The holidays
January 2, 2008 Out with Nynne and Jordan in the center today. There are a lot of sales! We met up with an exchange student from La Serena who was hosted by Jordan’s club in Canada last year. Small world. Went for Pizza. There was a little print/drawing of a light house. I thought it looked familiar and when I looked closer it said "Portland Head Light" and I got super excited. Again, small world.
January 1, 2008 (weird!) We stayed there until 6:30 AM to watch the sunrise. Afterwards we walked back to Jordan’s apartment to sleep. We didn’t sleep very much and woke up at 11 perhaps. Lazed around and then I went home at 2. Slept!
Monday December 31, 2007 Woo! New Year! A lot has happened and changed this year…wow. My host dad, host cousin and I made a “hot air balloon” out of tissue paper to launch when midnight struck. Afterwards the family came over and we had a similar affair to Christmas. We all had party hats and wigs. At midnight we launched confetti and the hot air balloon. Unfortunately the first one caught on fire but someone else had made another one so we ended up launching the second one just fine. It was so pretty to watch it float up into the air. Afterwards we all piled into the car as we all went out “dancing”. I got dropped off at Jordan’s apartment and unfortunately all the phone lines were really tied up so I couldn’t call to tell her I arrived. I was stuck in the stairwell for quite some time. Afterwards we went to the beach with everyone in the whole of La Serena. We met up with other exchange students, someone’s class from school, and a whole bunch of people. There ended up being 50 or 60 of us on the beach. Sunday December 30, 2007 Biked to Coquimbo with my host dad today. It’s about 16 miles round trip so it only takes about 2 hours to complete.
Saturday December 29, 2007 Went to the beach with my fellow exchange students to wish Kate (exchange student New Jersey) a happy birthday. We had a cake and everything! Also, Jordan brought the puppy that her family received for Christmas. It’s so adorable. Actually, they don’t want the puppy so now Jordan gets to raise it. We went for Chinese food after the party. It was a day of celebration!
Friday December 28, 2007 Unwell Thursday December 27, 2007 Unwell
Wednesday December 26, 2007 Went to Nynne’s for a Boxing Day dinner (They don’t have Boxing Day here…everyone works.) Her host dad is the president of our Rotary club. We cooked hamburgers and had an overall good time. The kids from Ovalle showed up and it was just a lot of laughter. Afterwards we all climbed into a truck (back of the truck) and went to the beach to Jordan’s apartment (her host family owns an apartment in La Serena). I wasn’t feeling 100% so I went home.
Tuesday December 25, 2008 Merry Christmas everyone! Today I woke up to a surprising Christmas stocking sent by my real parents. Thank you : ) It had all the normal things inside it that Christmas stockings are supposed to have in them…gold chocolate coins etc. The rest of Christmas day was quiet and everyone was just lazy. We went out later in the day to watch the kids in the center play with their new bikes and we went to a craft fair. Afterwards we went to the Japanese garden. It’s very pretty and it’s lovely now as the ducklings have hatched.
Monday December 24, 2008 Yey! Christmas Eve! Everyone was super happy today. In Chile, as well as a lot of countries, Christmas Eve is more important than Christmas day. We had my mum’s side of the family over and we ate a special meal. Afterwards we sat around and waited until midnight to open our presents (they are eager). They have Christmas stockings but they are filled with only food. Overall Christmas passed very well indeed.
Sunday December 23, 2007 Preparations…wrapping presents….the city is nuts. Completely and utterly nuts. No one wants to go outside but everyone has to so there is quite a bit of congestion.
Saturday December 22, 2007 Jordan came today! We sat in the mall trying to make an agenda for the day but both of us were just relieved to see one another as time spent after THE TRIP has been a bit dull in comparison. We ended up “Mr. Bean’s Holiday” which Jacob sent to me as a Christmas present. Hilarious!
Friday December 21, 2007 Went to a holiday Christmas party at the philosophy center where my dance class is held. We had a gift exchange and there was lots of dancing. It was really fun! I’m glad I went. Had to come home early because tomorrow my friend Jordan from Ovalle (one hour away) comes to visit! Thursday December 20, 2007 Guanaqueros some more. Caught the bus back with some friends at 1. Went home and slept for quite a bit of the day. Afterwards we had an “end of the year” festival at school. Unfortunately I was the only one from my class to show up since they were all in Guanaqueros and I also was the only person there to arrive in uniform. Ahahahaha. Embarrassing. It was basically a celebration to show who was the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd best student in each class.
Wednesday December 19, 2007
Class trip today! Un-chaperoned to Guanaqueros. Quanaqueros is a beach about half an hour away. Someone in my class owns a cabana there. We lay around on the beach which was okay except that I think there was red tide and there was also a dead seal rotting away in the sand. It was rather dead and it was impossible to move it as it was melting into the sand rather badly. Nevermind. Everyone was enjoying themselves. Afterwards we went back to the Cabana and they attempted to make a BBQ. Unfortunately none of them had taken Mrs. Wilcox’s cooking class because they didn’t have proper meat handling habits. It was a bit frightening actually. Well, the meat ended up tasting fine. Everyone was happy that school had finished and we all stayed up until 4 in the morning.
Tuesday December 18, 2007
Went out with Nynne to the center. We were looking for her Christmas package which appears to be sent to have been sent to Korea by mistake. It is now waiting in Santiago to be picked up. Afterwards I went to dance class. We have a performance coming up…oh noes!
Monday December 17, 2007
Just recuperated today. I think I’ll take the opportunity to explain Chilean food here. Since my family is Italian I don’t really think I have the full “experience” but I’ll try to explain. Empanadas are big. There are little empanada huts all over the place. Empanadas (or “emps” as we have nicknamed them) are doughy moon shaped pastry with meat, egg, olives, cheese…you name it…it’s a type of empanada. They also have sweet empanadas filled with chocolate or rhubarb. Apart from empanadas BREAD is really big here. They have all kinds of bread and some types that don’t have butter so it won’t “make you fat”. We eat that kind. Everyone knows the different health benefits of the different types of breads. Also, for lunch we have a combination of things:
Rice and Beef
Rice and Chicken
Potatoes and Chicken
Potatoes and Beef
: )
On Saturdays we always have fried fish and rice that my host mum buys at the Saturday market across the street.
Always for lunch there is “’salad” which isn’t really a salad but just veggies placed out on the table. They always have lots of salt, lemon and olive oil with their salad and if you don’t put it on they look at you strangely.
Desserts here aren’t really good at all. The only thing that’s good is “manjar” which is dulce de leche (just condensed milk boiled for two hours to make a caramel type thing). They have crepes and manjar. They also have this really strange dessert that is a pickled apricot in apricot juice with rice. It’s super weird but it manages to taste okay. All the Chileans go crazy for pickled apricot. Oh, also..rumor has it that the milk is numbered here. The milk is really pasteurized and it is not kept in the fridge in the store. It’s kept on the shelf. There are numbers on the bottom of the milk: a number once signifies that it has only been pasteurized one time. Once it goes by the sell by date it gets re-pasteurized and labeled with a number 2. This goes up until number 7. Just so you all know, number 7 tastes exactly like water!
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