¿Hablas español?

So this week I was swimming and one of the guys in my lane turned to me and I swear he said "Como te llamas?" Well apparently he said "cuantos llevan" (how many laps are left) but he spoke so fast that there was no way I could have understood that. So I responded by saying "Alison" and he looked at me as if I'd just landed from another planet and then told me what he what he was actually saying and we laughed. It's so hard to hear people in the pool that I really think they think that I don't speak much Spanish.

Spencer's younger sister (Madison) became friends with a Chilean girl (J

uani) who was spending the year in the US with her family. Well now she is ba

ck in Chile and she lives with her family in Santiago. Spencer gave the

m my information and they invited me to dinner at their house. Her dad picked me up on his way home from work and took me to their house, which was absolutely beau

tiful and the area was unlike anything I've seen in Santiago. Juani is 15 and she has a siste

r that is 8 and two brothers (12 and 17). They were all so nice to me and basically decided that they want to switch lives with me so that they can live in LA.

One of my friends here told me about this hiking group called El Montañista. Last weekend I went with 3 friends on one of their hikes. The group met at a metro station and then drove to the trailhead, which was called

the Quebrada de Macúl. There were about 30 people in the group, and most were families with young children. The hike was very easy, and we stopped about every 20 minutes for snacks. When we reached a waterfall and river, we stopped to have lunch and then headed back do

wn. Luckily, it was a beautiful day and we made some Chilean friends! The group posted an article about our hike on their website. It is in Spanish, but you can check it out here by scrolling down to where

it says "Salida de Trekking: Quebrada de Macúl) http://www.elmontanista.cl/component/content/article/52.html

Other adventures of the past two weeks include:

-going to a Mexican food restaurant with friends from CIEE, which was basically Chilean food with some Mexican aspects

-Alice and I made dinne

r together at my house because, for the first time, no one was home! We then tried to go to a movie but the tickets were all sold out (who knew it was such a big thing here?)

-going to the Human Rights museum in Santiago as a fieldtrip for my class (My professor, Juan Guzmán, came with us. He is a famous Chilean judge and his fans came up to us in the museum! Google him for more information!)

-there is now a box in the fridge that is just for me so that my Chilean siblings leave me some food