La Chilengüita: Missing Viña

This weekend my husband and I traveled to Viña, as we do quite often, to hang out with his family and enjoy the ocean air. Part of the trip was dedicated to moving my suegros (in-laws) back to their old apartment. About one year ago, they moved into a new apartment which had just been built. The point of that move was to have a better view of the ocean and have more sun hit the house. The “old” or previous apartment was on the 2nd floor and the sun hardly ever enters it due to the way it faces. Well it turns out they are making all the new buildings like crap—using minimum quality materials, making them the size of matchboxes, and trying to save in any way possible while still charging a butt-load of money. So what did that mean for my suegros? Well, less space was obviously a thumbs-down…especially since it meant going from a 3-bedroom apt. to a 2-bedroom one. This meant that when we went to visit, we stayed in my cuñada’s (sister-in-law’s) room while she slept elsewhere in the house. And while this is typically not a problem for Chileans as they are very accommodating in that sense—I absolutely hated sleeping in her room because uh, hello invasion of space. Right, that is my gringa side talking, but it drove me nuts. Now that they are back in the old apartment, a bed was put in the extra bedroom and voilah a guest room for us! The crappy construction of the new apartment meant that my sister-in-law could hear everything that happened in the apartment next door. Even if they turned on the faucet, she would wake up. She must be a very sensitive sleeper because I’ve never had problems waking up when we slept there, but as it bothers her and affects her quality of life—that is just not cool. There were also problems with the bathrooms, the administration of the whole building, etc. So back they went to the old apartment. We spent all day Saturday moving them. My job was to help in the moving truck and watch the things so no one would steal them. When the guys would bring the furniture, boxes, etc. to the truck and set them inside, I would take care to make more space by pushing it in further. Then the moving guys would organize the puzzle-like truck to fit everything in and return for more items. When we began unloading I would unpack and move everything that I could lift to the edge of the truck so they could just grab it and take it inside. That really helped the unloading process speed up. Overall, the move went well. After the actual moving, I tried to help out where I could. Christian was busy installing all the light fixtures, and anything else electric. My mother-in-law and sister-in-law went about organizing and putting things away. Since they had already lived there before, there was a space for everything.

Saturday night, although we were dead tired, we reanimated ourselves to go have a drink with our friend Clarita who just moved back to Chile to be with her fiancé. Hmm, that sounds kind of bad. It wasn’t hard to muster up energy to hang out with her, but that was because it was her. There are few people we would have gone out with that night after being so tired. Clarita studied abroad with me during the 1st semester. She, la Boricua and Kathy were my best friends on the program and we had some great adventures together. She has been with her fiancé around the same amount of time that Christian and I have been together and thus we have been able to share many of the relationship milestones together. I am super pumped that she is back because it helps make living in Chile a bit like it was before, even though I’m in Santiago and she’s in Viña.

Sunday was cloudy in the morning and so I took some time to edit some pictures that I’ve been meaning to work on. Christian was helping organize more and move this piece of furniture here or there or wherever they wanted it. As soon as the sun came out, Christian and I went to the beach to take some Christmas pictures. Then I aproveché de (took advantage of) sunbathe a bit to hopefully get a tan. I didn’t have too long though because we were invited in the evening to go have once at Christian’s ex-girlfriend’s (K.) house. That sounds strange, I know. But she was really close to Christian’s family. In fact, he moved to Germany to be with her in 2006. Had things worked out, it was a permanent move. But alas, fate was not in the stars for them and he returned to Chile where I then met him and blah blah blah, they lived happily ever after. No, but really, he and his ex have stayed friends and I have no problems with that because I know that when it was over, it was over. She actually moved back to Chile in 2007 (I think) and began dating someone that she had met through her work. They just got married in Oct. and are expecting their first baby within the next 2 weeks. Since my suegra hadn’t seen K. pregnant nor seen their condo, we were all invited to hang out a bit before the baby arrives. We had fun hanging out with K. and her husband. There is a huge laguna by their house and we all went for a walk out there and took some pictures. Sunday night we had plans to celebrate our friend Hugo’s 28th birthday with him at a bar called O’H. It was pretty tranquilo, but a lot of people we knew were there and it was great to see Hugo after like 2 months! I had a mudslide which was *delish*, and super strong. We weren’t out late, but long enough to see midnight come around, saludar Hugo for his birthday and chat a bit more with friends.

Yesterday was a holiday which meant no work. YAY for random Catholic holidays! While the topic of the number of and reasons behind Catholic holidays will be saved for the future, I must say the number of long weekends in Chile is a definite plus. First thing in the morning I went to the beach for a good solid hour and baked in the sun. It was amazing. And it made me miss my daily trips to the beach that I took back in the Summer of ’07. We came home after lunch and ran errands, cooked food, did some of the normal weekend house work, and chatted with mis padres on Skype.

Spending so much time in Viña, and on the beach, really made me miss living in Viña. It is such a beautiful city and in the summer you can’t find a better place to be. I really wish there were more job opportunities there because we would move back in a heartbeat. I’m super thankful that I chose to study abroad in Viña and Valpo over Santiago. Best decision ever. Now I just have to figure out a way that my husband and I can earn the same amount of money while living in Viña…..I guess for now, we’ll just have to settle on making more frequent trips to visit my suegros with the intention of hitting up the beach.