Trip to Valparaiso

I woke up today, ate a breakfast with Manuel (bread with palta (guacamole) and some tea to drink) and then we went to Valparaiso to get some things. We took the metro and, again, I had some one on one time to awkwardly conversate. However, I'm hoping I'm getting better. For those already familiar with Spanish, I'll learn you on some basics of "chileno":

-Chileans speak very fast..like the fastest of any Spanish speaking country in the world. Not like this matters for someone as clueless as me anyway but most Spanish speakers feel incompetent when they come here and try to have conversations. Imagine how I feel.

-Chileans leave off S's in the end of words and sometimes completely leave out the middle of words. Combine this with the above fact and it's disastrous

-There is a whole list of slang words that are unique solely to Chilean Spanish and heard nowhere else. Pollolo=novia (girlfriend), caña=resaca (hangover) etc. etc.

Anyway, Manuel is great. He's really excited to teach me spanish. We stay up late just talking to eachother. The past two nights, I've had to cut the conversation short because my head hurt. I don't know if he's just humoring me but I'll take it. I also ate some kind of fish today called "congrio."  Out of curiosity, I looked up pictures of it and it's a horrifying creature.  Long and snake like but Chileans love it and it's actually the only good thing I've had to eat yet here..besides the palta.  De todos maneras, yo aprendi mucho hoy, mañana voy a aprender mas.