Week 6

Hola!
This is my sixth week in Chile (as noted above in the subject). Today I´m home from school because it´s Semana Santa. In Chile, schools get Thursday and Friday off. Yesterday was a half day and in the evening we had a via crusis for all of the families. A via crusis (for all you who aren´t Catholic) is when you walk through the 12 stations of the cross and sing songs and say prayers. I only know one half of a prayer and that´s Our Father. I know it in English thanks to going to mass with Javier so it´s easier to pick up in Spanish. We all had candles and walked around to different classrooms and people read stuff at each station. It was fine but I didn´t understand very much. I liked the candles and singing though. Tomorrow we might go to Riñaca, a city next to Viña, for a via crusis on the beach but it´s still up in the air. A lot of the time our plans are up in the air until the last minute. I´m not quite sure what else we´re doing for Easter. I think we´ll go to mass on Sunday and have an egg hunt for the little girls. I´m sad to be missing passover. I think our family sedar was today or yesterday. This is my second time in two years missing it and it´s really a bummer. I was hoping to have a sedar here with a Jewish exchange friend but I don´t have a way into Viña and it would just be complicated, legistics-wise.
This week´s been okay. On Friday I got to leave school at 3pm and all the other exchangers in Quillota/La Calera and I took a bus to Santiago for our one-month orientation. That was pretty cool. There were about 50 of us there, all from the central part of the country. The students to the North and South had their own orientations. Lots of Americans and Germans. My Spanish was pretty good on Friday and it was a little hard to switch over to English because I was happy speaking Spanish but it´s so much easier to communicate with everyone in English rather than Spanish. I have to say, as much as I love speaking in Spanish it was such a relief to be able to express myself without really having to concentrate super hard. It was really nice to be with people who were in my same situation more or less and I click really well with a lot of the exchangers. We had to do some talking in groups about culture shock, which wasn´t that helpful because it was pretty general. I liked it much more when we just talked as a group about our experiences. On Saturday we went for a short bus tour of Santiago. We went to La Moneda, their version of the White House and took pictures outside. We also went to the central plaza, where there happened to be a group of actors doing a performance of Jesus Cristo Super Estrella. It was so funny. It took me a minute to realize they were singing in Spanish. Everyone was wearing hippy-ish clothing and dancing. We took a picture with the actors. Santiago is a fine city but I don´t think I´d like to live there. It´s super crowded. You can see the Cordillera from the city though, and it´s super pretty. One of the american girls waved from the bus at another bus driver and he waved back at her, lost his focus and crashed the bus. Not seriously crashed it but it made a loud noise and some glass broke. On Saturday night we had a party and voted King and Queen of the Camp. The winners were Thor, a 6ft+ guy from Iceland who looks exactly like you´d expect someone from Iceland to look and is really cool and Olga, a Finn living in Quillota who is also super cool. They got paper-napkin sashes and danced together. It was awesome. On Sunday we hung out and did an obstacle course competition which involved getting flour all over our faces and then we came home. When I came home, my Spanish was pretty horrible. I knew I could speak much better than I was but the words just wouldn´t come and I couldn´t understand my family very well. Aggh!! It´s better now though.
The highlights of this week: I found out I passed my bio test AND my physics test, with a 4.4 and a 4.1. They grade on a scale of 1-7, and 4 is the minimum passing grade. If I pass, I´m satisfied. My friend wanted to know how we grade at Four Rivers and I tried explaining it to her, although without the hamburger rubric it was pretty difficult. Let´s see...what else? Last night Panchi and I went over to my friend Cata´s house with a bunch of other friends and we had homemade sushi which was really good. We also sang kareoke in Spanish and English, including A Dios Le Pido by Juanes (speaking of Juanes, I saw a word search activity book with Juanes on the cover). There were really weird music videos that went along with the songs, including a video of baboons that accompanied a love song. This week was also the begining of soccer. It´s super chill. The first day there were only 6 girls: two from Primero Medio and 4 from Tercero Medio. The skill level isn´t super high and I´m super rusty, as in laughably rusty, but it felt really good to run around and play. We did some passing and finished with three v three and my team won. So that was all good.
I´ve been okay but feeling a little frusterated because everything takes so much work. Just talking can be draining and my Spanish is okay considering, but I still miss a lot and talking can be a challenge. Making a plan to go into town to meet a friend is this huge challenge because I don´t know my town very well, I don´t know how to use the public transportation and it´s hard to talk on the phone. I end up feeling like a little kid because I need so much help with everything. I´m SO looking forward to speaking Spanish better. Ahh well...in time. I can read Angels and Demons pretty easily, so that´s good. I have to admit, I´m hooked. I´m also sort of hooked on a Chilean soap opera called Cuenta Conmigo hasta que Morir (Count on my until death). It´s really funny and dramatic and they speak Chilean Spanish so it´s really good practice. This guy´s wife is going to die of cancer so he finds a replacement for her, who happens to be his secretary, but then his wife doesn´t die so he´s in a sticky position. I´m pretty sure there´s also a pregnant 15yr old and some other stuff is happening too but I don´t watch it often enough to understand, plus I miss a lot of the dialogue.
Oooooh! I had my first real empanada. I´d had empanadas before but they were pre-frozen. This was a real, huge empanada de pino (ground meat, hard-boiled egg and olives) and it was delicious. We ate them at the orientation. They served them at lunch and I thought that was our lunch because they were so big and then after that they came out with these big plates of chicken and rice. So much food. I also had this really good pastry on the bus. It was a cone of dough filled with manjar mixed with cream. It was yummy. I´m definitely going to bring back manjar for you guys, because it´s awesome. I don´t know what the difference is between manjar and dulce de leche but I´m pretty sure there is one.
Alright, I think that´s all for now.

Much love,
Sela