken there and she spoke to us alot about Chilean culture and politics. considering there was 100,000s of young people drikning, we didnt see one fight and everyone was just in really good spirits. you can see chile is prospering, and i think the people are really proud of the countrys recent liberation.

feliz nuevue (sp?) is happy new year in spanish, and we were shouting it out with everyone else, except one guy said to megan that she was saying feliz wevue, and wevue is egg, so she was telling everyone to enjoy their egg! sera is doing much better with the spanish than moo and i. a couple of people have told her she has really good pronunciation. im trying hard, but im just pretty useless. were getting a lot of looks that make us feel pretty ignorant, as almost all the backpackers here (except the australians) speak atleast 2 languages.

anyway, new years eve was just an unbelievable night and i think we just felt really lucky to be a part of it all. also soooo luck to have found Victoria and her hostel.

we stayed in valparaiso another full day and left on the 2nd. it kinda lost its charm after new years because everyone just urinated in the street during the party. blah it stunk so bad the next day.
lots of people had trouble getting accommodation, so people were spread around the city sleeping on the streets the next morning. a few looked like them needed a poke and maybe some sunscreen, or CPR another guy had, had his shoes stolen. there were lots of punks in valpaiaiso, and also here in santiago. they have a really big live music culture and big bands come here - like audioslave, my chemical romance, etc, etc.

overall our trip to valpariaso was fantastic, a good warm up for things to come i hope.

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