Little Earthquakes

We've had 5 or 6 earthquakes since I arrive about a month ago. While I was in my senior year at Smith I woke up one morning to an earthquake around 7am. It shook my bed and woke me but I turned around and went back to sleep- not computing what had just happened. At breakfast when I had heard what I had failed to recognize as an earthquake, I was disappointed in myself for not being cognizant enough to notice what I had experienced- I could now tick the earthquake box, but I had no idea what even the minor rumble had felt like. I know now...

I realized what was happening the first time here- Sylvain and I looked at each other and thought aloud, what was that? The second time, the next night, it felt like it came from the roof down, like some corrugated metal house of cards built on the roof had toppled- we exchanged looks again, wondering aloud what that was, and moved on with our lives. After that we've had several small earthquakes that have felt like some big hand was jiggling our building. We had a couple today and Sylvain decided if we had a big one, we weren't well situated. Apparently, this area is about due for another big one, the last being about 20 years ago. I told him relative to the situation in the Northern Hemisphere with Swine Flu, we were relatively safe.

Yesterday on my trip to Vina I bought some yarn and today I started making a scarf. I had a bit of a misadventure in Vina and after successfully purchasing the yarn I asked the woman how to get to one of the Universities in town, she told me to take a yellow collectivo just outside the shop. I did, and as excited as I was to take my first collectivo with a sweet abuela sitting next to me, I wasn't very excited when he charged me well over what I should have paid and dropped me off what wouldn't have taken me more than 10 minutes to walk- I find it really irritating here when people act like walking a mere 10 minutes is far to long to go on foot- I have found this to be the case more often than I can comprehend... The university wasn't a campus, it was an administration building and so that was even more disappointing... I couldn't post any fliers either because it was gated. So instead I walked around posting them of telephone polls. On my way home from Vina I got on the bus and said Vaparaiso por favor. It took me about 5 minutes to realize I was headed the opposite way from Valpo and although I was angry with the bus driver for not bothering to tell me he wasn't headed to Valpo, I stayed on the bus a bit longer to see the coast. Sylvain and I visited my friend Mike in San Fran in April and we spent a day driving up the coast in a zip car; the views were stunning, and the coast here reminded me somewhat of that drive, but far less breathtaking.... Eventually I got off and put myself in the direction towards home, but not without giving the bus driver a piece of my mind.