Week 8

Hola a todos!
Thursday afternoon and I´m the only kid home, as all my sisters are off doing track or studying for the college entry test. We´re doing construction on our house right now so it´s REALLY loud. I hear what sounds like a jackhammer going and it´s been going for the last while. We´re all super psyched for them to be done, especially my host parents because then they´ll have their own room again. Our house used to be white, but it has since been painted bright yellow. At first I wasn´t so psyched but I think it´ll grow on me. This week was a really short one, school-wise because on Wednesday we had our class jornada and tomorrow I´m skipping school to go on a tour of Quillota with AFS. Our jornada is a yearly event where our class skips school and goes to the house of one of my classmates with our head teacher and religion professor. We have a theme that we talk about and do activities around and at the end, we do something fun. Our theme was sexuality and we talked about different aspects but I can´t really give too much detail because I didn´t understand a whole ton. We played some games where we had to solve a sexuality crossword and stuff like that. Afterwards we had a bbq and all ate hamburgers and listened to music. It was fun. Tomorrow my school is celebrating International Book Day. There´s all this stuff planned. Each grade has produced a radio theater piece and they´re going to be performed. My English class is doing a production of War of the Worlds and my Lit class is going to be doing a poetry performance. Unfortunately I don´t think I´ll be able to participate because I´ll be with AFS. I´m bummed. I signed up for the tour before I really knew about the Book Day and I also really wanted to go, because I´ll get to see exchange friends from both Quillota and Viña. It´s hard to chose between being with my class and being with AFS. This week was another tough week. I just get very frusterated because I can´t understand as much as I´d like and communicating is hard. Grrr. Yesterday I was super frusterated so I walked to town and bought myself a Bon o Bon, which is a little chocolate thing with Chilean peanut butter inside.That helped, getting outside and moving around. I went into the center last night as well, to hang out with a friend from Finland. Her name´s Olga and she´s pretty cool. We just sat and talked, and it was super nice to talk to another exchange student.
This Saturday I went to play soccer at a soccer school at my school. It´s affiliated with La Universidad de Chile, one of the professional soccer teams here. There were only three other girls though, and they were freshman and younger. I´d like to play soccer but I want to find something to do that will help connect me with more people outside my school or with people my age. My soccer skills are incredibly rusty and I´m very out of shape. I´d like to join a gym here. Have to investigate that!
I´ve been sick this week but I´m feeling much better now. Actually, it was this weekend that was the worst - a bad cold. As such, my weekend here was very chill. I read a lot, because I have two school books to finish by next week. Yikes! I´m also still reading Angels and Demons by Dan Brown (in Spanish) and that´s going well.
Ooooh, exciting news. I PASSED MY MATH TEST. I PASSED IT, AS IN NO LITTLE RED FAILING NUMBER!!!! I got the lowest passing grade but I don´t care because I PASSED! Chem, no. But that´s okay.
What else...Oh, I know! In a few weeks, my school has it´s anniversary week. It´s called Alianzas (alliances) and all the odd-number grades are together and all the even number grades are together. My little sisters and I are together, but Panchi´s on the other alianza. There are all these different events. I´m going to be playing in the soccer game. Alianza is four days long and sounds really intense. There´s a theme every year, and this year it´s (Asher, you´´ll appreciate this) Brazil vs Italy. My team is Brazil! There´s going to be some samba-dancing going on.

Hope everyone´s well,
Much love,
Sela