One Month...

¡Hola a todos!
I have now been in Chile for a month. It both feels like I´ve been here for a while and just got here. Things are going pretty well. I´m in a super good mood right now because a) the week is almost over, b) I´m going to Santiago this weekend and c) I had a really good time at the pool today. This week was okay. We had a test in Physics (pretty sure I failed that one), a test in Lenguaje (I don´t know if I passed or not...I hope so) and a test in Chemistry, which was today. Honestly, I had no idea so I had to guess on quite a few. Hmmm. My stepbrother and brother´s names start with a so I´ll pick a! Oh well. Oh and I had a spelling test with the 6th graders as well. I think I got almost all the words right! It´s really weird to go from being a good student in the US to failing everything here. It´s really frusterating and can be sort of stressful, but I´m trying to keep everything in perspective and not put too much importance in how well I do. Hopefully I won´t have to repeat any courses in the US. I stayed after school with my math professor two days this week and that really helped. Yeah, school´s a challenge. I think right now it´s the hardest part of this experience. I´ve decided to transfer from my historia elective (lots of research) to art, which I hope will be less academic and a bit easier to follow.

Last weekend I went over my friend Vale´s house with some other girls and we watched Twilight and hung out, which was fun. On Saturday I went with my family (minus Panchi and Valentin) to this really popular resturaunt in Quillota called el Buho (the Owl) which is burger joint. The hamburgers are delicious and enormous and they make great fries. Then we all came home and the little girls and I watched a teeny-bopper movie. Sunday was, like always, a family day. I really like Sundays because they´re super chill. Everyone stays home and we prepare a really big lunch. I love hanging out in the kitchen and helping get lunch ready. It´s one of my favorite parts of the weekend. On Saturdays I also usually go to track with my little sisters. Me running track. Ha! Soccer starts next week. It seems super laid-back. We only play once a week. I´m also going to do theater, because one of my friends suggested it to me so why not?

Tomorrow I´m going to Santiago for a weekend-long AFS camp. I´m really psyched to see my fellow AFSers! Plus we get to leave school early to catch the bus there. It´ll be weird to speak English so much (which will probably happen). I speak almost all Spanish here. I´m not sure if my Spanish has improved in the last month. I can´t really tell. I hope so! It´s a little weird writing in English. It feels sort of awkward.

Sports....This week there were two World Cup Qualifying games for Chile. We beat Peru 3-1 and tied Uruguay 0-0. The Peru game was super intense. There´s some inter-country tension right now over rights to the coast and so add that to an already intense soccer rivalry....tons of security in Lima! It´s fun watching the games. The big news is that Argentina lost 5-1 to....BOLIVIA!! I have to say, right now I´m sort of glad to be on the other side of the ecuator than the Knicks. Oh dear, is all I can say.

So...everything is good. There are good days and hard days. The great thing about the hard days though is that often when I talk to someone about how I´m feeling down they really cheer me up. Tuesday was sort of rough and then I talked to a friend on the phone and she completely cheered me up.

I hope everyone is doing well!
Love,
Sela