Anniversario del Colegio

I apoligize for being boring lately, but it's gotten to the point where life here almost feels routine. After a month here, I obviously don't speak Spanish fluently or really fit it, but that's t be expected. I can however, understand a lot more, and I'm way more comfortable with Chilean life in general. I even went into a store and bought something all by myself yesterday! It was only a bottle of coke, but still, I felt accomplished.

As you can probably tell from the above mentioned adventure, I've been having an exciting week. Last weekend, my family went to the desierto florido for a passeo. We drove a couple of hours on a highway before turning onto a dirt road that led to the village that my abuela and her mom live in. They have goats by the way. That dirt road turned out to be nothing compared to the one through the desierto though. We stopped and took alot of pictures, and I spent part of the time riding outside of the car (Ely got the roof, I'm a bit jealous). Overall, it was a bit like stepping into a Monet painting. Everything was pastel colored, the flowers were like the dots of paint from an impressionist's brush, and the clouds were so damned fluffy! Whew, there, I'm done trying to be poetic.

Besides Chile's awe-inspiring landscape, there has also been the matter of my school's anniversary. Apparently in Chile, school's celebrate their anniversary once a year (that needed clarification) by forming alliances, having a bunch of games/contests, and doing other crazy stuff. I was in the Hollywood or white alliance (we won by the way!), and this involved doing a show where people dressed up as celebrities and walked the red carpet. I was Madonna. (Please try not to laugh.) Part of the festivities also involved having each of the exchange students come up on the stage and dance. (Previous comment reiterated) Basically I've been feeling a little bit out of my comfort zone the past few days.

The anniversary ended Friday night with la fiesta del colegio. It was regala, and since I don't own any fancy clothing, I ended up borrowing my mom's sister's dress and shoes, my host-sister's leather jacket, and having my host-mom do my hair and makeup. Getting to Casa Norte, where the party was, was an adventure in itself. It was down a long dirt road, but since it rained thursday, mud road may have been a more accurate description. When I showed up at ten (it started at nine) the two exchange students with rotary, me and a handful of Chileans were the only ones there. This whole notion of latin time is taking some getting used to. I danced with Sara (the finnish exchange student), Daniela and a couple of other people.

The rest of the weekend I've mostly done homework. Guess who got assigned a two page essay to write! Yes, I did! It's to replace a dissertacion that they did in tecnología while I wasn't here. I also have to read book for thursday. Fun. I did, however, walk around the centro yesterday with my hostmom and sister, and saw the mil cuecas they're dancing in the square. We also ate sushi (apparently that's one of my host-family's favorite types of food).