Saturday, August 14, 2010

super long post filled with amazing chile-ness!

so i haven't posted in over a week. sorry about that. andddd of course i've been doing a whole crap load of stuff, so this post is probably going to be ridiculously long. oh well.

i actually wrote this down on paper and was supposed to post it on tuesday:
"so i'm currently writing this in the comfort of the library at school, everyone has PSU (which is like the SATs) but the exchange students don't have to take it. we get to sit in the library for five hours instead. so Ipek (the girl from Turkey) has been writing Spanish vocab and i've been reading and translating this children's book.

oh i apologize for not posting sooner. i've had time but so much has happened that it's a pain to write all of it down.

so i believe the last time i posted was friday, when i went out. haha that was so fun. and i can't believe that i understood the majority of the movie. oh, i also had delicious ice cream. i had three flavors: caramel toffee, cappuccino, and mint chips. it was SO good. so after school, bowling, ice cream, and a movie, i was soooo tired. however, when i came home, ale was having a little going away party and all of her friends and classmates were here. they were eating cake and watching home videos that had all of her classmates. it was really cute. i also had to stay and somewhat mingle with the classmates.

next comes saturday. the whole family climbed into the car and drove for about two hours to this ski resort. unfortunately, the resort was closed, but we still got to ski. and my dad helped me learn how to ski. looking back on it, it was pretty fun. i fell a lot though. and friggin a it's hard to get back up. i tried my best though. we also had a picnic and made a snowman. it was so beautiful there. which reminds me, i need to make a flikr or something for my pictures. i also need to take more pictures. haha, i don't want to look like a complete gringa though. oh well, i'll do it eventually.
anyways, we stayed at the mountain for about three or four hours and then went home. man i was so tired after that, that i slept most of the way home. i also don't notice my carsickness when i'm sleeping.

sunday was Dia del Niño. I'm not entirely sure what it is exactly, but i think it's a day for kids haha.also, sunday here is like family day. so i met an abundance of aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, a nephew (i think), etc. they were also here to see ale before she left. oh and one of my aunts is an english teacher, so i talked with her a bit. also, one of my cousins (he's older) understands english, but failed to tell me until much later.
i hate how stupid i feel when people ask me questions and i have no idea what they're saying. they all speak so damn fast. i know i've only been here a week, but i want to learn faster. luckily, my classmates, teachers, and family are patient with me. anyways, back to sunday. ale had to take a bus to Santiago at like 10:30 at night. so the family and some cousins came to see her off. we're driving to santiago on thursday though, to see her off at the airport. i'm gonna miss her :c it's so cool though that she's going to be two hours away from where i live. and her host family is related to one of my friends. small world.

sooo monday was an interesting day. not entirely bad but not entirely good. i'd say stressful is the word for it. so first off, i was rather tired in the morning. and we had chemistry. haha for some reason the teacher had a chemistry book in english, which was really awesome. unfortunately, it didn't help me at all with the worksheet we had to do. so i just ended up feeling incompetent and frustrated. that was a great start to my day. i also apparently started some drama among my classmates, without even knowing it. and so began the culture shock. so here's what happened:

the girls i went out with on friday, i've been spending a lot of time with them and sitting with them and stuff. like just being good friends and whatnot. i also kinda felt that some of the other girls didn't like me. however, that wasn't the case at all. apparently everyone wants to talk to me and get to know me, so they're kind of hurt that i've only been spending time with those girls. this has also started some cat fights and almost led to some of the girls going to talk to the teacher about it. so of course i want to get to know everyone so i have to figure out how to integrate myself into this group that's known each other for many years. without knowing the language. sweet deal. i also have to spend more time with other people without hurting my other friends' feelings. anddd i've only been here a week. so today after school i'm going out with my original friends, and on friday i'm going out with some other friends/classmates to a club. haha oh well, at least they like me :p

so that's what i've been up to for the past few days. love to everyone <3"
haha and that was supposed to be posted on tuesday.
after school on tuesday karen, yisley, and i walked to pizza hut for lunch. silvy joined us later, but she had to finish this olympics thing at school. oh, also the waitress said that she really liked my eyes and would intensely stare at them when she came to take our order or bring our food. so during this lunch date, i realized some differences from america. first of all, in restaurants, you seat yourself. at least that's what we did at pizza hut. next, you don't get ice in your drink. i really do miss this. also, they eat pizza here with a knife and fork. haha i wanted to just pick up the damn pizza like i normally do, but i withheld. also the waitress puts the pizza slices on your plate, which was nice haha. also in this restaurant, you paid at the front counter, instead of having them bring you a bill.
so after lunch we walked to this mall downtown and got some ice cream. i was kind of full from all the pizza, but i got some anyways. they also made me order it myself haha to practice speaking to strangers in spanish. however the second i start speaking, it's completely obvious that i don't speak the language, so people are usually patient with me. haha so when i ordered i didn't actually know what i was ordering (which has been happening a lot lately) but it ended up being quite delicious. it was ice cream, manjar (which is slightly like caramel, but better), and oreo cookie things. next we looked around the mall for a bit and then walked yisley to the bus station, because she had to go home. next we walked to another bus station and took a bus to karen's house and hung out there for a bit. then my mom called and wanted silvy and karen to show me where the YMCA was. so we walked there and then we all walked to my house and hung out there. eventually, karen and silvy left though and i went off to bed.

to be honest, i can't remember what i did on wednesday. i didn't have to go to school because there were PSUs again, and i wanted to sleep in. oh right, so i woke up around 10 and had some breakfast. then i went back to bed and my mom woke me up at 2:30 and we had lunch. after lunch, my mom, javi, and i went into town to register my visa. then on monday, i'm going to get my carnet. then we dropped javi off for skating lessons (i think) and mom and i went back home. then i'm pretty sure i did nothing for the rest of the day.

thursday was a ridiculously long day. we all woke up at 6 to get ready to leave for santiago. at about 7:30 my parents, javi, two of ale's friends, and i climbed into a car and drove for 8 hours. i got to sit in the middle between two girls who i'd never really talked to before, so i didn't get to sleep at all. that was fun. i also ended up getting carsick, like usual. when we finally got to santiago (around 4 ish) we stopped at my dad's brothers house and had lunch there. i got to meet my uncle, aunt, and three cousins. oh yeah, my dad has 10 brothers and sisters. anyways, we had a BBQ and it was SO GOOD. like, usually, i don't like meat that much, but this was just so damn delicious. like legit.
so after lunch (we were there for a good two hours) we headed over to the airport to find ale. oh man, there were SO many kids going to the US from chile. like there are six Americans that came to chile this year. there were like at least 60 going to the U.S. oh i also found another person that was going to be living near me. i tried to talk to him to find out which city, but he kind of blew me off. but all of us sat around the airport for about three hours waiting for the AFS kids to leave. oh, also i'm not supposed to leave Temuco without telling AFS, and i wasn't sure if we had told my contact and all of these AFS volunteers who knew me were there so i was like ZOMG HIDE ME. i think i was all set though.
oh yeah, so i realized that it really sucks to be the ones watching someone leave for a year. so i'd like to take a moment and apologize to everyone that i left in the U.S. for a year. it's nothing personal. i still love all of you and i'll be back before you know it c:
but seeing all of these people in a close vecinity crying was so upsetting to me. i'm not sure how the AFS volunteers do it.
so around nine we watched ale's plane take off, and then went to find our hotel. that was an adventure and a half. haha we had to use my dad's iphone to find our way around, and it still took us about an hour. so me, javi, and ale's friends entertained ourselves by making faces at the people we passed. eventually, we found the hotel and got all settled, and went to have dinner at like 10:30 or so. for old times' sake, i had french fries c: oh also, the juice here is different. it's like the actual juice, pulp and all. it's different, but i like it. and my fries came with a bunch of toothpicks in it. i wasn't sure if i was supposed to use them or not. but it was difficult to properly use them and get ketchup on my fries, so i didn't use them. then we went to bed at around midnight.

the next day we got up around 8:30 to get ready. oh yeah so i found out that there are things that i took for granted. like hotels that have lotion and hairdryers. and elevators that can carry more than three people.
anyways, so we had a lovely breakfast upstairs and then went across the street to this Castillo Hidalgo. i should've brought my camera :c fail. it was pretty cool and really old. we also climbed like five billion stairs up to this observatory that looked out over santiago. that was pretty cool too. then we started our drive home, which took foreverrrrr. oh yeah i also took fast food restaurants and not taking an hour to have lunch for granted. but oh well, the food was way better. anyways, so we finally got home around 9:30, but my night was far from over.
i quickly jumped in the shower, did my make up, got dressed and whatnot, because i had to go carreteeeeeeee. i got to my classmate carol's house around 10:30 (we got lost trying to find her house) and some of my classmates were there. we also had a BBQ (they said that they usually don't do that, but since it was my first time out in chile, they had to make it special :p). next we hung out and whatnot, and finally left for the disco around midnight. the guys took a collectivo and carol's dad drove the girls. we had to kind of push our ways in, and it cost about 6 bucks, which was pretty cheap. also, we almost didn't get let in but then my friend was like "oh she's a gringa and she just wants to get in" so i put on my 'i dont understand any spanish' face and started speaking in english. so i had to show them my passport (which i luckily had on me because i took it with me to santiago for ID) and they finally let us win. go gringa :p
so the disco was so so so much fun. i danced the entire time and blah i just loved it so much. i only got to stay until 2:30 though. then my mom picked me up. i'm so happy she let me go though!!!

and now it's saturday and i have a headache and stomach ache. and since i've been so busy i'm just taking it easy today.
buuuuuut yeah that's basically what i did in the past week. ahah and i'll try to keep on top of my blog so that this doesn't happen again :p

also, let me know if you want me to talk about something specific about chile and i'll do my best to cover it.

lots of love <3

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