English Camp and Pan D'Azucar

A couple of months ago my host-sister applied to an English Camp run by the government and she signed me up to go along and help people practice their English. I'm not sure hyow much good I did, but I certainly had a lot of fun! It's run through a program called English opens doors that brings english speaking volunteers to Chile to help teach English so there was an American couple at the camp. There were also a few English teachers from the Atacam region and one from Santiago who spoke really good English. It was awesome being able to speak English with people though! We also did a lot of fun things like we played pictionary in English and we did karaoke, plus we did field trips to a pool and the beach. I actually met a girl who goes to the ETP, the school I'll be going to next year, and she's really cool! I feel like it will be a lot easier to switch schools now because I'm a lot more comfortable with the culture, the language, the people, and I swear I've become more outgoing although that's not saying much. I'll tell you all about how it goes in a month though! Speaking of school, we tried to go uniform shopping today. I ended up buying some stuff, but the only school related thing was a notebook with a tiger on the cover. Yes, it's awesome. We basically just did some price comparing today, I think we'll actually go buy the stuff tomorrow. It kind of sucks though because it makes it real. Part of me wants school to start, but I'm also starting to enjoy summer a lot. I've been hanging out with some of my friends this week which has been a lot of fun! Not to mention I've started going to swimteam practice. We'll only be going for two weeks because we leave on vacation next weekend, but it something to do. The other weekend we actually went on a camping trip to try out our new tent and stuff. We went to a national park called Pan d'Azucar which is about a three hour drive north of here. It's full of amazigly dry hills and it's right on the ocean. Supposedly there are penguins there, but I didn't see any. Well, I saw some black strips on a rock which technically may have been penguins. We camped right on the beach though and we had asado both nights, but I guess that's what Chileans do when when they go camping. We also went on a hike which ende up more like rock climbing than hiking, but we got some amazing views of the ocean! We went swimming a little bit too, but the waves were really strong wo we didn't go very far in. I think we're ready for our upcoming trip now and I'm incredibly excited about it! I'll probably make a blog post about just that when I get back, so be ready!