Week 10

¡Hola a todos!

Today is Saturday and I´ve officially been in Chile for ten weeks. This was a pretty good week. On Saturday, after much deliberation, I went to Fantasilandia with a group of exchange friends and Chileans. Fantasilandia is an amusement park in Santiago and at first I wasn´t sure if I wanted to go because I find roller coasters and other unnatural contraptions of death a bit unpleasant. Nevertheless, I had no other plans and I love my exchange friends so I decided to go, which turned out to be a good idea. It was me, Mihi (his real name is Michael but the Chileans pronounce in Mihi), his friend, Sally, Tanja, Ham, Nut (a Thai kid from San Fernando), Lee Hao and his friend, Ham´s host brother Juan Pablo who was our chaperone although he´s my age and Clint, a kid from KY who was on exchange in Argentina but is now at a university in Valparaiso. We took a bus into Santiago at around 9:30am and got to Fantasilandia at a litle before noon. We all split up into groups and I spent the day with Sally, Juan Pablo and Clint. We didn´t go on any of the big roller coasters, but we did go on the Extreme Fall. They have it at Six Flags too. You go this tower and they just leave you sitting there waiting and then suddenly you fall back down. It was slightly terrifying but fun too. The one unpleasant moment occurred on the slide. There was this big slide thing that you took a little raft down and they put water down to make the boat go faster. Juan Pablo promised me I wouldn´t get wet at all. My entire butt and back of the legs got soaked. So I spent a lot of the day feeling a bit cold and clammy. On the bus ride home I spent the time talking with Mihi and his friend, who wants to go on exchange to the US. He had a lot of questions about English grammar and it was really funny because Mihi, who´s German, was able to answer them much better than I was. People get really confused by “do” as an auxilary verb. So all in all, the trip to Fantasilandia was fun.

Monday was a little hard but after that the week was much better. Tuesday was a really good day. Here´s one part of my exciting news for the week! So a few weeks ago we took a PSU (their equivalent of the SAT) Language test where we had to analize poetry and stuf like that and she handed them back on Tueday and I got a 5.3!!! In normal circumstances this would be a pretty average grade but considering I was taking a college-entry test in Spanish, I was pretty psyched. My teacher said I did really well. The weird thing was that my classmates scored wicked low. I had one of the higher grades, which was funny. Then later that day we got our history tests back and I passed my first test from way back in March with a 5 and somehow had managed to get a 4.2 on the PSU Precolonial Chilean History test, where I pretty much just guessed on every single one and chose the names I liked best. So passing a test always makes me feel good so passing three was very exciting. On Tuesday and Wednesday we had our midterm Language test. That was pretty hard. We had to analize poetry, read paragraphs and identify the thesis and intent of the writer, do synonyms, stuff like that. A lot of it was multiple choice, which was good but there was some open response too. On Wednesday we had to read and analyize a Neruda poem and afterwards my brain was exhausted. I feel like I´m begining to understand more, but I have to constantly be paying close attention, which is exhausting. In class discussions when everyone is talking over each other, yelling at each other to shut up, and just making lots of noise in general it´s completely overwhelming. I much prefer talking to people one on one.

One thing I really love about Chile is the public transportation. I can take a colectivo to and from my house to town for about a $1.50. I prefer to walk to town though and then take the colectivo home. I love being able to get around by myself. It makes me feel incredibly independent. On Wednesday I walked into town, did some little errands and then met up with Olga and went and talked to the people at the Tourism office, who know us. There are also buses to take into Viña but I haven´t taken one yet and I want someone to go with me the first time.

Thursday was a weird day. One of the funny things about being an exchange student is that you´re often surprised by things. On Thursday I get to school and all I knew was that the police were going to come and show us their dogs. Instead of Math, which is our first class on Thursday, we left the classroom (I had no idea where we were going) and went to the little chapel to have our school anniversary mass with 4º Medio. Next week is the official anniversary of the school. So we had mass and then went and hung our class cross on a tree out in the back field. Yes, we have a class cross. I think we go and pray to it if our class is having dificulties, I´m not sure. All I know is that FRCS never gave us a class cross. What´s up with that? Then after half of literature class we went and heard a presentation by a member of the Chilean GOPE (their version of SWAT). He talked to us about being a GOPE officer and showed us a video of their training. Then we went and saw a demonstration of the police dogs doing tricks. Some of it was pretty cool. By the time we had finished lunch, we had pretty much missed all of our classes except for PE. So that was all good. On Friday we also learned that in the national standardized test last year, my class scored the best in the region, and sixth best in the country in math. They were all so excited. The math profesor was so happy too. He said we´re going to have a celebratory breakfast.

Two more exciting pieces of news. One is I finally called home this week, since it was Mom´s birthday. I was really nervous about calling home because I thought it´d make my homesick but it was just really, really nice. J The other exciting piece of news is that I FINALLY EXPERIENCED A TEMBLOR!!! I´ve been in Chile for more than two months and although there have been others, I didn´t feel them, much to my disapointment. But yesterday we were sitting in Literature class and there´s this sort of far-off rumble and then everything just shakes a little bit. It was cool.

So that was my week. In a about a half-hour I´m going to soccer and then I´m hopefully going to a party tonight. HAPPY MOTHERS DAY to all the mothers!!!!


Much love,