Good Days

Day Eight- Today a Chilean student asked me to go to church with her, so of course I jumped on that opportunity. It appeared to be a small church in a shopping center, but once we got in there it was HUGE! We sat on the second level to watch the service. The music lasted about an hour and I loved it. I could recognize some of the music because they sing a lot of translated typical Christian songs. They were all very into it though. It was awesome to be able to watch them worship. The sermon lasted about an hour too, I had no idea what the guy was saying though. He spoke kind of slow so I’m sure when I learn Spanish I will be able to understand it. After church I came back to the house to meet up with Katie for lunch. She is Catholic so she went to a church nearby that she loved. We realized that almost every store is closed on Sunday here so we walked around for like an hour looking for food. Eventually we found this sandwich shop thing that was kind of like a fast food restaurant. It was a little expensive but the food was good. And it was big enough for me to eat it for lunch and dinner. Katie and I went for a 30 minute run around the park which was pretty fun, it always feels good to be outside when the highs are in the 60’s and the sun is shining. After we go back, we cleaned the bathrooms here because they were pretty freaking dirty. So then I showered and unpacked and we rearranged our room. I put my pictures and things from my friends on the wall. I feel so relieved to have my own space now and not live out of a suitcase. I love my room! Well our room, which is weird to say because I’ve never shared a room with someone for longer than about a week.

my bed, I have the top bunk and decked it out with pictures of family and friends, and also cute things my friends gave or made me before I left

my part of the book/shoe shelf

Day Nine- Today was a holiday in Chile called something I can’t remember, but it was for Virgen del Carmen, which meant we were out of school and a lot of places were closed. A Chilean friend of Phil’s named Betzabet decided she wanted to take us out for the day and we decided that we wanted to climb Cerro Santa Lucía. Her friend Liz came too but she is in a wheelchair so she went to Starbucks to use the internet, which is the reason she came anyways, we weren’t excluding her. It was probably about 1/3 of a climb as Cerro San Cristóbal. The views were still really pretty though and it was basically a castle that we got to climb to the top of. After that we met back up with Liz to find lunch. On the way we ran into a parade celebrating Virgen del Carmen. It was so colorful, expressive, and just really cool to watch. They were dancing and playing instruments, I liked it a whole lot. After that we went to the most chaotic place ever to eat lunch. And of course it was a seafood place, the one thing here I don’t eat. So I got two baby cheese empanadas which was kind of disappointing. We passed so many cool places that I would have much rather eaten at. It was ok though, I am not going to complain because I got to eat. After that we walked back to the house and I bought a 2 liter of un-carbonated water because the tap water here, although it’s safe, is not very good. Now I’m sitting here, about to do some homework and cook some dinner and then go to bed. 

the very top of the hill

the view from the top

the parade