El Campo

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The past week has involved little more than all of us starting to count down the days until we go home (22 for me!). We went to classes, went out too late, and hung out with our families. I watched Zach's baby host sister take some of her first steps as, ironically enough, her first independant steps outside the house were at the mall! My 8 year old host brother can now officially say more long numbers in english than I can in spanish... punk! I'm just not so good once I get to numbers like 24,890...

We spent the weekend outside the city (almost 4 hours away) at a house in the country. It's a friend of ours family's home. Boy is it beautiful! Perfectly situated to where you can see all the mountains, mostly snowcapped peaks, and the surrounding farms speckeled with horses. We spent the first night huddled around the fire, drinking, snacking, and enojoying the absolutly amazing sunset. On sunday we had an amazing bbq. We made potato salad and deviled eggs while Natalia's cousins grilled us up some chicken, sausage, and steak. We went and explored the near-by lake, which of course was beautiful, with the reflection of the mountains in the water. It was just so peaceful, literally completely silent. They had 2 dogs, a german shepard and a smaller mix along with about 9 cats and the mix dog has 9 lil babies about 3 weeks old all black and one white... and TOTALLY adoarable. Sadly, if they don't get homes they are killing the puppies... this is the reality of NOT spaying your dog. Come on Chile get your pets fixed!! Anyway, (before I get on a tangent about the lack of of people who fix there dogs here, or in the States for that matter...) the bus ride was long and on top of that I had to prepare for a presentation when I got home.

The presentation did NOT go well. The teacher was not pleased and told us so immediatly following our presentation in front of the 26 or so chileans in our class... fabulous. Hopefully she will grade us better than she made it sound.

*All the pictures are brought to you by Natalia, her cousin Steph and Justin too!

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Photos

Sunset
The two strips of light are 2 seperate little towns.
Justin's

Lays and Beer Pong
Yea, genuine Lays... and genuine USA drinking games

Chopsticks?
Crystal thought these looked liked giant chopsticks and tried to pick up my shoe... just some random good times

Fire!
Yep, thats it! And theres Craig too...

View from the Porch
This house w a seriously a dream house to me... huge porch all the way around, bueatiful wood floors, tons of animals, oh yea and it was in the country... too bad its not in Texas

Sharla and one of the Pups!
*Justin's

Chillin at the Lake
Just ya know... hangin out

Swimmer!
If you look close you can see Zach escaping the freezing water and the snow capped mountains behind him.

Zach!
He had his long johns on under his jeans, went swimming in his underwear, and these were his dry clothes. BAH HAHA

Texas?
This is how we made the 20 min ride down the dirt roan to Natalias. We thought it was ironic that all the gringos were in the back and all the latin kids were in the wront. Roll switch? haha

Real Live Cowboys
*Justin's pic

Zach and Empanadas
Some of the 50 odd empanadas Sharla and I learned to make... I'll never make another one.

Us Girls
The girls at the futbol game. Chile v. Panamá. It was a tie.

Skiing.. No I wasn't there
A bunch of ISA kids went skiing this weekend and since I've never been, have no money, and am frankly scared of speeding donw the ANDES on a board, I did'nt go. But This is what it looked like.