Photos!

I just thought I should let everybody knwo I'm still alive and post some photos so here goes.

The End of Summer

Or at least the end of my first summer this year. I don't think I'll ever get tired of saying that, but whether people will get bored of hearing it is another question. Be that as it may, Summer number 1 of 2011 is officialy over. I started school the thursday before last and I really should have posted about it before this, but I've been exhausted. If there's one thing that I like about my school in the US, it's that it ends at 2:15. In the ETP I have classes from 8am to 5:15 every day except Wednesday when I get out at one. I actually get out earlier this year than in the San Agustin but it's because we eat lunch at school. Now that's something I'm used to, but they do it way differntly here in Chile. My and most of my classmates' moms send us big lunches of pasta or meat and rice that we heat up in the microwaves. We also have insulated lunch-boxes and apparently they don't label you as a dork here, either that or I haven't picked up on it yet if it does.
I think I mentioned before that I'm studying metalurgy this year but I had no idea what I was getting into. When we wrote our schedule down on the first day of school, I had no idea what almost half of my classes were! I'm getting it figured out now but I don't think metalurgy is something I'm going to pursue when I get back to the US. I do happen to really like my class though. There are 44 of us and I still haven't learned everyone's names, but I'm working on it. I'm pretty sure I'll manage it by the time I leave.
This first day of school was really different from my first day of school in the colegio San Agustin, and I don't think the difference has so much to do with the school as with myself. I understand the language this time around which is incredibly helpful. Being able to cumminicate iss never a bad thing when trying to mske friends, but I think more than that, I've become a lot more outgoing. To be honest, I'm still shy, but meeting and talking to new people is so much easier now than it was before I left the US. The first day we made out lab groups and the teacher had us "present" ourselves in front of the class and she asked me somme questions that I was able to answer witout hardly even getting nervous. Then she asked me why I chose to come to Chile and that I couldn't answer because I'm still not sure I know. The only reason I can come up with is kind of stupid and not sommething I want to share with my class when I first meet them. Despite that, things are going pretty well. I'm making friends and talking to a lot of people and we have our school's anniversary coming up in a couple of weeks which should be a good wy to meet people.

Viaje al Sur

I've been waiting so long to write this because I haven't been willing to put the time into uploading and sorting though the 800+ pìctures I took while we were on vacation. Actually, I still haven't done it, but I figured I should at least write about it while the memories are still fresh in my mind and I'm not busy with school (which starts this Thursday!).
Well we left the 5th of february to go to La Serena where we stayed at my host-aunt's house and got everything ready for the real start of the trip. The next day we got up reasonably early and got on the road. We stopped for empanadas de queso along the way and sandwiches before getting to Valparaiso in the afternoon. Valparaiso is definitely one of the coolest cities I have ever seen. Most of the houses are brightly colored and built into the hills around the city. Pablo Neruda actually had a house there that we visited called the Sebastiana and it is gorgeous! Neruda has huge picture windows in his living room bedroom and office that look out over the city and the pacific ocean. After visiting Valparaiso we drove around Viña del Mar which is right next to Valparaiso. Most people seem to think Viña is prettier, but I definitely liked Valparaiso a lot better, it has more character. That night we camped near a lake that's mostly dried up because this summer has been really dry before heading further south the next day. We sight-seed a little bit and went to Chillan where we bought Langanizas de Chillan whcih are like sausages to make on the grill later before getting to a waterfall called Salta del Laja in the afternoon. We set up our tent in a camping spot before walking to the waterfall were we ended up going swimming. That was definitely a cool experience. The next day we kept heading south to Villarica and Pucón, two cities on lake Villarica which have a greta view of the Mountain Villarica. We walked around Villarica for a while in the afternoon and ate typical Chilean food like empanadas and Humitas for lunch. Afterwards we found a camping spot right on the lake and headed out to Pucón to walk around a little bit and eat dinner. We were in Pucón when it started raining! It was really exciting because I hadn't seen rain in like four or five months! The next day we went ziplining before lunch, swam in the lake a little and went rafting in the afternoon. Rafting was my favorite part of the day because we got as bunch of awesome views of the volcanoe and mountains while rafting, but it was a lot of fun in itself too. I jumped into the river partway through and it was so cold I almost counldn't breathe! When we left Villarica we headed to Valdivia where we got a cabin before taking a ferry to an old war fort where we saw a reenactment of a batlle between Spaniards and Chileans. We also saw more of the area on the ferry and I was pleasantly shocked by how green everything is there! There are trees everywhere! It even rains! In fact it was raining that night when we went to a fair in a town outside of Valdivia where we tried a lot of typical foods such as papas rellenos, seafood in various forms etc. The next day we headed out early to a national park called Puyehue which is famous for its volcanoe and hot springs. The whole three days we were there it rained and I ran out of dry sweatshirts, but I still think it might have been one of my favorite parts of the trip. We hiked around in the trees some and went to the indoor hot springs which are basically a pool but fed with water heated by the volcano. We also hiked through the woods at 11 at night in the rain to go swimming in heated pools that form in the rocks on the side of the river. That's not an adventure I'm going to be forgetting about naytime soon! Packing up the tent in the rain also deserves to be mentioned. It was quite the ordeal, but we lived through it, and so did the tent for that matter.
The day we left we were planning to head over to Bariloche Argentina and in anticipation of that, I'd sent a letter to the AFS office in Santiago asking for them to send my permission papers to leave the country. I had those, my passport and my carnet ready, but when we got to the border, they told me they weren't the right papers. It turns out noone out of the many people who had handled the papers, had bothered reading them. It was pretty disapointing, but it was fairly funny too now that I think about it. After that we turned around and headed back to Chile where we stopped by Frutillar, a picturesque town on a lake where they make really good Kuchen before heading to Puerto Montt where we ate lunch before catching the ferry to Chiloe. In that area of Chile there's a typical dish called Curanto which basically consists of mussels, smoked pork, sausages, potatoe dumplins and some other stuff being cooked togther in a pot or sometimes in a hole in the earth. We had that for lunch and as I'm sure you can imagine, it was pretty good. In Chiloe there are a lot of old wooden churhces that are patrimonio de la humanidad along with the palofites or houses on stilts. There are also a lot of sheep. We saw all of these things. We also went to a bunch of craft fairs where people were selling things made of wool as well as other crafts. Our last day in Chiloe we actually went to the northern part of the island near where we caught the ferry to a part where there are penguins. We had planned on taking a boat to see the penguins but they didn't have any spots for almost four hours so we climbed along the place on the rocks to a place where you could see them from. We were carrying binoculars so they looked pretty close and I even got pictures. That was one of the collest experiences of my life!
Once back on the mainland we drove to Temuco where we spent the night, then drove to Santiago the next day. There we ended up spending the night in an appartment and doing some shopping. We went to the biggest mall in Santiago and it was absolutely huge! After Santiago we drove straight to La Serena where we met up with my host-dad's poarents and sister to go camping at a beach near there. We camped out for a couple of nights, ate asado, did typical chilean things before driving home on the 20th. Since we've been back in Copiapó, we've been getting ready for school which starts on the third of march and relaxing. I spent this weekend at another exchange students, Sara's beachouse in Loreto. There we stayed up late, watched movies, and went to the Despedida de Verano in Caldera where they had fireworks. That means that summer number one of 2011 is officially over.
Back to our trip though, I had an absolutely amazing time. I feel like I got to know Chile a little bit vbetter through it. I saw more of it's landscapes, cities, people and customs. I ate more typical foods (a lot of typical foods actually) and I feel like I got to know my host family better. I spent more time talking to my host parents since I didn't have tpo go to school and they didn't have to go to work (and we were all in a car together for like 4000 km). I would call it one of the best experiences I've had in Chile and an amazing way to end summer.
Next time I write, it will probably be about my first days at my new school, so wish me luck!

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!

Erika Sucks at Keeping her Blog Updated

It's been what, like a month since I've updated this? Yeah sorry about that. I've been really busy with the holidays and everything and this whole summer thing is just making me lazy. My biggest news is that I'm changing schools next year. San Agustin, the school I was at last semester was great, I made awesome friends there and I had a lot of good times, but I think that I'll have good times and awesome friends at the Escuela Técnica Profesional (ETP) too. It's right around the corner from my house and my host-sister is starting there in primero medio next year. The really exciting thing is that I'm going to be studying metalurgy! It's because it was the only curso with enough room, but I get to wear steel toed boots so it's all good. Other than that there was Copiapó's birthday parade on the 8th of December. People danced Cueca and all of the schools were represented by students with their uniforms.
We also had an exciting AFS event last month. The volunteers set up a flee market in Caldera (a port town near here) and all of the exchange students made posters about their countries. After that we had an Asado and we talked with the Chileans postulating to go abroad.
I supose I should mention something about Christmas and New Years too. Well Christmas here is really different in a lot of ways. We got all dressed up and ate dinner on Christmas eve. We had a Peruvian themed appetizer (I love Peruvian food, it's almost all seafood!) Couscous and lamb for the main course and suspiro Limeña which is basically manjar with merengue for desert. After dinner we opened presents and then everyone went to bed at like three in the morning. My host-brother got an X-box Kinect which basically allows you to play video games without using a controller. It's kind of awesome! The day after Christmas we went to my host-family's beach house to celebrate my host-sister's birthday. Out of curiosity, do any of you know of somebody who has fallen out of the top story of a bunk bed while asleep? Let me answer that for you, yes you do. After that fun little experience we went home for a couple of days before heading to La Serena for New Years. We got all dressed up (again, but I was cool with it this time because I had an awesome pruple dress and heels) and went out to a restaurant for dinner. We ate and talked and after midnight everyboy toasted and started dancing. I still don't think I've gotten the hang of this whole dancing thing. It was a lot of fun though! We stayed out until like 4 am. The next day we went to the Valle to visit some of my host-mom's cousins and we had an asado. We also visited a dam with an awesome view of the valle. The following day I went fishing with my host-dad and kind of broke his fishing reel. I'm never going to live that one down! Now we're back in Copiapó and I've been getting a little bit bored of summer. I went to my first yoga class today though! It was fun and I felt really relaxed afterwards! Tomorrow we have the despedida or going away party for the AFSers leaving in January.

Paseo de Curso Among Other Things

The last week or so has been pretty awesome for me. It was the last full week of school so we had finals but there was also a bunch of time to hang out and my friends taught me some cool Chilean card games. Yesterday was actually my paseo de curso which is kind of like a class field-trip that we took to the beach to celebrate the end of school. We went to a beach called Loreto which is about an hour or an hour and a half from Copiapó where we rented a cabin. The official paseo was only for the day but about half of my class aranged to spend the night there. I only stayed for the day but I had an amazing time! We played some cards with my cool New York deck, we went to the beach and swam in the freezing Pacific, we walked around a lot which I should not have been doing barefoot. After lunch which was an asado (surprise!) we walked to Bahía Inglesa which is a beautiful beach a supposed 15 minute walk from where we were staying. It turned out to be more like 45 minutes, but it was still fun. We went swimming there and the water is so clear! Everybody took a bunch of pictures and I'm posting mine to Facebook as I write if you want to stalk me. My curso even gave me a gift, an Indio Picaro. It was adorable! I think this is the first time in my life that I've been sad about school ending. I feel like I'm finally starting to fit into my Curso and have a place there and now school is over. I'll still go tomorrow to get my final grades and on Thursday there's an acto de premicaión which is some kind of ceremony in which they give out prizes for the best average and a bunch of other stuff. I have an invitation for me and my family for the cuadro de honor, actually I think all of the exchange students do, but it should be cool. Among other exciting things that have happened this week, Friday and Saturday was the Teletón. It is a telethon as in a 24 hour TV show to raise money, but it's so much more than that! It's something that Chile does every two years (I think)to raise money for disabled children. The have a bunch of famous artists perform and people donate money. This year they were trying to and succeeded in raising 16,000,000,000 pesos I think. I get increidbly confused by the size of number here. It was lot of money though. They also showed a lot of stories of people who had been helped by the teletón. It made me cry. They also do shows in all of the major cities and there was one in the Copiapó plaza. My host-mom, my host-sister and I went to the bank to donate and afterwards they got teletón related massages. Saturday night was an AFS thing. We went to my tía Cecilia's house for a culinary night. Everybody cooked something from their country. Nook cooked Pad-Thai, Annika cooked Kartoffelsuppe and Butterkuchen and Julien cooked Quiche Lorraine. I made monster cookies. It was really fun and we talked and hung out as well as eating some Chilean food. So that's basically all of the highlights of the last few weeks.

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.