New Digs

Yesterday I moved into my first real apartment in Valparaíso. And eventhough I was anticipating feeling lonely after leaving the hostel, I really have no idea what to do with so much time to myself. The apartment does not have working internet yet, so I am writing from a cafe. My room is about five feet by fourteen feet with its own tiny bathroom at one end. One of my roommates described it as "austere" (she's German...) which sort of gives you an idea. Fitting with the general level of color saturation, the walls of my bedroom are a robin's egg blue, the kitchen is yellow (the best color for kitchen, probably) and the dining room/common area is a sort of orangey-terra cotta color. Currently it is Sunday and a religious holiday so most stores aren't open. Which is sort of annoying since I am missing some key elements in my living space (a mirror of any kind, for example). The cold, grey-ish weather we've been having this weekend has been a little tough on my moods.

So this week I am going to begin the search for a job in earnest. Which will probably look something like me walking into places and stammering fragments of sentences in Spanish, smiling, leaving my resume and never hearing from anyone. I think I'll have to get a cell phone here in order to effectively find work. Especially if my lack of Internet continues. It's been sort of nice to be without one these two weeks. I also really only know about six people in this entire country, so I really don't need to call people very often. But maybe it would make me feel more connected...

This blog post has been a sort of fascinating exploration of the Chilean keyboard for me. I don't think of myself as being the greatest typist, but move things around and I am completely hopeless. Additionally there is no "undo typing" option on the edit menu, so when I accidentally erased the whole post with an unknown key command, I had to start from scratch. I wonder if there is some sort of universal keyboard that people in multi-lingual countries use (can you imagine what a South African or Indian keyboard would look like? They have so many official languages!)...

So I hope everyone had a very happy Halloween. Yesterday when I was grocery shopping I saw a couple of older ladies wearing brightly colored witch hats, but that was about the extent of the celebration here. There was also a drunk fruit vendor heckling all such women and calling them natural witches. Which was funny and sort of surreal.