Tremors!

Not to sound like a broken record, but life is moving at a pretty normal pace, with a few mentionables:

• We went to an asado (i.e. cookout) at a friend's house in Valparaíso last weekend.  Valpo is way harder to navigate than Viña, and Freya had to meet up with us to guide us up the winding road to the off-season hostel where she and ten other students live.  It was a lot of fun, though, to meet all kinds of crazy travelers from around the world.
• I can now say that I've tried vegemite.  Freya (above-mentioned friend from the asado) is an Australian student who's been here since last semester, and the other day she brought a big tube of it along with a pack of crackers to share with the class.  It was interesting; not bad at all, actually, but maybe that was just the cracker covering it up...?
• I've been able to get more involved with church recently, including the start of a small group (as of last week), attending a missions seminar featuring a Chilean missionary recently returned from Mozambique, a lunch for exchange students, etc.
• Marie, Vicky, and I bought bus tickets to San Pedro de Atacama - the worlds driest desert located in the northernmost region of Chile.  We'll be gone from Oct. 31 to Nov. 6, although the ride one-way is some 22-24 hours (yet also considerably cheaper than plane tickets...)
• I have now been through two tremors.  Well, ok, that's false.  Rephrase: I've been through a lot of tremors, but I've been conscious for two of them.  They've typically happened in the wee hours of the morning so I sleep through them, but last weekend one hit around 10:30 p.m.  It wasn't too exciting; my bed started shaking as if the neighbors downstairs were being rowdy and it took me a second to figure out what it actually was.  Today another, considerably stronger one hit, reportedly rating a 5.7 on the Richter scale.  I was at school for this one, waiting for the bus in a little study area when all the sudden the windows started rattling all crazy and there was this sound like persistent rolling thunder.  Instead of fading, though, it kept getting louder and I could totally feel the building shaking at its foundations.  It passed in a matter of seconds, but it was certainly impressive.
  [Sidenote: Actual big-deal, for-real harmful earthquakes are classified anywhere above a 7 on the Richter scale and only happen once every twenty years or so here.  The last one was in 2010; everyone still talks about it and there are a lot of buildings still under repair.  All that to say, there is essentially zero chance of me being caught in an earthquake, so don't exhaust yourself worrying about that :) ]