My Chilean Thanksgiving

I know most of you probably won't believe this, but I put my hand inside of a dead turkey. My host-family wanted a traditional Thanksgiving meal and preparing turned out to be quite an adventure. We had my host-mom's mom, her cousin and her friend over last Thrusday and I cooked. I'd made pumpkin pie and pecan pie (but with walnuts) on Wednesday and my mom had sent me a package with some stuff to make cooking easier (including a loaf of pumpkin bread!!!) so Thursday wasn't all that overwhelming. I did, however, have to make stuffing and stuff the turkey. My host-mom bought an 8 kg turkey which I figure comes out to something like 20 pounds but all went smoothly. It came out of the oven a nice golden brown. We also had mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes and apples which turned out a little bit different since sweet potatoes here are white, and some greens. Everything actually turned out really well and everyone enjoyed the food. I even gave a little speech before the meal and we all said thanks which I actually have video of but I haven't uploaded it to the computer yet. I'll try to post it later because it's really cute. So that's basically everything
thanksgivingy. I'm taking my finals all this week. My school has a christmas tree in the lobby.

Carreteando

I've been too exhausted this past week to update my blog. This may have something to do with the fact that I didn't go to sleep until 6:30 last saturday. The funny thing is, before coming here, I always thought 6:30 was pretty early to go to bed, but it turns out it can be pretty late too, at least when you're talking about A.M. The reason I stayed up so late was for my host-mom's mom's birthday party. She turned fifty and my host-mom threw her a vegas themed casino party. All last weekend we were making appetizers for the party with everything from canapes to sushi. It was a lot of work but it was also really interesting to see what goes into throwing a party. The party itself was a lot of fun though. I played some blackjack and even danced a bit of cumbia. Apparently that is not one of my many talents. I had to keep looking down at my feet to keep from completely losing the rhythm. It was fun though. Did I mention that the weekend before last my host siter threw a Halloween party? It was fun, I ended up inviting a few people and we hung out and danced a bit. I dressed up as a devil but it was really a lst-minute costume. Literaly. I think halloween is pretty much just another excuse to party here. Most things are. But hmm, what else has been going on? On tuesday I went to the pool with my class in educación fisica and it was a lot of fun. We swam and hang out. It's getting close to the end of school now and everyone's getting in a summery mood, but there are also christmas decorations in the stores. It's relly weird. Other than that I've pretty much just been hanging out. Today I went to the centro with Sara, a finnish girl here with rotary and we window shopped and talked about Chile. It was really fun and I discovered that apparently everyone goes to the centro on Friday afternoons. I guess there really aren't that many other places to go. I also happened to mail my first letter since I've been here. It was just a simple one page letter but I had to go to a bookstore to buy the envelope then to the post-office where I waited in line for ten minutes and then it took the lady at the counter ten minutes to fill out the paperwork for selling me three stamps. I almost suffocated in bureaucracy. I still love Chile though.