Salsa, Poll dancing, and Halloween

We spent the weekend in Santiago which was nice since we hadn't really done for a while. Being ambitious, we decided to go out on Thursday night. Since I started teaching English Thursday mornings and having to get up at 6:30, I usually am so tired at night that I go to bed early. I decided to rally this time, and we went to a barrio we had never visited, Barrio Brazil. It's crazy that we've been here for more than 4 months, and theres still so much more to see. We went to this Mexican restaurant with delicious food and margaritas. We wanted to go out dancing after, but the club we were looking for was closed on Thursdays. We went to another neighboorhood, and walked around, but of course at 12:30/12:45 everything is still empty. We sat at a club that had a live band, and I was falling asleep in my chair. I decided it was time for bed. I made a valiant effort though--got home around 3am.

Friday afternoon we had a talk about Religion in Chile. I'm taking a religion class this semester, and I think all of it is so interesting. There's so much about religion that I don't know about, and especially in the context of Chile, which is a rather catholic country, it's especially interesting to learn about. I went to a salsa club for a friends birthday. I hadn't gone salsa dancing in a few months, but it was extremely fun. At first I was horrible, and not that I magically became fantastic, but I started to get the hang of it. It's nice because at salsa clubs people will ask you to dance, you will dance for a song or two,  say thank you and then you part ways. Its fun to dance with different people, and not have to worry about the creepers you might find at other types of clubs. We got there early, around 11:30ish, and after dancing for a couple of hours, everyone cleared off the dancefloor and there was----a poll dancing competition. of course. The lucky contestants were two woman, one guy who probably should have kept his shirt on, and then one tiny woman in her 30s or 40s who climbed up the poll. Bottom line: very entertaining. At around 3 they started playing reggaeton music, and we decided it was time to go.

Saturday, Halloween!! Definitely not as popular here. Apparently it because a holiday as we know it about 5 or 10 years ago. There were a lot of parties that probably were 'halloween parties' but no one really dressed up, it was very easy to spot the foreigners. We decided we had to dress up--i mean it's halloween, so we bought wings and went as fairies. We went to a club in an ex-factory, which was huge, and had 3 or 4 floors all with different types of music. It got packed really fast. When we decided to leave, there was a line of people waiting to get in, at around 3:30am. I don't think i'll ever get used to the nightlife here...
out 3 nights in a row, impressive right?!

I'm in my last 3 weeks of classes, crazy! Time to do all the work that I didn't have all semester, uh oh...