Hey, do you think the Chilean girls speak piglatin?

Santiago is a pointy city. Houses are gated with spike-tipped iron, and the tips bloom into sharp petals. The car dealership we passed on the way to the bar was protected with an electric fence, which I guess isn't so unusual. The bar was called La Fuente Chica, and served 3 liter towers of beer that you poured like draft at your table. It was all boy talk between the towers, hands of the clock providing orientation. 11 o'clock over my left shoulder got mixed reviews, but the waitresses were well received. About an hour later our teacher's daughter came, 24 cute, looks exactly like her mom except without all those things that age does to you. Managed the attention of five boys for a while, before table conversation fell into a more naturally portioned state. We stayed there for a couple hours while a couple TV's played MTV jams. Outside the bar a beautiful girl and her sort of cute friend approached us looking for cigarettes. I gave them a cigarette each and lit. We ended up in conversation with them. They asked us what we were doing and we said we didn't know. The vague promise of sex was in the air, for someone, somehow, somewhere, but like usual it was only a faint scent. Still, it was enough. Somehow we ended up at a shuttered kiosk on the corner where their guy friends were drinking a Chilean alcohol called Pisco. Conversation was mostly singing American songs and later, trying to learn our names. They sang Take On Me, which the beautiful girl sang as "Take off me", Gangster's Paradise, a song that goes "Pongale Pongale Pongale" which means drink, drink, drink, and a song we learned recently where a girl asks "Por donde" (where?) and the man says "tras" (from behind). One of our number commented that these girls were playing us, and indeed it seemed they were. Before we left, the tallest and blondest among us requested their phone numbers, and even I and the original complainer, who were stationed somewhat defiantly along the curb, willingly gave our names when asked by the beautiful girl, whose name was Cata, so that we could be friends on Facebook.

Classes are over. Now it's just a dead week and 3 finals and then I'm home. I'm excited to go home. I feel like I didn't "make the most" of my time here. I played a lot of chess. I missed out on some vacations. Even now, I could be in the south of Chile, where it's raining and gorgeous, but I declined, albeit to potentially spend time with friends here. I could probably even make a trip somewhere next weekend, which I suppose I might do. I don't really have any desire to, other than the desire to have done it. It's strange and I don't how how I feel about it.

The last trip I took was to a desert in the north of Chile called the Atacama desert, which is one of the driest places on earth, as it hasn't rained in something like 100 years or something like that. It was pretty good to look at for a while. There were some good sand formations and our hostal owner was some kind of awesome breed of party animal who took us around to bars and offered us various illicit substances. All in all, a good trip.