Dear Chile, on further reflection, I think your country is worth my $131.

Where to start... This is my problem when I haven't updated in a while.
Let's see. Well last week I went to Chile to visit Santiago and Vina del Mar (oh and Kelsey and Amanda and Dania too..). It was pretty awesome, so nice to be with people I know well and who know me. I also got free housing, which balanced out the money you have to pay the Chilean Treasury on entering. This is a reciprocity fee, and apparently it is caused by the fact that Chilean citizens have to pay to get into the US, so they charge us right back. Logical, but it's not my fault!
Oh well.
Anyway. Santiago is a nice capital city, smaller than Buenos Aires and covered in grass and trees. It's kind of a DC to Buenos Aires's New York, to give you some idea. It seemed cleaner to me, despite all the smog. Maybe the fact that I was just visiting gave me a more touristy view of it. We saw all the touristy stuff, La Moneda, La Chascona, La Plaza de Armas, and the Cerros, and then when Amanda come we basically walked through the entirety of the city.
Then when Kelsey went to Torres del Paine (honestly, you couldn't have put me in your suitcase?), Amanda and I went to Vina, where she lives in a palace next to the beach (You think I'm kidding. I'm only slightly exaggerating). The beach was beautiful, and we spent a day in Valparaiso, which is really really cool with all the crazy colored houses and staircases to nowhere. Otherwise, I mostly got to relax.
The impression I got in Chile was that the Chileans are really happy people. They're a very different population from the Portenos--for one, they aren't of European descent and so look more typically "South American". I don't know if they're more warm or open than the Portenos, but they certainly seem so when first meeting them. They're calling you "mi amor" or "querido" after the first minute. I think this is just something they say, the way old women call everybody "dear", but they definitely don't do that here in BsAs.
Then there's the Chilean form of Spanish, which you wouldn't think would be that different considering how close they are to Argentina. Think again. I didn't realize both how accustomed I'd become to the Porteno accent and also how much it had crept into my own speech until I opened my mouth in Chile. I also think it's funny how I've had both Chileans and Argentines tell me that their dialect of Spanish is the weirdest and most difficult. They've definitely got a competition thing going.
There're a lot of other minor differences, like they sell more fruits and veggies there, I think, and I found fresh spinach (!!) and yogurt in a tub rather than in a bag. (Short digression, I don't think I've explained this before, but all the dairy products here come in big bags. Milk, yogurt, ricotta cheese... it kinda weirds me out. Also, then you have to have a pitcher to put the bag in in your fridge. Seems rather inefficient to me).
Of course it all caught up to me the minute I got back, I've spent a pretty stressed week trying to catch up on my mountains of reading and finish my taxes. But that's ok, it was worth it.
I also got to go this week and get a form saying I don't have a criminal record in Argentina so that I can go get my visa in a couple of weeks. This seems pointless to me, since I have three months on a tourist visa every time I reenter the country, so after going to Chile I have till mid-July. But apparently UCA won't transfer our transcripts if we don't have a student visa, so... It was rather a fun time standing in lines, but was more efficient than I had been lead to believe. Fingerprints, what are your parent's names (Thomas Thomas? *incredulous giggle*), stamp stamp, you're done.
I had a moment the other day, while reading Borges' Fervor de Buenos Aires, of love for BsAs. Slowly, surely, it's coming. I don't know that you can live in a place for any length of time and not start to love it, at least in part. I may never live here again, I may not miss it like I miss Paris or Boulder or even DC, but there's always a fondness that comes with familiarity. There are parts I love and hate about the city, but I know how it works now. I can get from the airport without problems. When people mention intersections I kind of know where they are. I only really look at my Guia T when I'm going somewhere I haven't been before. I know what kind of empanadas I like and I've started craving dulce de leche. I say "vos" more readily than "tu". People ask me for directions like I might actually know something. In short, I've got a portena veneer.
For the rest, you'll have to see the pictures.