September!

Hi everyone! As always I'm having so much fun and becoming more and more comfortable with my life here and all the cultural differences. I'm able to have longer conversations with my family and get to know them better, and I can tell my friends have noticed that I can understand more too because they explain more stuff to me rather than just being like "come on Alli let's go!"And yesterday I had my first soccer practice, which was fun. I finally had something to do after school since I don't really have homework. My teammates seem really nice and they're all really good, but that could be because most of them are 20-25. There's only one other girl that's 16 and the rest are older. I guess I expected that because I was in Chile that more people would play soccer, but because of the cold weather and the small size of most of the schools, there just aren't as many opportunities to make teams and to learn at a young age. Even if they don't play it they still love to watch it though. Yesterday there was a big game in which Chile played Colombia and we lost, but it was really entertaining. A bunch of my classmates got together in my friend's quincho (lots of people have these, they're like an extra little building next to the house where people can hang out, eat, and watch tv) to watch it, and we even got out of school early for the occasion. Even the people who don't play or really understand soccer like to watch and they all get really into it. Of course they taught me the Chile cheer that goes C-H-I chi! L-E le! Chi chi chi! Le le le! Viva Chile! Everyone knows it, it's awesome. They kept asking me what the US's cheer was and they thought it was strange that we don't have one. Also they think it's crazy that we don't have a national dance, cause they have the cueca which they learn when they're really little. I've been learning it in gym class, but I'm terrible! On Friday everyone will wear the typical Chilean outfits to school (I promise to take pictures) and there is a cueca competition between the three best pairs from each grade. In other words, we get to watch people dance instead of going to class. I'm excited. Then, when we get home from school we're leaving to go to El Calafate, Argentina for the weekend! Everyone I've told is jealous because it's so pretty there and I can't wait to go hiking. The following week will also be one big celebration because September 18th is Independence Day. My family keeps telling me all about it so I can't wait to see it all for myself. Apparently I'll get to eat the best food there is in Chile, but I love all the food here! Our dinnertime conversations are also very entertaining, especially with my dad who is currently learning English. He likes to try and practice with me so one time he was offering me butter and asked if I wanted some "butterfly" because he thought they were the same thing. Another time he was trying to tell my Grandma to look him in the eyes, but he said "look me in the ass." My mom, my sisters and I, who all understood what he said, were dying laughing and we keep making fun of him for it. And here's some differences I've noticed from the US.

-there are lots of things to do with school, like I mentioned before
-you never have to pump your own gas because there are people whose job it is to stand outside in the cold and do it for you
-they don't have parking meters because instead there are more people that stand outside with little handheld machines that tell them how much you owe for how long you were parked and then you pay them... either of those jobs would be sooo cold.
-they don't really have phone contracts, everyone just has some form of adding money to their phone when they need more minutes
-lunch is the biggest meal of the day, which is always home cooked and always eaten with most if not all of the family
-there are four meals: breakfast, lunch, onces (tea time), and dinner, but sometimes we only have onces and no dinner
-people don't usually follow the speed limits, even more than in the US
-usually only the driver and front passenger wear seat belts
-almost all of the cars are stick shift
-everyone knows everyone! even though the city of Punta Arenas has 150,000 people, my parents are constantly saying hi to people, and everyone at school knows everyones parents and where they live
-in general, they are much more friendly and polite
-they do errands as a family on weekday nights
-almost all of my teachers are the parents of kids that go to my school

There are a lot more, but I can't think of them at the moment. Here are some pictures:

This is me and Kuki in our school uniforms on my first day of school.

This is my with my family on Kuki's birthday.

This is me with Kuki and Martina when they picked me up at the airport.

This is me with Martina and my mom and the Winter Festival fireworks.

This is me and my sisters with Punta Arenas in the background.

A Whole Month!

So I've now officially been gone for over a month. It's crazy how fast it's going already. I can already see my spanish improving, though I can understand much more than I can say, so it still gets frustrating sometimes when I can't say what I want to. It's also tiring trying to process and think about spanish all day, but it is getting easier. My family has started to play this game where they randomly ask what the name of the street we're driving on. It's actually really helpful because it makes me feel like I'm getting to know the city of Punta Arenas better. Another thing that I really enjoy is that my family likes to take random hour-long drives through the city and the surrounding areas in the evenings so I can see everything. I love getting to see all the different neighborhoods and mountains and views of the Straight of Magellan. It's also a nice way to break up my time after school because I'm used to having hours of homework every night, but here I barely have anything to do. Hopefully that will change soon though because tomorrow I'm going to Sokal (another school in Punta Arenas) to talk to the soccer coach about playing for the girls team, since my school doesn't have one. They don't have as many opportunities to play sports here, especially for the girls, so I'm really happy that I'll be able to do something active like I'm used to back home.

I have a lot to look forward to in the upcoming weeks because Chilean independence day is September 18th. It's an even bigger deal here than in the US, and they think of September as a month of celebration. I get the whole week of the 17th off from school and there are all sorts of things downtown and at my school like traditional food (empanadas, anticuchos-"shish kabobs", and chorizo) and traditional Chilean dancing (the cueca). In addition, my family has decided to go on a trip to Calafate, Argentina from the 14th to the 17th. Calafate is a town that's not too far away, even though it's in Argentina, and is right by the famous mountains of Torres del Paine. We'll get to do a lot of hiking, so of course I'll get to take a ton of pictures. In October, my school celebrates its anniversary, which means that there will be a dance, kind of like homecoming for the US, and games during the day. I have no idea what that'll be like, since my school in the US doesn't really do anything like that, so I'm excited to see. Then in December I'm going on the tercero medio (junior year) class trip to Brazil. Every junior class gets to go, which is typical for many schools in Chile to do, so I got super lucky with my timing! Then around New Years my family is going to Viña del Mar, which is a beach town in northern Chile. I get to go so many places, so it's hard for me to not be so excited all the time. I got so lucky to be hosted by a family that loves to travel as much as I do. Now I'm going to go to bed because last night was daylight savings in Chile, so i lost an hour of sleep in addition to staying out much later than I'm used to with my friends. I'll try and keep this more updated!

My First Couple of Days!

Hey guys! I finally remembered to do this haha. So on Sunday I finally got to Punta Arenas, Chile where I will be living with my new host family for about 6 months. I live with my parents Charo and Naldo, my sisters Martina and Kuki, and my grandmother Yeya. They are extremely nice and have been very welcoming. I actually left Chicago on Wednesday though and had two orientations with AFS in Miami and then in Santiago. The one in Santiago was so much fun because it was with all the AFS students from around the world that will be staying in Chile for either a semester or a year. There were 82 of us in total from 16 different countries and 5 of us from the US. It was crazy to see and hear about the differences and similarities between everyone. For example, I met a girl from Turkey that lives in Istanbul, which has 18 million people in it. On the other hand, I also met a guy from Austria who has 20 people in his village. There was a guy from Italy who brought his guitar and would play it during our free time and I didn't realize it, but I guess everyone knows the American classics, like the Beatles, even if they didn't speak English otherwise. So we would all sing together, which I thought was so cool because it was one of the one things that was universal between all of us, although most people spoke English pretty well.
Since Chile is south of the equator, it's winter here and Santiago was freeeeeezing! It was only about 40 degrees, but the buildings there don't have heat so you never really warmed up. I ended up sleeping in my winter coat with tons of layers. Punta Arenas is a little bit cooler, but it's very rainy and windy. The winds get up to about 120 kph! I don't know what that is in mph though because I'm still trying to learn how to convert everything to the metric system. I woke up in the middle of the night last night because the wind was so loud. And I thought Chicago was windy... it's nothing compared to here! There aren't many trees here because of the wind, but the ones that are here look like paint brushes because the branches still straight up, also they all lean in one direction from the wind pushing them so much. I will be sure to take a picture of them the next time I go into downtown Punta Arenas, where they're more prevalent because they look so funny.
Today was my second day of school at Colegio Charles Darwin. It's a little different from the US because it's a block schedule, we have 15 minute breaks in between every class to talk to people, the teachers move around to different rooms instead of the students, we have a 2 hour break to go home for lunch, and we end at different times everyday. So far it's been hard and a little stressful because everyone speaks so fast and it's really hard to understand. Also, I'm taking physics (which I'm hoping to change) and biology. They're extremely difficult because in addition to being in a language I'm not fluent in, I have never taken physics and the things I learned in biology are different than what they learn here. It should get better though. I mostly just get frustrated at the fact that I don't understand it because I don't need grades from those classes for my school in the US.
I miss my family and friends back home a lot, but hopefully that will lessen as I get more comfortable with the language and culture here. Now it's time to go eat dinner (9:30 pm! or 21:30 as they say here). Every morning we have a small breakfast. Then at about 1:30 we have a very large lunch. At 6 we have tea time, or "onces" where we also eat bread, cheese, and jam (they eat so much bread!). And finally we have a smaller dinner, usually a little earlier than tonight. They say I eat like a bird but I think they just eat a lot haha. I'm especially not used to eating so much for lunch because it's the main meal and we usually have 3 courses. Well now it's time to go, but I'll try and keep this updated when I remember.