hello. i must apologise for my lack of photo putting up. this blog website is a bit of a pesadilla when it comes to photos and as a consequence i have become very lazy. i assure you i am taking lots of photos. they all go up on my facebook so if you have a way of accessing that then its much easier. i will put up some soon though i promise.

these past few weeks have been filled with so much activity i have very much been pulled out of my jelly filled lethargic bubble. i believe my last blog was when i just arrived in santiago having said goodbye to the parents. so after being a little shell shocked to be in a real city for a change and when we got over the fact that the bus driver gave us a wad of fake notes in change we managed to find our hostel and settle in a bit. our time there was spent going to some amazing museums and art galleries, hanging round in the hostel and making the mistake of climbing up what can only be described as a mountain, to see a statue of santa maria. this became a mistake halfway up when we ran out of energy having had about 3 hours sleep the night before and the realisation that there was no way we would make it to the top before sunset. when we reached the top it was all worth it although almost dark and we ended up having to do the descent in the pitch black through the woods which was a bit terrifying. we met lots of interesting characters including an english guy who only uses baby wipes to wip his bottom! hahaha. as we were living in a 1 bed dorm, it was a bit inconvenient to turn the light on before going to bed. this resulted in a very unthorough removal of that huge pile of things that always seems to accumulate on a bed. after a troubled nights sleep i woke up and was certain that there was a razor somewhere in my bed. i found the offending item just 'chilling' next to my leg. lucky that i didnt wake up scarred.

we moved on to Valparaiso which may be one of my favourite places ever, we very nearly didnt go and we arrived very late but i quickly became very glad we had. we had a bit of a run in with the bus man, apparently it's a real issue if you move seat, so we had to spend the whole journey with him watching us through his silly glass cubicle. after arriving at the hostel in a wild fit of hysterics (got the wrong place a few times, ended up in some random womans house and then eventually getting seriously stuck in the door of our hostel) we calmed down. it was a tiny hostel with only about 5 other people staying there. turns out these 5 were amazing and we all got on really well. we went out for dinner with some and i had a really good night. we met this crazy, tiny chilean man with giant eyes who got chatting to us when he recognised one of our companions who had been on the news after being arrested for grafitti. haha.

we spent the next day just wandering out photographing the beautiful city, i found a spectacular pair of purple trousers in the street which have since been robbed, i will retrieve them! when it came to leaving, again it all happened very last minute. we spent almost an hour wandering casually round santiago where we changed buses, while at the bus station we spent quite a while washing grapes etc. we realised with 8 minutes to spare that we were in the wrong bus station and had to run run run to the other and just about made it but very sweaty and red. we then spent the next 8 hours next to the toilet, unfortunately there was an 'ill' woman on the bus. i dont think i will elaborate, the memory of the smell is quite traumatic.

straight back to work in the orphanage the next morning which is hard but really enjoyable. i think i am in love with a little boy called bruno, he is so cute! one little boy sneaked in to the kitchen while i was washing up and turned on the gas of the over. anyone who reads this blog regularly will know i do not have the best track record with gas ovens. this was no exception andi couldnt find the switch anywhere. i ran frantically around the orphanage looking for a teacher to help me, when i found one she seemed surprised i was so stressed. haha. oh well, no one died.

so i have only a few more weeks left in mendoza and then i will be off travelling. im starting off in the north of argentina, then over to the desert in chile and then up to peru, bolivia and hopefully paraguay. miss y'all, ciao xxx