Hey! I can't believe it's almost already been three months, time really flies by here. So what's new with me you want to know? I think we left off in the end of September, lots has happened since then And my gerbil memory will probably only be able to blog about 20% of it, sorry. In the month of October I had my first Rotary meeting in Llay-Llay, met a cool girl named Gabrienne, she's from Washington/Oregon is seventeen and lives about an hour from me. I think that was the most English I've spoken since I got here, it's crazy how much you miss speaking when you literally aren't able to say what you want whenever you want. You crave conversation, and not just through Facetime or Skype, conversation with a native speaker, person to person. Turns out Gabrienne and I have a lot in common, being girls we gossiped about hot guys that we've met, both agreed that Chileans are very attractive people. We talked about our families, school, friends, struggles, parties, everything. She has since moved to Los Andes which is a little farther due to problems with her host family, glad that she is finally somewhere where she is happy, looking forward to seeing her at the end of the month when all of us exchange students spend a day together.
                  Halloween has come and gone, it's not as celebrated here but we got two days off of school for Day of the Dead, I don't exactly remember how I spent them, I don't think I did much. The highlight of my Halloween was the package that my aunt sent, full, literally full of candy, some socks, lotion, granola bars, fried rice, syrup, pumpkin filling mix and other little things. Shared the candy and pop tarts with my brother Rodrigo, think he enjoyed it I know he at least liked the 100 grand bars. Halloween night I spent with my brothers friends, just hanging out at one of their houses, it was relaxed but I always have a good time with them so I didn't mind.

               
              My family took me to a beautiful vineyard, we got a tour, inside and out, did a little wine tasting with cheese and crackers. It was incredible, we got to go into the cellar and everything, so grateful that I have a family that takes me places.

 

View of the vineyard. 

           The last week has been hot as hell, upper 80's to mid 90's, seeing all the pictures of snow and buck hill and such on Facebook and Instagram has made me jealous. Personally, I love winter, snow, snowboarding, snowmobiling, everything about the cold so when I see things like "ugh snow" "I hate snow" it makes me wanna slap all you ungrateful little brats for not taking advantage of it, you're lucky. Another fantastic thing that I've been getting used to is that air conditioning basically doesn't exist here, not in schools, not in houses, noooowhere. That'll take some getting used to this Summer. Let's see last weekend was Rodrigo's birthday so we went to our dad's house in the country, (if you remember from the first blog post) to celebrate. It was a beautiful day, turned into a freezing night, I think I fell asleep at like 2 or 3 not being Chilean and all. Almost everyone else stayed up til 8 or 9 partying, I honestly still have no idea how they do it. Sunday I woke up with a sinus headache and a terrible cold, yay me. Stayed home from school on Monday and have spent this week getting over it.
      

Andres, Rodrigo, Viche.

 

 

 

This week was the last week for the seniors here. I'm sad that today was their last day because most of my friends are seniors. Wednesday was the dreaded "lista negra" it's basically a farewell to the juniors from the seniors, if you can call it that. They post a list in the class with everyone who is on the blacklist, then put pictures in the courtyard of the worst people on the list. Most often it's student council members, ex boyfriends or girlfriends of seniors or things like that.

I was excited all day to see what it was about, then finally the time came and the seniors came in masks with white latex gloves on to all the classrooms to 'kidnap' all of the juniors on the blacklist, actually kind of intimidating. Then they took them all down to the courtyard, duct taped their hands together, duct taped them to the chairs, some of them even got their mouths taped. Meanwhile I was on the balcony watching like wtf this would never be allowed in the states but ok cool. I'd like to thank and also show some hate for Francisco Aray and Seba Delgado for calling me out, they don't usually do things to foreign exchange students for obvious reasons. As I was watching two guys came up behind me and took me down to the courtyard, in my head I was like "oh gee this will be fun, like a cool hazing or something" wrong, wrong, wrong. First we got paint on our faces, amateur right? They took it to a whole new level with some kind of sauce that had ground pork, oil, garlic, onions, cheese, and other disgusting things in it, poured it all over our hair, I started gagging because the smell was so horrible. On top of that we got honey rubbed in our hair and eyebrows, hair gel, sawdust, most paint, and then got our hair teased. Now that was a farewell. After washing my hair three times there was still pieces of pork in it, and the smell was still there. My uniform was gross and I just wanted to go home and shower at the end of the day. Good stuff, if only we could get away with that kind of stuff in the states.  

 List posted in the class.

 

 

 

 Worst Offenders

 

 

Some students looking at the girls board.

 

 

 

Aftermath

 

 

 

 

Today was the graduation ceremony for the seniors, lasted about two hours, not too long I think ours was about two hours too, but then again we were a class of 300 something and they're a class of around 80. It was much different than ours. They have a military style to it, with marching, a marching band, passing of the banners, flags and things like that. It was fun to watch and be a part of, everyone was crying by the end, I think graduating is a much sadder thing for them than it is for us. I don't remember any of us crying after graduating, pure ecstasy is more so how I would have described it.

I'm sad to go back to school Monday knowing that none of them will be there, it'll be different that's for sure.

 

 

 Panorama view of the gym.

 

 

 

 This is the military style I was talking about.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Senior class celebrating after.

 

 

 

 

 

  I have to say that the last week has been really hard for me homesickness-wise, I think the combination of the coming of thanksgiving, and my struggle with Spanish is making me a little depressed. I have to say I thought that I would be more fluent by now, I think I picked one of the worst countries to come to to learn Spanish though, they conjugate verbs differently, have so many slang words it's hard to understand. Sooo I will continue struggling, I started reading The Diary of Anne Frank in Spanish, marking the words I don't know and looking them up later. I figure by reading, living, and watching the news I'm bound to pick up Spanish sooner or later. Until then I'll keep struggling and continue to remain grateful that I have friends that are so patient with me.

 

 

Peace, love, and all of that good stuff,

Kita.