PATAGONIA; EL FIN DEL MUNDO

Patagonia…
One week spent forming incredible lifelong friendships, learning new things, meeting new people, conversing with strangers in a foreign language, adventuring, exploring, and making mischief, all in one of the most beautiful places in the entire world. It was an experience I will never ever forget; the experience of a lifetime. I am so blessed.

Thank you Rotary, my family, and everyone else who made this possible for me.

Day 1:
The six of us arrived at the terminal de buses at 5:45pm, said goodbye to our families, and begun our adventure. It was a three hour drive to Santiago, unexpectedly extended by 25 minutes because of a flat tire. I think it might've been the best time I have ever spent on a bus; the six of us became really close in those three and a half hours. We g
Arrived at the Santiago airport around 10, and spent the three hours before our flight left tiredly re-meeting all the other exchange students. Kelly and I did happen to find the one open dunkin doughnuts in the whole building, and nearly died of happiness.

Day 2: slept on the airplane, then spent the rest of the day on the bus, sleeping on and off and enjoying the scenery. We stopped a few times to take pictures. We arrived at the Refugio that evening, and as soon as we figured out our rooms, we all took naps. Brigid, Kelly and I woke up and decided to explore, and ended up being chased off of a mountain by a VERY ANGRY wild horse who apParently did not like the idea of foreigners looking at his glacial mountain stream. We ate dinner at the Refugio, and it was some of the best food I have ever eaten.

Day 3: we woke up early, ate the best oatmeal I have ever had, and got ready for our 18 km day hike up to the Torres del Paine. After walking for about 30 minutes, someone realized that Alex from Germany was missing (because our three counselors, as amazing as they were, were not good with headcounts). So Taylor, Zach from Kansas, and Mathieu from France volunteered to go back and search for him. Personally, I was hoping that he was ABOUT to be attacked by a puma so that I could go fight it off, but it turns out he had decided to go on a walk after breakfast and we had left without him. It was nice though, just walking with the five of us and not all 42, an it turns out our rescue group BOOKED IT up the mountain, because, even though we were an hour behind everyone else, we got the the halfway point five minutes after everyone else did. So we felt pretty proud of ourselves. And to make it even better, our counselor, Ernesto, told Alex that he had to buy us all a beer when we got to Puente Arenas for our trouble. :) We got to the base of the Torres, ate lunch, took pictures, watched a few crazy boys strip and swim in the lake, and then hiked the rest of the way back down.

Day 4: got up, packed our backpacks, and hiked 11 km to the next Refugio. We stayed right on the lake, and it was super pretty, it wa probably my favorite campsite. When we arrived it was raining and we had to set up our tents in the rain. It rained all night and was freezing cold, but thankfully it was the only night I had to sleep in a tent.

Day 5: a day hike was planned, but the weather was pretty bad, everyone had blisters or other pains, and the only two trails were the one we ame in on and the one we were gonna leave on, so we just stayed in instead. Kelly and Casey and I learned Tai Chi from Arturo, our counselor, and we did Tai Chi by the side of the lake. It was super peaceful. Then I hung out with Taylor and Constantin from Germany in the counselor's room which was awesome (it had three-story bunkbeds and was super cozy and cabin-y) and we had a massage exchange and then a dance party. And then about half of the exchange students stripped to their underwear and swam in the icy lake, and I'm glad I didn't do that but it was fun watching them.

Day 6: thanksgiving! We hiked 13 km to the last Refugio, and it was probably the prettiest hike and also the flatest, which was a godsend, because I had four terrible huge painful blisters which I am still recovering from now. While on the trail, I met a man from Orange County who was studying at HSU, and even though I didn't get to talk to him from very long, it was still super exciting. We ate lunch at the Refugio, and it was pretty bad (but the food at every other Refugio was delicious, so I can't complain too much). Then we spent the rest of the day just hanging out.

Day 7: we were supposed to go on a day hike to see a glacier, which would've been amazing, but it was raining hard and there were 70 mph winds, so that plan was cancelled. Instead our counselors gave us the whole day to make up a skit which would be performed before dinner. My group came up with a skit entitled "the true story of where Alex was" or "la verdad historia de donde estan Alex" which entitled the five other group members hiking and complaining about the weight of their backpacks and commenting on the views and wondering where Alex is, and at the end of the skit, they turn around, and I am riding in Santiago's backpack carrying a sign that says "hi, my name is Alex". Alex found it hilarious. And yes, apparently I AM small enough to fit in a hiking backpack. Who knew. Afterwards, we got a talk from some rangers, ate dinner, and then about a dozen of us braved the wind and rain to climb the mountain that was right next to the Refugio. We pretty much had to scramble up on our hands and feet, and I nearly got blown off anyway. Taylor, Constantin, and I stayed long enough to take some pictures with flags and then got the heck outta there.

Day 8: we got up and took the boat across the lake, and then took the bus back to Puente Arenas. We had an hour to walk around the city, so Taylor, Mayella, Kelly and I walked to the plaza and bought alpaca sweaters. Then we accidentally found this pub that had a secret entrance under a building we were taking pictures of, so we took pictures with the waiters. Then we went to dinner with everyone else. Then we hung out in the hotel and I got to use the wifi to skype my parents.

Day 9: we had a bus tour of Puente Arenas and visited the cemetery which was super cool because Chilean cemetaries are NOT like American ones. They are super colorful and each grave has a little garden with lots of flowers and some of them are so crazy looking they look like advertisements for a circus. Many of them have little window boxes with pictures of people who died. It was really interesting. It was also cool because only about half of the tombstones were written in Spanish; there was a lot of English and German and Croatian. We had lunch together an then had a free afternoon. A dozen of us decided to take a collectivo to the Zona de Franca, the tax free zone, which didn't end up being that exciting because it was Sunday and most of the stores were closed. But it was fun anyway 'cause we crammed a ton of people into one collectivo and had interesting discussions with the taxi drivers. And a few of us bought Austral (the most southern region of chile) flags and later got everyone to sign them. Then we walked around for awhile, watched firefighters in a relay race on the plaza, and then Kelly, Taylor, Zach, Alex, and I broke off from the rest of the group because we wanted churros, and we couldn't find any open because it was Sunday, but we did run into Brigid and Olivia and Briana, so the eight of us found a pub to eat dinner at. We watched soccer and throughly confused the waitress with our complicated sandwich orders, but it was delicious and the waitress was really nice, and we ha a lot of fun. Then we met everyone back up at the hotel and got our backpacks and took the bus to the airport. We got back to Santiago around 3 in the morning and there were a lot of sad goodbyes.

Day 10: the six of us Talcans went to Alex's house where we had breakfast and slept for an hour, and then Arturo and Ernesto took us to the bus terminal where we took the 6 o clock bus back to Talca. I got home around 10 am, fell immediately asleep and woke up at 7pm, only because the boys got home and were loud, of course.

Day 11: I slept in long, uploaded my pictures to facebook, got pissed at the computer, and am now lying in the grass in the sun listening to Calle 13 and writing in my blog. And it is nice!

Tomorrow back at school!

Mountains and Aniversario and Rodeos and some other things

So, the mountains. Pretty much we didn't do much except hang around in the sun and talk, although all day Sunday we went to the carrera, the horse races, which was really exciting and fun, especially because Cami's horse raced and so did Roberto's horse, Banana. Banana won and Roberto made $30 betting on him, which he promptly lost half of betting on Cami's horse. Oh, and there was this beautiful horse called Don Simón, and normally I can barely tell one horse apart from another, but this horse was really the prettiest horse I have ever seen. And he was huuuugge! He raced the last race of the day, against this horse who was also gigantic (but less beautiful) and half of the audience said Don Simón won and the other half thought it was a tie, and I still don't know what the actual outcome was, but it was awesome to watch.
The other especially cool thing we did was visit the compound where all the goats are kept, and there was like a hundred of them, and about half were tiny tiny baby goats. And we found one that didn't have a mother, so it would come right up to us and try to suck our fingers. It was really cute. And none of the other mommy goats would let it have their milk, so Roberto started tackling them and holding them down so the baby goat could feed, and it was adorable and really funny too.

The other things we did were celebrate Cami's dad's birthday, walk around the mountains, play soccer, and just hang out. It was really really hot, so we were really really lazy. But it was fun! 

And Cami's family was super nice and they invited me to come with them again sometime and also to go to the beach with them this summer, and actually, they invited me to live with them, and I kinda wish I could but of course Rotary would say no. Not that I don't like my current family, because I do, but we just live so far away!

Then, last week was Aniversario, the anniversary of my school, which is pretty much like homecoming week. 
There's activities all week long and the school is divided up into two alliances, red and white (villains and heroes) and whoever gets the most points from the activities and such wins. There were races, soccer, basketball, volleyball, dances, mission impossibles, and beauty pagent-ish competitions. And some thee things that are harder to explain. I'm pretty sure my team (villains) lost but I'm not exactly positive because different people have been telling me different things so who knows. 

It was pretty fun, except that watching the teams play basketball was like torture. When you watch Chileans play soccer it's like "oh my god, these guys could be pros" and you just sit there kinda dumbfounded at how amazing they are. It's impressive. And then, you watch them play basketball... And you are a little embarrassed.. In their defense, they weren't playing on actual teams that had practiced together before or anything, and the high school boys team was actually decent (decent!) but the other three teams (high school girls, middle school boys, and middle school girls) well, it was hard to watch. especially the middle school girls, who went around like "oops, I dropped the ball and the other team grabbed it, oh well". It made me mad.

What else? Yesterday my family took me to the rodeo. It was quite an experience. What happens is two men on horses (there was only one woman in the whole rodeo, but i was excited to see even one) chase around a cow in a circle, until it gets really scared and crazy, and then they let it out into a bigger circle, in which they have to heard it to a section of the wall and then slam it up against the wall. You get points for doing it really fast and for slamming the cow the right way, and lose points if you go past the wall without slamming the cow or if you lose control of the cow. And if you can make yourself stop feeling sorry for the cow, it's actually kind of fun to watch. I was excited, because I was able to understand most of what the announcer said, so I could actually figure out what was going on. 

I'm sorry that I haven't been posting so much lately. The internet at my house has been terrible, and I haven't had any internet at all the past few days.

Dinner Table Manners

Today I was eating dinner with your host family, and I take a huge bite of burning hot soup, like, kill-a-persom hot,  but instead of just spitting it out like I would have at home, I forced myself to swallow it because I dont want my host family to think Americans are any more disgusting then they probably already do. So I ended up not only burning my mouth and throat but also choking so badly that Emilio had to give me the heimlich manuever. And not even two minutes later, Franco took a bite of burning hot soup and just spit it out. All over my face.

 Now go ahead and laugh. I know you want to.

Bipolar exchange students

Exchange students are very bipolar creatures. I am constantly going from normal happy to incredibly happy to extremely sad or grumpy (but mostly I'm normal happy, just so you know). Like today for instance. I was a little grumpy because I got in trouble with rotary (not badly, but apparently I sleep too much in class. Which is probably true. They weren't really mad, but I felt bad) and then, I was incredibly happy because I had five emails from you all back home, and then I was upset because it was raining super hard (partly because I always thought rain is a little saddening, and partly because Chilean houses do NOT have legitimate heating. By which I mean the heater is the stove) and then I was thrilled because we were having lentils for dinner and keke (pretty much a mix between yellow cake and cornbread) for desert, and I love both of those things so much, and then I was sad because apparently not only does rain mean cold, it also means that us country folks have absolutely no power, and then I was happy again, because the lentils were extra delicious, and then I was super excited because I understood a whole conversation in Spanish. And all of that happened in about two hours.

And right now, I'm happy that the powers back on, but mostly this terrible weather is making me kinda depressed. So I'll tell you all about the mountains when the rain goes away.

Photos

So. Some of you may know that I spent the whole weekend in the mountains with my friend, Cami. Actually, you probably don't know that, because I didn't metnion it, I don't think. And I'll tell you all about it, but first, I just need to rant a bit. Because flickr is muy muy muy estupido!! So stupid. I tried to be a very awesome blogger, and upload the bajillion photos that I took this weekend (seriously, I think there were like 200 of them or something, so much in fact, that I only have photos from Saturday, because after that, I completely wore out my camera battery, and of course, I remembered my charger, but, the one thing that I forgot was my Chile-U.S.A converter. So sorry about that). Anyway, I tried to upload the pictures to flickr, and it was like "You are exceeding your monthly limit. Get rid of half of the pictures, or pay for a premium account." and I was like "WHAT THE HELL??!! The pictures I took in one day are all I can post for the rest of the month??!!!!"

So, that's a problem. My short term solution is that I posted my favorite pictures to facebook, so you can look at them there (and if you aren't friends with me, if you read my blog AND I actually know you, you might as well be friends with me) and I will think of a longterm solution when I have more time to fiddle with things (I only have 30 minutes of computer on weekdays, because I got in trouble for using the computer too much). If anyone knows of a good picture sharing website, let me know.

Anyway, I spent the whole weekend with my friend Camila and her family at her home in the mountains. It was really really fun and super super hot weather. And.. I think I have to tell you more about it later, because my computer time was up.. about 10 minutes ago. Ooops.

Sorry! Love to you all!

How to make friends

Bring a jar of nutella to school, and everybody will magically become your best friend (except Francisco, who will hate you forever and not talk to you for the whole rest of the day). But Especially if you happen to be in a country (like Chile, for instance--imagine that) where half the population has never tried nutella. Poof, magic friends.

I could make an infomercial for nutella, I think. 

Oh that's something else! South American infomercials are even funnier/worse than infomercials in the U.S! I couldn't believe it, but it's true... They have me on the ground laughing at how bad they are.

Speaking of tv, today I watched 'one tree hill' for the first time in my life, because it was the only thing on tv that was in English with Spanish subtitles, as opposed to solo in Spanish, which of course I don't understand. I didn't understand MUCH of what happened in it, because I only saw the second half of the episode, and I'm not exactly sure WHAT the show is about, or why it's called one tree hill. But, this is what I thought: One, the boys weren't especially hot, but the girls all looked like movie stars. This is not realistic, and someone needs to fix it. Two, NOTHING happened that wasn't either sad or happily sad, and sad music played throughout the WHOLE episode. It was waayyyyy depressing. Three, not once did I ever see a tree on a hill. Four, all the parents look way way way to young to have kids that old. Unless there's a storyline I don't know about where every parent in the whole cast of characters got knocked up at sixteen.... Wait, maybe that happened. Yes, that's probably what's up. 

And you just witnessed my how my train of thought goes... On a good day. Usually it's a LOT more random than that, seeing as I'm normally scatterbrained and then add the fact that I'm trying to speak a new language and that I don't understand ANYTHING around me, and I make absolutely no sense at all. But that's okay.

Love Gracie <3

homesick

So, yesterday, for the first time since I've been in Chile, I was extremely homesick. I literally FELT sick, and I thought I was gonna die. But, even still, I didn't really want to go home... I just wanted my mommy :)

I think it mostly stemmed from the fact that one, I did absolutely nothing on Halloween, while all my friends from home (all you people) were out trick-or-treating and haunted housing, etc. And then I did absolutely nothing yesterday (no school) so I just had lots of time to think about how sad I was. And, two,  I started talking with other exchangers about how sad we collectively were, and all the things that bothered us about our families (usually I love my family to death, but when you are homesick, everything feels terrible), and while it was comforting to know I wasn't alone, it made my homesickness worse.

BUT, TODAY IS A NEW DAY.
It's the second day of November! Which means I have been in Chile for two months! And, I have a jar of nutella (which is making me extremely popular at school, I've had it open for five minutes and it's halfway gone) and it's sunny and I feel so much better.

So yeah. That's all. Besos y abrazos to you all, and extra special besos y abrazos to my lovely mother for being her awesome mommy self.
Love, Gracie

HEY, LOOK!

PHOTOS!!! RIGHT HERE! ^^^^
CLICK ON THE LINK AND LOOK AT THEM!!!