Where in the World is Casey?: on many adventures

Well funny story, I complain about not having much to write about so I go out and get a life, but come to find out when youre busy doing stuff, theres no time to write about the stuff! and then comes a weekend day where you just want to relax chill out do nothing, maybe prepare for the exam next wednesday but oh wait i could blog instead! yayyy!!! okay so, much has happened since I last wrote, including me becoming extra aware of how close my departure is and how mixed my feelings really are. I really have gotten used to it here... but never fear, I am still comin to a city near you! :)
interesting thing casey did #1: Decided to try surfing... I figured, hey I saw Blue Crush and Lords of Dogtown, it shouldnt be that hard right? wrong. i got eaten by the waves. but I had fun in their digestive system and as such will definitely try catching that perfect wave in rhode island dudes, hang loose and cowabonga mann.

so yep, thats me, with a surfboard, and my friend allison, with her surfboard :) we didnt realize how much bigger hers was from mine until we took this picture... lol. so, I am guessing you readers out there wanna know how on earth we came across such fetching outfits with matching boards and those beautiful salty waves (olas en espanol) behind us... well, it all started when we came upon a poster in the office of our program.... it advertised a weekend excursion to a town not more than 45 minutes from Valparaiso, called Quintay. We said, hey lets do it... then promptly forgot until I was bored in the ISA office a few weeks later and randomly facebook stalked and emailed the group, Nativos Quintay Surf. Turned out it would only be 70 luca or about 140 bucks for two nights lodging, all the food, rentals, lessons and super fun we could want! im not an ad, really. so I say to allison, hey what are you doing this weekend? (it just happened to be halloween so there was a chance she had some wild debauchery planned out) but luckily she said nothing so I suggested we be surfers for halloween. and that ladies and gentlemen, was the first trip your casey jackson has ever planned out! i mean granted, all I had to do was email with them letting them know we wanted to go and when but still, I planned something, and for those of you that know me, thats a big deal. and if you dont know me, im not sure why you are reading this, but hey maybe Im like an internet celebrity or something? but nothing like tila tequila, maybe something like the sneezing panda?

moving on, we decided to find our own way to Quintay for an adventure and also for the cheapness of a colectivo. A colectivo is like a shared taxi of sorts, so we stumbled around the bus terminal until we finally found the lovely quintay colectivos. unfortunatley we were the first there so we had to wait a while until more people showed up before they would bring us, but it ended being worth it, the guys we drove with were so nice and informative about the town. They explained Quintay is like a family, theres nobody who doesnt kno anybody if that makes any sense? imagine pittsfield. except with a caleta (fishing thingy where they gut the and we end here) and an ocean, which is expected if theres a caleta... surfing is like the skiing. so, we arrived and were quickly ushered into our room, at first it was alittle odd but we quickly moved on and moved in. The cabanas and restaurant were owned by the lovely mother of our surf instructor, the guys in the colectivo werent lying about the family thing.

They drove us down to the beach to check it out, where we proceeded to psych ourselves out looking at the fountains of anger coming from the sea. we walked back to the cabana, about a mile or so, not to bad. and so went our first day in Quintay. the juicy stuff starts now, when I explain how the ocean ate us and spit us back to shore. first of all, while we were trying to get our wet suits on, no one explained to me that the zipper goes in back so I of course but in all my effort to put it on backwards until allison starts cracking up at me tells me Im doing it wrong.. nice of her to tell me after all the pulling and stretching hmmm? after we managed to wrestle the suits on, we made our walk down to the instructor who had us draw imaginary surfboards in the sand, and practice the paddling and getting up motion. i saw this on blue crush in that scene where they taught the football players how to surf, so I knew it was legit. then we were paddle ready and headed out to sea. once we were catching waves, with the help of our instructor Cano, it was pretty fun. even tho we were essentially body surfing as we were not even kneeling yet... altho that wasnt too far away, after a few waves we decided to try to kneel and eventually stand up, we failed at the standing but are now experts at kneel surfing. and that is how pretty much the rest of the weekend went. Sunday night, the second night we were there and the first night after surfing, was Halloween. we were wiped so we didnt go the raging awesome discotec right below our bedroom... use your imagination, but we did walk the town, see what was up and we came upon trick or treaters.... apparently the custom got here around 4 or 5 years ago. well, these little "adorable children" ahem, really take the trick or treat thing seriously. Not that mother brought me trick or treating much as a child, but it was a fun night of candy hunting, no anger no spite not much scare... silly rabbit, how mistaken you are. these little ones, held up the trick part or as in spanish "dulce o la basura" or something along those lines which means sweets or trash.. not really a good tranlsation, im sure youll live. so back to the walking around, we decide to head back and turn onto the dark cross street to get back to our cabana when a stampede of screaming children come running at us throwing waterballoons in our direction at a friend or enemy it was hard to tell. poor kid, what if water didnt go with his costume, we cant all me mermaids and michael phelps for Halloween. so I see these kids wanting a new target, and like hell and i going to fork over my newly bought lollipop in honor of halloween, so I bolt, unfortunatley it revealed I am a terrible friend as I left Allison in my dust with the demon children behind her. oops! funny anecdote no? well I am full of them! :) okay so that about sums up Quintay and surfing, moving onto Pucon and the wonderful ISA planned trip down south.
I was extremely happy for this trip as I really wanted to go south, to the pategonia for instance, but ran out of time and or money. Pucon is a town in the south known for tourism, it was kind of a mix of mont tremblant and killington, and thats not really a mix as theyre the same, you get the picture. the trip down there involved a 12 hour bus ride through the night and ending with waking up in Pucon and being put onto another bus to go tour around for the day. but it was worth it, we got to see a waterfall, salta de china, and the volcanoe from a distance which is really anywhere in pucon but they brought us to a specifc place where new years eve something like 50 years back, 15 minutes to midnight the volcano exploded but didnt destroy the town because of a hill that diverted the lava. happy new years?! and we also got to see a mapuche farm. It was really funny watching all the other people on the trip interact with the farm, alot of them admitted to never having seen livestock in their life. and then the cursed guide said hed give free white water rafting tickets to whoever could catch a sheep... so half the group went galloping towards the poor scared sheep and it was sad. but this isnt a sad blog update so moving on.

This lovely woman made us sopapillas and tea. Mapuche is the Native American of Chile

this was the cabin we stayed in

The two nights we were in Pucon, we had to cook for ourselves, and somehow my cabana ended up being the one where everyone came to shower and eat and hang out when they werent sleeping or rafting.
sidenote: i went white water rafting, it was super fun, cold and awesome. unfortunatley i am a cheapskate and didnt want to pay 20 dollars for the dozen or so photos they took of our raft so I have no proof. but hey isnt my word worth enough? so the food. I have another funny anecdote, although I will most likely get in trouble with one and be told i am terrible by a few others for sharing. but hey, if that bothered me, well idk and hey this is as much for posterity and memories as it is to let you all know whats up, but moving on, so there was a lot of cooking and purchasing of food that went on with the group of friends. We had all bought our own rations for the weekend although some had coupled up with others to make stuff together, for example I made soup with allison. and junk food with allison and james. but we all had our own cheese and milk... that is until one friend, we'll call her daureen.... decided she wanted to make grilled cheese's and flan.. but to make said dishes she used the contents of the fridge, i mean hey nobody was using it at the time right? but then, when it came to light what had happened, like for example when a certain casey wanted a sandwich but had no cheese, or when others wanted some hot chocolate from leche (milk) it was mysteriously missing. Its nothing terrible in the grand scheme of things, but I could have really gone for that sandwich, and I know of atleast two people who wanted some cereal and hot cocoa but were left in want. thankfully however the flan was for everyone and up until the minute we left it was being shov.. i mean offered. so the joke of the trip became, got milk? no but i got flan!
what is flan anyway? i mean i love me some jello but why would someone go in and ruin jello like that, really nasty substance i must tell you, or maybe i was just biased. i am a jello lady after all. so that pretty much sums up my last few weeks, its been super fun. I go to the beach anytime i can inbetween classes or after to catch a few rays. and by that i mean spend a few minutes out there get burnt and hurt for days. i will have leather skin when i grow old simply from this trip, but it will be worth it when i come back the winter wonderland with tanned glowing skin. i promise! anyway, i hope all are well and look forward to seeing everyone!!!

love, Casey J.

ps pictures, as always