Ready to begin 3 weeks of traveling!

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Tomorrow morning at 7:40am, I hop on a bus with my friend Brando, bound for Arica in northern Chile, a good 30 hour treck. And I'm ready!

I just finished my very last final today, my econ final. Everyone else wrapped up last week and began their travels on Saturday. That, combined with the fact that I needed to do really well on this econ test and all of my other classes were finished, essentially gave me 5 days of straight studying for this final. Parts were still challenging, but I came out feeling so much more relieved than the past tests!

It has been strange this past week though, with so many people already having left Santiago for other countries, the States, or the north. It makes the city seem a lot bigger, and it feels strange to still be here without other people, especially when I see places we would usually go/meet. Also, for it only being a week since I've seen people, I really miss them and I'm excited to be finally meeting up with people on Saturday (my 22nd birthday! 😊 ). I believe it will be Laura, Kelsey, Paco, Preston, Emmanuel, Rachel and Emelina. It was also strange these past 2 weeks having to say goodbye to people- knowing that even though I'd see (most of) them back at ND, our time in Chile was ending. Saying goodbye to my friend Michelle seemed the most unreal- for that to be the last time we'd see each other in Chile? Maybe it was most strange because we didn't really get to know each other until we got to Chile.. it was sad in any case. Fortunately we'll be living together next year 😊, with Laura.

So that last week and a half after Buenos Aires consisted of Michelle's birthday, going out, a relaxed dinner gathering, wrapping up final class papers/projects, and of course our very last Thursday afternoon of just sitting and hanging out at the "umbrellas," this little patio, and just talking, even though it meant missing watching the US play in the World Cup. Oh well. It was worth it.

One thing that has been nice about having this week to myself, staying in my house all day/night long to study, has been that I've been around my host family a lot more. While that has meant I'm eating a lot more (they still are constantly feeding me), it has also been nice to talk with them and I've especially been bonding more with my sister. We bonded over her monitoring me to make sure I was studying at all times and not being distracted by talking to friends online and such. haha 😊. And tonight we were gone for an hour to go to their Wal-Mart equivalent to get some food and find me a new journal. I figured with all that time on the bus and traveling around South America, I don't want to run out of pages! I'm going to miss my sister most of anyone in my family though I think. She's already told me she's going to write to me and send me pictures of her birthday 😊 Oh Panchita.

And so tomorrow begins what I was most looking forward to at the beginning of the semester. Heading into Peru June 3, going to Cuzco, seeing Machu Pichu around July 6. Thinking about crossing into Bolivia to see La Paz and Lake Titicaca around July 10, as I never made it out there last summer. Then I'm going to cut over to the east to go back to Cochabamba for a little bit. Down south, re-meetup with people, dip through northern Argentina perhaps, and meander our way back to Santiago. Aiming to get back around July 20, which would give me a few days here to wrap things up and maybe to back to the campo.

Well, I'm off in a few hours. And here goes..the last leg.

(Again, pictures up in a bit when they're working)

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