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Published: April 29th 2009
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Vive Chile!
showing pride at the soccer game Hi Friends and Family!
Oops it’s been a month or so since I wrote... last time you so shamelessly and unabashedly stalked my blog I had just gotten back from my trip to southern Chile. I’m sure that since you are so obsessed with my awesome and enviable life you’ve been regularly checking this thing to see if I’ve updated it, so to keep everyone happy here’s more or less what’s been happening for me!
A) I made friends with my little sisters… I really don’t know how or when this happened but by complete accident on my part we are now best friends forever. In fact, we just got done painting my nails; my toes look like I stuck my foot partway in a blender. In all honesty, though, I’m extremely happy that they finally like me and that we can understand each others’ completely incomprehensible, nonsense sentences. Our conversations are like those between two people with legitimate word-salad, tourrettes, and instant short-term memory loss. When speaking abilities fail us (which is quite frequently), we like to dance. Being the great role-model I am, I taught them how to dance inappropriately to “Super Freak” by Rick James. If
April Birthdays!
My host sisters and mother I’ve learned anything here it’s that non-verbal communication can get you a long way. haha! *to be read with a sense of humor*
B) Another festive only-in-Chile activity I did was to attend a Fútbol match between Chile’s national team and Uruguay. It was in Santiago and we just bought general admission tickets so in order to ensure ourselves a seat in the stadium, we had to skip class and go insanely early. Of course we met a festive handful of SUPER fans; you know- the ones who bitterly cry when their team loses and yell with mildly discomforting amounts of genuine anger when someone makes a bad pass… yeah that’s who we sat by. It was an entertaining experience to say the least.
C) BIRTHDAYS! My host mom had her birthday at the beginning of April. She invited all the family friends over and we had sushi. For my first-ever encounter with sushi, I found it surprisingly delightful. I’ve actually been having a lot of sea-food lately: lunch the other day was a sea-food soup, and this past weekend a Chilean friend cooked my friend and me some yummy salmon. But anyways, it was a very lovely
llama?
if you squint your eyes and turn your head sideways.. birthday for Mamá. THEN a couple of weeks later it was my birthday, during which it just so happened that our exchange program traveled all together to a town up north called La Serena. It was right along the coast; very pretty and peaceful (but cloudy during the day unfortunately). We stayed in cabins of 6 people and cooked for ourselves, which was very fun as it turned out. We went to a famous star observatory and saw cool constellations that I’d never seen before: the dark cloud Llama constellation, for example, can’t be seen back home in MN! I grabbed a picture of it off the internet and now I can’t figure out how it could possibly be a llama, but at the time it made SO much sense to me. We also saw Saturn really clearly and it’s rings. Another thing we did was go to a solar-powered restaurant in the Valle Elqui, then after that we toured a Capel’s pisco factory! Pisco is made out of distilled Muscat grapes and is the national drink of Chile. Mix it with some lemon juice and sugar (sometimes a whipped egg white on the top to give it a froth)
and you have a Pisco Sour! We got to sample some of Capel’s pre-mixed concoctions which were very delicious. SO after buying some pisco for my birthday, we went back to our cabins and started my birthday fiesta which included (of course) a cake, musical chairs, a three-legged race, a dance club, soccer on the beach until sunrise, and a last jump in the pool! Luckily my friends here helped make it a memorable event, because otherwise turning 21 in a country where the drinking age officially is 18 (and unofficially is whenever you are strong enough to hold a bottle of wine to your lips) can be anticlimactic. However, I am very excited to exercise my long-awaited rights back home; especially in all cool places in Minneapolis! I certainly wouldn’t refuse a celebratory belated birthday drink if you bought me one when I get home…
hint hint!
D) I know that by reading this it probably doesn’t seem like I attend class, but I assure you that I really do, and it takes up a lot more time that I thought it would! School definitely has picked up since I wrote last: in my Human resource management class
I’ve had weekly quizzes on the chapters we’ve been reading (legitimately failed the first one and have gotten in the 6s for the rest… the grading system is on a scale of 1-7 here) AND I had a big group presentation.
Ok I’m sick of writing, that’s all you get! Love you, bye!
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