Mrs. Mancuso, you win.

I really should have listened more in Spanish class. My sister, Margie listened, and now she´s fluent in Spanish. This is hard. My last 12 hours would have been so much easier with Spanish proficiency. I´m looking forward to reading this post at the end of my trip and laughing about when I couldn´t speak Spanish. I vow to make Mrs. Mancuso, my middle school Spanish teacher, proud at some point during this trip.

I´m in Valparaiso, a coastal Chilean town that apparently goes nuts for New Year´s. I think the whole country was here last night. All the hotels and hostels are full (of hung over Chileans and travelers). I´ve taken the first thing I could find, which is actually a nice, but expensive room in a bed and breakfast.

People are friendly and seem generally interested in helping me out despite my ignorance of the language thus far. I´m off to find a bite to eat, if I can somehow use hand gestures to signal that I´m hungry and have money to spend. Wish me luck.