Here's to You

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Right now, life is pretty good, though I'm think I'm coming down with a cold. I have "Here's to You, Nicola and Bart" stuck in my head, and I'm trying to find out if there's a party somewhere tonight. No school tomorrow, I'd hope somebody would organize something tonight

What makes me happiest on a daily basis is when I have a really good conversation in spanish. Sometimes, I'm just sitting in on a conversation and trying to make sense of it. But when I'm actively involved for a good length of time, it makes my day. Helps with the homesickness, too.

In my school, at least, I'm with my class pretty much the whole day. We stay in our room and the teachers come to us. We have different classes every day, but the same schedule the whole year. We have math, spanish, english, history, biology, chemistry, physics, philosophy, music or art, and elective. Elective is where we split into groups that go to different rooms. There's humanist (government, social studies, language, philosophy, etc.), math, physics, and bio-chemistry. I'm a humanist.

My school has kids from kindergarten through high school, and little kids are awesome. They like to talk, they are good at explaining, they don't try to speak english with me when I don't understand, and they are easily entertained. I have told the story of Little Jimmy, and the hat game. We talk, play frisbee, have footraces, and play slide. Thank you, Cora

A note on parties for people who would like to visit Chile: As most parties here are open invitation, you will most likely not be directly invited. That means that you have to make phone calls if you don't want to be stuck at home on a Saturday night. Also regarding parties. You don't show up or leave alone. Everybody shows up in a group. And when I say I'm going to leave, people ask who I'm going with. I guess it's for safety, because it's not a good idea to walk the streets alone at night. I don't mean there are people around every corner waiting to mug you, but it's a good idea to be in a group.

It's fun trying to pick up all the chileanisms in the speech. They have a word, "poh," which they put at the end of sentences. It adds no meaning whatsoever, but they say it anyway. I'm told it's derived from "pues," for you spanish speakers out there. Also, pronuciation isn't always the best. D's in the middle of words are often dropped. "Cuaderno" becomes "Cuaerno," etc. S's at the end of words are dropped. "más o menos" becomes "maomeno." And they use plenty of swearwords. I think some people end every sentence with "poh, huevón," only they slur it and it becomes "poheón" or something.

I highly recommend the movie Pan's Labyrinth. Like a fairytale....only somebody turned out the lights

There are a lot of stray dogs in my city. I don't know if it's that way all throughout Chile, but I sometimes see a dog on each block.

I'll have to add some photos to this later

Have a good day, I love you all

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