Alli in Chile!: It's Finally Getting Warmer, Yaaaaaay!

It's spring! Not that it's actually that warm, but anything is better than having freezing wind every day. It gets a little old when you walk to school for 5 minutes and your hair is a big knot when you get there. So time is going by waaay too fast. I go home in a month and a half and even though I want to see everyone, I would love to stay longer. So towards the end of October I went the the penguin colony with my family and they were really cute! There weren't that many though because they go to Brazil for the winter and it was still pretty cold. Then there was Halloween, which is not nearly the big celebration here that it is in the US. I saw some little kids out trick or treating, but not everyone goes and kids over 12 don't really do anything to celebrate. I ended up going to a friends house to celebrate her birthday. Also I only saw one house with decorations. Even though I like halloween and it's fun to celebrate, it was interesting to see how they celebrate it in another country because I had no idea how different it was.

November went especially fast because I had so much to do. First I had my birthday and the Saturday before my friends were really sweet and threw me a surprise party! During the day I had gone to the mall with a couple of my friends and we usually hang out there for about an hour or two, but they kept wanting to look in every store and waste a bunch of time, so we were there for about 3 hours. Of course now it seems really obvious but at the time I had no idea what they were doing. Then my parents came to the mall to pick me up and decided that they needed to go shopping too, so we spent another hour there. Then finally I got to go home and I walked up the stairs and all my friends jumped out. It was so cute, but I was so shocked and I had no idea what to do. It was really fun and of course there was cake, which I love. It's called cookie cake, but it's nothing like the cookie cakes in the US that are just giant chocolate chip cookies with frosting. This one is made with sweet crackers, they're not exactly cookies, and manjar, which is like a thicker carmel kind of spread but it's not as sweet. Then it's baked so the crackers soften up and I'm obsessed with it because it's so good.

The weekend after my birthday I went to Torres del Paine, which is a mountain with these rock tower things, with a group of other AFS students in my area. On Friday I took a bus with two of the other students in Punta Arenas (Pim and Alberto) and one of the volunteers (Maximiliano) to Puerto Natales, which is the next closest town about 3 hours away. We spent the day touring Puerto Natales with the students that are living there. It's really pretty and a lot like Punta Arenas because it's next to a lake and has mountains, but it only has about 30,000 people. Then we stayed over night and got up nice and early the next morning to get on another bus to Torres del Paine. In total there were 12 of us; Pim, Alberto and I from Punta Arenas, 3 AFS students from Puerto Natales, another girl from AFS that lives up north but was visiting, 3 students from YFU (another program like AFS) that go to the same school as the students in Puerto Natales, and 2 volunteers. Saturday we had a full day bus tour where we stopped at all these other landmarks like a big cave, lots of pretty lookouts, and lots of lakes. One lake called Grey Lake we actually got out at to walk around, so we hiked a little big and went down by the shore. That the probably the most wind I have ever experienced in my life. We could literally stand and lay back into the wind and not fall because it was so strong. It was also impossible to take a decent picture because everyone's hair was flying around. Also the little pebbles on the beach were picked up by the wind and would fly and hit you in the face and they actually hurt. After we were done with all that we went to the campgrounds to set up all our stuff. That night we just hung out and talked, which is always fun when it's with other exchange students because we can share stories and all that. I learned from the two Thai students that there are three different words that are all "ma," but they each have a different intonation of the voice. One means horse, the other is dog, and the last is come here... it would be so confusing! Also we kept seeing rabbits while we were there and someone asked how to say rabbit in english (talking in Spanish of course) and Pim who is Thai said it was "labbit" because she's not used to the r sound. Of course after that we only called them labbits just to make fun of her. After that we even had to cook our dinner over a mini fire. They're really protective about fires in that area because a couple of years ago some foreigners burned down a ton of the forested part when they tried to burn their toilet paper. On Sunday we got up really early again so we could start hiking the actual mountain. It was a lot harder to climb than I was expecting because it's almost all uphill. The first part took us about 3 hours with lots of little breaks. I was in the group that walked a little faster so we got to wait for the other group to catch up, but of course the people with the lunches were behind us so we were starving. Then came this part that is really steep and has lots of rocks that you have to climb over and it was definitely the hardest, but after that we reached the actual Torres del Paine. Los Torres (towers) are these three big rock structures that stick out of the mountain and to me they kind of look like popsicles. They're really cool and it's hard to believe they're natural because they're not like anything else. After that we had to do the whole thing backwards to get back and even though it was mostly downhill it was still hard to keep from sliding. In total it took about 8 hours and on the road that led to the campgrounds I was literally walking with my eyes closed because I was so tired. Once everyone arrived we took the bus back to Puerto Natales and every single one of us was sleeping. We stayed one more night in Puerto Natales and then Monday morning we headed back home to Punta Arenas. It was really fun and I was not expecting to like it as much as I did. It was so pretty and where I live in the US it is completely flat, so I loved getting to hike up a mountain.

The other weekend on Sunday we went to our cousins' parcela, which is like a little cabin in the "country" about 20 minutes outside of Punta Arenas. They just finished rebuilding it so they had lots of family and friends over for a barbecue. My family usually goes there to celebrate Christmas and New Years and also whenever it's nice out and they want a barbecue. I ate lamb for the first time, which I didn't really like because it has a lot of fat and the fact that it's a lamb, but at least I tried it considering I was a vegetarian for 9 years before I came to Chile. The rest of the day we just hung out and I went on a walk with my mom to see all the other parcelas that are in the area. It's really interesting to talk to her because she went to Illinois on an exchange program in high school, so we have a lot in common and it's fun to hear her stories.

Now I only have about a week and a half left of school, which is so hard to believe because everything has gone by so fast. We're basically just taking tests to finish up the units we are learning because they don't take finals here like in the US. Then once we're done with those we have parties in almost every class because there's nothing else to do. And theeeen the Sunday after that I leave to go to Brazil on my class trip! By now everyone is so excited and it's all anyone is talking about. It should be really fun because there's all sorts of places we will visit and activities we'll do, plus it's with all my best friends so it will be ten times better. I'll post again as soon as I get back because I will have tons to say!