Some Explorations

This weekend was fairly exciting, because I finally got a chance to go exploring a little bit (as well as sleep in a bit). On Saturday, after lunch, I went to the Costanera Center. It is a huge mall that is about a miles walk from my apartment. The mall has 6 floors. The bottom 5 are all stores, and the 6th floor is half restaurants and half a movie theater. On top of the 6th floor is a huge building (the tallest in Santiago I'm told) that is part a hotel and part offices. The building in total is 300m tall!

In this photo, you can see the building. It's the tallest one there :) It was very cool to go explore. Here are some more photos I took of the inside!

These was a very cool waterfall that was controlled by a computer and made shapes and such as the water was falling. It was hard to get a good picture of it, but this was my attempt.

This mall also had a full size car dealership on the bottom floor. Kind of strange for a mall, but also kind of neat.

This store I thought was very interesting. LAN is a South American airline. This would be like having a SouthWest store in one of our malls in the U.S.
On Sunday, I went to a place called "Pueblito Los Dominicos." Anatolio and Marcela gave me a couple of Metro tickets they had, and I took the Metro to Los Dominicos. The tickets were labeled "Adulto Mayor." Since they gave them to me, I assumed "Adulto Mayor" just meant that these tickets were for adults (side note here: "Adulto Mayor" means senior citizen). When I got down to the Metro, I was a little confused since it was my first time using it. I asked the attendant for help, and when he looked at the ticket, he gave me a very confused look. He said, "you're not an adulto mayor." Me, thinking that I was, said, "Yes I am." When I said this he looked at me even more confused. At this point, I realized what "Adulto Mayor" meant. I felt so awkward, and wasn't quite sure what to do. I looked down and noticed that the terminal for Adulto Mayor was also for Students, so then I began telling him that I was a student. I guess the tickets aren't the same though, because he just looked at me even more confused. Finally, he said he would let me go this time, but gave me a warning. Needless to say, on the way back, I put my ticket in the terminal and walked through without talking to anyone. Anyway, basically Pueblito Los Dominicos is like a little walled off village with a bunch of little shops and lots of hand crafted stuff. It was very fun to walk around and shop in. I took some pictures while I was there, but unfortunately, I wasn't thinking and didn't actually take a picture of the little village area. If I go back, I will make sure to snap some shots of the actual place.

As I was walking into the village, I happened to look up, and snapped this shot of the Andes with the sun setting on them. Quite a beautiful sight. :)

One of the very first shops that I came to was a pet store, or at least what looked like one. Although not native to Chile, this colorful fellow was out front and was in quite a photogenic mood :)

This curious little friend was inside the shop. He was very cute, and I couldn't help but snap a picture of him as well :)
Unfortunately those were all the pictures that I took of the place, because I got so distracted with all the shops. If I go back, I promise more.
Some other things to share this week:
I wandered into the Tonelería this week (where they manufacture the barrels) and took some pictures to share.

Here are some barrels that haven't quite been made into barrels yet.

Some of the almost finished products here.

And here's some of the parts that are pretty crucial to the whole process :)
Finally, the pictures everyone has been waiting for!!! I finally took a picture with Marcela and Anatolio so that you all can see who it is that I've been living with :)

I hope you all enjoyed this post. I've been very grateful for all of the positive feedback that I've been receiving about the blog so far, so thanks to everyone who has been so supportive. As always, feel free to comment below or send me an email if you want more! :) Love to you all!

-Ryan