LONG OCTOBER UPDATE!!!!

Ok well I am in school yet again, waiting for school to start. I get here so early, but it doesn’t really bother me. Well, I have been hearing that people want me to blog again so here I go. So I have some topics to talk about while I sit here waiting for school to start.
1. The Chilean holiday on Sept 18th,
2. Sept 11th and why I had to stay inside all day
3.What are rotary meetings are like
4. Snow boarding
5. The rotary meeting I had with the other exchange students.

1. So the Chilean holiday which was the birthday of Chile, is sort of like our Fourth of July, but totally different. I woke up pretty late that day cause I was at a party the night before with my brother, we didn’t get in until late so I was tired. I did my normal morning stuff and went down to the kitchen to find no one there. Remembering my parents said something about cooking with fire on the birthday of Chile I went outside to where I knew the grill was. Sure enough they were all standing around cooking some food on the grill. They told me they were cooking food for lunch it was typical Chilean food. Ok cool it is meat and sausage, stuff I’ll eat, cool no problem.
After they were done cooking we started out with the sausages, which were AMAZING!! I can’t even think how to spell the name of it. It would be something like an Italian sausage but like 10 times better. Anywho, we had wine with that and yet again AMAZING!! I am not a huge fan of wine in the United States but this stuff was great! Sooo smooth there was no kick to it. It was almost like drinking just a sort of strong grape juice. I really liked it. After we had the rest of the meat grilled on the grill, which was a combo of pork and deer I believe. It was tasty. After we just hung out around the house. I studied my Rosetta Stone that my mother had just sent me (THANKS!!!!). After a while my host mother came into my room and told me that I would be going out with my brother’s friend’s sisters. To make it easy their names are Barbra and Denise, and they are now close friends for me when it comes to me wanting to go out and hang out with people my age. So we left for their house around 10 and hung out at their house, had a few cups of coffee while we were at it. Around midnight we finally went out. We went to an area close to my house, which was interesting, but we didn’t go to the club first, we went to a friend’s house where we hung out and met more people to go to the club that were friends of Barbra and Denise. Finally we left for the club at 2AM. I was really tired at that time. I don’t like this late late night stuff. But I guess I’ll get used to it.
So we arrived at the club and paid to get in. I thought I might get carded but nope, I guess because I was with the girls they didn’t feel the need to card me. That night at the club there was a live performance from the Reagaton Boys. From what I could gather they were from the Caribbean, needless to say they were Africa American, and that is shocking to a lot of people here…strange. The club was very different than the other one I went to when I first got here. It was smaller and only one floor where the other one was three floors and easy to get lost. But this one had louder music. I have never felt my whole body move because of the bass. It was crazy. We finished that night at around 0530. Wow what a long day!!! Saturday was devoted to recovering and sleeping. Thank goodness I wasn’t going to go out Saturday night too.

2. About a week before the Chilean holiday was the anniversary of not only September 11th for the United States but for Chile too. From what I gathered (I need to research it in more detail), but back in the 1970s Chile was run by a dictator and on September 11th with the help of the United States government, Chile over threw its own government. More to come on that one. But still on that topic I was not allowed to go out that day because there were riots and protests going on that day and my family deemed it unsafe for me to leave the house, I am assuming because A. riots and protests are just not a good thing to deal with, and B. because I am an American, and it would not be a good thing to be out in public on that day.

3. Ok my third topic, what Rotary meetings are like? Well I have been to two so far and they are different from the United States ones. They are first off in the evening, so they have dinner. There are WAY less people; in my first meeting I went to there were only about 8 of us including me. On my second trip to Rotary there were about 12 of us including my brother and I. Most everyone in Rotary speaks English, which is really cool. So when I had to give my presentation I just translated the PowerPoint into Spanish and did the speaking part in English. I sure am lucky. Other than that, Rotary is pretty relaxed and the meetings here are smaller, very different than in the states.

4. Ok fourth topic, snowboarding!!! OH MY GOODNESS!!! IT IS AMAZING!!!! If you have ever gone skiing in the mountains of Maine or New England you know what I am talking about when I say the “east coast struggle”, nothing but ice and often slush. Well being on the west coast of Chile we don’t have to deal with ice! That’s right no busted tailbones when you fall, no horrific accidents, nothing! I have been twice so far. The first time was interesting to say the least, it was snowing and there was a mix of freezing rain also, because of that only two of the like ten chairlifts were working so I was only able to go up a little more than half of the mountain. Which would be about the height of two Camden snow bowls. So it was still fun. We ended up skiing for about five hours until I was so tired I was almost dead. No way was I in shape or form ready for snowboarding in the “summer” (the winter here). So that wasn’t quite as fun as the second time I went.
The second time I went it was about 100 times better. The weather was perfect and the snow was also perfect. The snow was wet and perfect for making snowballs, which made the snow slippery so I was able to get some serious speed going on my board. I know I have been only snowboarding for about a year now but I feel almost like a semi-pro. I have gotten carving down I just now need to be comfortable carving at high speeds. But that will come with time. I love snowboarding here! When we reached the top of the mountain I could see for miles!!! I was able to see the mountains in Argentina and a good portion of the Andes mountain range. It was breath taking. I thought being on top of Ragged Mountain (Snow Bowl) was amazing, being able to see the ocean, but this was 100 times better. Really the only way you can even try to grasp what I am talking about is to experience it yourself. Oh and when they say you should put sunscreen on, don’t turn it down; they are serious when they say the sun is strong on the in Chile. I came away from that trip with a TERRIBLE sunburn, it is now 3 weeks old and my nose just finished peeling. Oh well. It was totally worth it!

5 Ok last topic that has been asked. Orientations. I love orientations!!! Last month we went to Chillan, which is two hours away from my house in Concepcion. It was a blast other than waking up on a Saturday at 7 am. I took a bus to Chillan with my counselor and an exchange student (her name is Viola) from Denmark. Wow the buses are nice here. Wicked roomy and on time. Why can’t airplanes in the United States be like that, I would have much rather been sitting on a plane that size coming to Chile. Anyway,
we arrived in the city of Chillan to only figure out that we were going to all cram 15 exchange students who are about as tall as I am in a Dodge Sprinter with all of our over night gear and sleeping bags. Yea right. Well…we did it!! All 15 of us got in a Dodge Sprinter. We then drove an hour towards the ski hill that I normally go to when I have been snow boarding. After an hour we ended up at some persons house, turns out it was another Rotarian, he opened his house to us and we spent the night in his house. Boys in one room downstairs and girls upstairs in two rooms. Yes there are more girls than there are boys. It was fun. We hung out around the house and had empanadas and tortillas for like a little snack before we had lunch. After we had our “snack” we went outside and walked around and found a trail that we had been told about by one of our counselors, turned out that at the end of that trail there was a waterfall. After about a half hour of hiking through the woods, dodging bushes with rather huge spines or as we call them in Maine “pricker bushes”, we came across the waterfall. It was not Niagara Falls sized, it was just a small waterfall but, hey it was a waterfall. We ended up taking photos of who could get closest to the water and group photos; it was a blast. By the end we were all soaked to the bone.
After, we all hung out around the house eating dinner and talking in a mix of Spanish and English to one another. The counselors had brought common Chilean games and music for us to play and listen to. It was very interesting. After we had all settled down after the games and dinner, half of us ended up watching the soccer game. I think it was Chile vs. Argentina. I don’t know and most of the Americans all left the area and went to hang out in a room upstairs. By the end of the night all 15 of us ended up in the room upstairs, it was quite a scene all 15 of us either laying on beds or the floor. We were just all swapping stories of our home countries or amazing things that we do in Chile. I had a blast.
Around 1am we were all told to split and go to sleep. Fine with me I was tired. But thinking about it hey there is only two beds in the boys room and there are 5 guys, someone is going to have to sleep on the couch. I quickly volunteered! I couldn’t pass that up a bed all to myself and o yea to top it off it was next to the fire so I could stay warm all night. SWEET!!!! So I slept on the couch that night not a bad deal.
The next day we all had breakfast and talked to the counselors about life in Chile, like how are our families or our schools. No one really had any problems. I love my family and I strongly voiced that. After that small meeting we ended up all climbing into a larger bus to go to Termas De Chillan. Which is the skiing hill that I go to. Sweet, I thought, we are all going skiing. No, it was raining and snowing pretty hard at the top of the mountain and none of the trails were open, so we were all given the option to go to the spa or not. About seven of us opted to pay about 26 American dollars to go swimming in thermal waters from the dead volcano that is in part of Termas De Chillan. It was a blast I have never had so much fun in my life. The pool was outside so we started out just swimming and ended up playing in the snow. It's really great fun to have a snowball fight in the water. I had a blast and will probably never have a chance like that ever again in my life.
We all headed back to the house to have lunch and crash after having a blast in the pool. After lunch, the 5 of us who went swimming were so tired we just spent time watching movies on my laptop in Spanish and we all ended up taking naps. Around 3pm we started our long trip home, from the house to the bus terminal and the bus terminal to home. What a great weekend!! I love all of the other exchange students they are like another huge family here in Chile; we are all our own support system. It’s going to be sooo sad when we all have to go back to our home countries.

That’s all I got for now ill start doing smaller updates every week! I would love feedback or questions you all may have that I could answer!!!

Chao!!!