Mi vida Chilena: ¿Una routina? ¡No sé!

This is Santiago after the rain!!!

So I know that it has been way too long since I last wrote a blog entry, but every time I sit down to write I get distracted by all the other things that I need to be doing. I am about to have finals next week (hard to believe, I know!) so I figured it would be a nice break from studying and writing papers. As for my life here, I've been doing lots of travelling on the weekends so I've only been in Santiago during the week.

In the past month, I had to deal with group projects which is quite an experience with

Chilean students because they all want to work the day before it is due. Clearly not my style...but I've had to learn to deal with it! For my class at Universidad de Chile, we had to visit a drug rehabilitation center. I was supposed to meet my group at the metro, but when I got there, there were only people from a different group. So I joined their group and went to visit

the center. We were able to listen to people tell their stories which were all very inspirational and about halfway through, I realized that I had forgotten they were talking in Spanish because I was so engrossed and could understand everything! In our groups of 10, we then had to create a powerpoint presentation and a paper to turn in. I'm pretty sure that one person designed the presentation because I heard nothing about it until showing up in class. I was so nervous because not only was I going to talk in front of 100 people in Spanish, but I had no idea what I was going to say! Luckily, the professor said to pick three people to represent the group and I almost died of relief!

I've finished my volunteering in the school, but in the past month I've had a lot of good experiences with it. I helped twice in a classroom with 8-year-olds which was absolutely hilarious. Both times, I taught them basic songs in English like "If you're happy and you know it." They were so fascinated by me that when I walked in the classroom, all 30 students surrounded from all sides. When I said I was from California, they wanted to know if I was friends with Hannah Montana or the Jonas Brothers. I also helped the high school girls with their presentations and learning how to make resumes.

A few weekends ago, Allyson and I went on a hike to Yerba Loca with El Montañista (the hiking group). We left early in the morning to meet the group and then this lady who had a car took us to the base. She was born in the US but moved to Chile when she was 5 so she has a perfect accent in both Spanish and English

which freaked us out. She's also Jewish and has a daughter who studies Sociology who she wants me to meet. It took us about 3 hours to hike up, an hour for a lunch break, and then about two hours to get down. All the Chileans laughed at us for bringing entire raw vegetables and peanut butter sandwiches in our lunches, but then they admitted that it was probably a good idea.

In the past month I've also been invited over to 2 friends' houses. The first was Virginia, a girl from my salsa class, who invited me over to make sopaipillas paseras which are basically fried dough soaked in this wierd sugary substance. I didn't like them very much because they were soggy but she was so excited about the project that I had to eat them. The second was Alfredo, a friend from my swim class who invited me to have a typical once at his house which basically includes bread, cheese, avocado, tea, and lots of cookies. We talked with his mother for a long time and he also gave me

a tour of different parts of Santiago.

This past weekend, I had a trip to visit a Mapuche villiage with my human rights class. It was very interesting to be able to talk with them and see everything that they do there. Since it was just outside of Valparaíso, Allyson and I

decided to spend the night in Valparaíso. She stayed with her friend Anna who is spending the semester there. I stayed in a Hostel with Alice and Ben (Alice's friend from Pomona) who were spending the weekend there. On Saturday, Anna showed us around Valpo. We walked around the outdoor museum, visited La Sebastiana (one of Pablo Neruda's 3 houses), ate wonderful food, and then headed back to Santiago.

This past week Allyson, Alice, and I spent a lot of time with Ben since he decided to spend some time in Santiago before heading to his next destination. When we returned to Santiago, it was pouring rain and he didn't know where his hostel was, so I offered for him to stay on my floor at my house. The next morning, we ate breakfast with my host mom and younger brother. Unfortunately, Ben mentioned the tortilla that I was given by the Mapuche wo

men (literally a brick of bread) so then my host mom demanded that we eat after she warmed it even though it was still hard as a rock. When I returned home that evening she had some comment like "Oh how wonderful young romance is!" It took me a minute to realize that she was talking about me because she thought Ben was my boyfriend. I told her that he wasn't and when I told that story to Ben we both laughed.

Last week was Alice's birthday so Ben and I went to have once at her house with her family. I baked her some chocolate chip cookies and then I gave the rest to my friends in my swim and sociology classes since fresh cookies don't really exist here. They were so excited and all told me that I made the best cookies they've ever eaten! Alice and I went to see Que Pena Tu Vida

which is a Chilean movie. We were both so excited that we could understand it all becase we knew that if we had seen it upon arriving to Santiago we never would have understood any of the modismos.

Two weeks ago I participated in Running UC which is a 5K/10K race around the University. I ran with five other friends and we got free tshirts for participating. It was lots of fun because they did a baile entretenido warm-up and played great music. One last bit of excitement...Last week I was in a construction store to buy gloves for my volunteer trip and this guy

who was helping me find what I needed asked me if I have a parent that is a native Spanish speaker because he thought my Spanish was so good!

Today was pretty typical in the life of Allyson and Alison. We went to study in Starbucks today...well I arrived around 2pm and she came about 3 hours later after getting lost on her way. We caught up on life for about the first hour and then actually did some work for the next two hours. We exchanged headphones and played each other music from our itunes libraries which made us realize that we listen to a lot of the same music. When it was finally dark and we accomplished something, we decided to head home after buying $2 individual pizzas from Telepizza. We laughed when the guy there asked for a name for the order, and then laughed more about how we could never show our host families what we had just bought.

More updates to come soon about my recent trips...