Fantasilandia!

(11/9-11/11) This weekend was a pretty exciting one. Friday a student and I went out to lunch at a restaurant called J. Cruz where I tried chorrillana for the first time. Chorrillana is French fries with eggs, onions, and steak on top of it. It’s delicious. I could have eaten the whole plate by myself but I was sharing. I was meeting with a student because she needed help making a video for class interviewing someone in English. She asked me to help her come up with questions and then asked to interview me on camera. I said of course I would help her. Their English accents are so cute, I hope I sound cute with my Spanish accent. So that took about three hours in total. When we finished my friend Koke was at the house so we went and played ping-pong for about an hour or so. Eventually I needed to take a break and laid down on the couch where I apparently fell asleep for about an hour. When I woke up Eli and Jorge said they were going to the store to pick some stuff up at the market to make pizzas that night because a few people were coming over for pizzas and a movie. They told me I was going with them so I did, I love them very much, my family here. When we got back it was about 8:30 so we started cooking the pizzas and the people started trickling in. We sat around talking until about 1am when they decided that was the time to start the movie. I let them use my Netflix but went to bed around 2am because I was exhausted and Saturday was a big day. What was so big about Saturday you ask? Well I went to Fantasilandia, basically their version of Wild Adventures Theme Park. It was awesome though! Except we ended up waiting over an hour for everyone to get to the designated meeting location before hand, that’s Chilean time for you. I rode so many roller coasters and got to hang out with 6 El Oasis students (Carla, Ruth, Kevin, Koke, Moises, and Katie) all day. It was about $16 to get into the park which the students thought was expensive but compared to the US it was so cheap. Also the food in the park was really cheap comparatively. I ate a hamburger, large fry, and a large drink for less than $10. I was impressed. The rides were pretty awesome too. There was one that spun you upside down and then shot water in your face, it was weird but I liked it. It was the perfect day too, sunny with the high of 74, but the whole theme park was decorated for Christmas. It was so strange! There was even a parade with Santa Claus. They don’t have Thanksgiving to celebrate so right after Halloween they go straight to Christmas. We were in the park for about 7 hours and I wasn’t bored for a minute! It was such an awesome day. We got back to the house around 9 that night and then I played ping-pong with the guys for a little bit. Then when they left Katie and I played ping-pong for a little while. It was fun but I was pretty freaking tired so I showered and went to bed after that. Sunday was pretty awesome too. A student (Koke) had invited me to go to church with him so I took him up on his offer. Their pastor is a guy from the US so his Spanish was really easy for me to understand. Plus they had a visiting pastor from the US who didn’t know Spanish so we got to hear the sermon in English and in Spanish, it was very cool. After the service, Koke invited me to his house for lunch. I don’t pass up on free food. So I went. Koke and I hung out while his dad finished cooking lunch. The lunch was awesome though. It was like a cheesy zucchini casserole thing that was awesome and french fries. It was cool being able to talk to his dad and brother at lunch and understand what they were saying to me. Some days this language just clicks in my head and some days it’s harder. Luckily I was having a good day. His mother was at work so I didn’t get to meet her. After lunch Koke and I played Guess Who for a little while. Then he showed me his most prized collection, his movies. He was so happy that I went through all of them. He had a lot! It was about 3 by then so I decided to head back home. Plus he lives an hour+ away from El Oasis. When I got back I did laundry and ate beef jerky and sour watermelons while watching some Netflix show. I relaxed the rest of the day and it felt good. What a great weekend!

my delicious chorrillana

our group at Fantasilandia!

Fantasilandia!!!

giant swings

captured

me being angry at Christmas decorations

Pancakes and Mary

(11/5-11/8) Monday I woke up at about 1:30 in the afternoon. In my defense, that retreat wore me out, plus I did wake up at 10:30 to eat breakfast and then went back to sleep. Anyhow, not much happened on Monday. I ate and watched tv with Eli, both of us still in our pajamas. After a while the staff came over and had their meeting at like 4pm and Jorge came over so he walked with me to get lunch. I went to El Guaton, my favorite restaurant here. My friend Koke came over later and we practiced Spanish and English together and then we played ping pong for about an hour. That night instead of the usual event (Donce) we had Doncine. The staff knew after the retreat they didn’t want to have to plan and get a bunch of stuff together so a few students came over and we watched a movie called In Time. When the movie was over we got into groups of about 4 students and talked about the movie. It was pretty cool. Tuesday I went to lunch with Eli at Barcelona. I really wanted steak and fries but they were out and I was sad. After that I just hung around for a while reading and uploading pictures and stuff like that. That night I took two students out to dinner with me, Susana and Cynthia. We went to this cool restaurant called Por Amor al Arte (for the love of art). Me and Susana had gone once before and just loved it so we took Cynthia this time. It’s such a cute place, everything in it is for sale and the food is pretty good. It had so many cool art pieces I could have stayed in there all night. Wednesday was probably the most eventful day. Katie and I decided to climb San Cristobal and it was fun. A little hot but I prefer this heat to GA humidity any day. So we climbed and hung out at the top for a bit and then climbed down. On the way back to the house we stopped by a Lider to pick up a few things for dinner because we had invited a few students over for dinner that night. After Lider I spotted a student sitting on a bench waiting for the bus so we went over and talked to her until her bus came and then we made our way back to the house. I showered and hung out a little. I got a text about an hour before we were supposed to start cooking with the students we had invited that said they wouldn’t be able to come over. It was sad, but randomly there were two students here practicing for their cover band, Ruth and Pulpa who are sisters. We asked them if they would want some dinner and they said yes. So the four of us went down stairs and started cooking pancakes! It was awesome we made 6 different types of pancakes: plain, chocolate chip, banana, nutella, peanut butter, and manjar (which is kind of like caramel). They were all pretty delicious. We watched a movie while eating the pancakes called Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist which I had probably seen about 10 times but it was still fun. They helped us clean up after and then I went to sleep. Thursday was an awesome day too. I was sitting in the living room watching tv when Carla walked through the door. Carla is one of the girls we invited for pancakes but sent me that text saying she couldn’t make it. She came bearing gifts for me. She brought me lunch, KFC. It was so sweet! We ate together and watched the Princess Bride. That was the best. I had to start my chores a little after that so I cooked my brownies and printed everything for Café a lo Gringo. Then we set up for Café a lo Gringo and then, obviously, started Café a lo Gringo. This week’s theme was questions, how to form the questions, how to ask questions, and how to answer questions. My game was Bingo and it went really well. The whole Café went pretty well and after that Tertulia started. We started a new series this week about the world how it began and how it will end. So this week was on the Creation. I don’t know why, but it was very hard for me to keep my eyes open. Afterwards I went around taking pictures for a while until the ping pong table was free. When it became free I played with Koke and after three games I finally won one! It was so awesome and I was very excited. Then everyone had to leave because of the metro. I went to bed shortly after that. 

me and Mary

all the pancake mixes

pancake group

final product

me and Koke and my new shirt!

Carla and Cami playing Bingo!

Retiro de los Sexos!!!

(11/2-11/4) Well this weekend El Oasis went on a Retreat! I can’t remember the name of the place but it was about 4 ½ hours south of Santiago. Let’s start with Friday though. I woke up early to go grocery shopping with Claudia, Eli, and Amy. It took about two hours to shop for 70 people for 3 days. I think there were about 6 grocery carts full of food. When I got back I finished packing. Then I went to lunch with Amy at an empanada place. When we got back students were starting to arrive with all of their stuff. Not too much later the buses arrived and we loaded up and moved out. I slept a little on the bus, but not very much. My job was to go around and make everyone introduce themselves. I about lost my voice yelling everyone’s answers. We played a few games too and after that I sat with a student and we listened to music the rest of the trip. When we got to the place I immediately had to help in the kitchen cooking dinner. My job was dicing tomatoes and it took forever! The dinner was actually hotdogs so we diced tomatoes and smashed some avocados because that is how Chileans eat hotdogs, along with some mayo. After dinner we played a game which I don’t know the name of but my CCF plays it on retreats as well. I was partners with Carla and we came in third place. After that we had a dance competition which was very very tiring. They would play four whole songs and then eliminate only four teams…and there were 40 teams! Abraham and I got out on the second round but I’m pretty sure both of us wanted it. When that was over everyone just kind of did their own thing. I hung out with some girls who started doing karaoke and dancing. I probably made a complete fool of myself for over two hours but it was a blast. I went to bed around 4am. I woke up at 8 to go help with breakfast like I was told to do but of course it was only me. Two other students walked in pretty soon after me so we just went ahead and did everything ourselves. It was too much work because it was cereal and milk but there were only 20 bowls and we had 70 people. As soon as people were done eating we had to immediately wash their bowl so the next person would have something to eat on. It was all good. After that we had our first talk of the weekend. I’m not going to lie, it was my least favorite part. This husband and wife talked about sex which was fine but the guy talked so fast that even the students were having trouble catching what he was saying. I hardly understood anything and it lasted two hours. The music before and after was really awesome though. Then the girls got together and worked on our dance that we were going to do at the beginning of our soccer game. Apparently the boys and the girls perform a dance before the epic match. Then we ate lunch and got ready for the game, all the girls got decked out in black and pink and just started pumping each other up. Some background on this game, the competition started in 2009 and the boys have won every single time. So we really wanted to win. I started in the game and my primary job was defense. So I had to be extra aggressive. For everyone who knows me, that wasn’t very hard. I knocked a lot of guys down and stopped a whole lot of goals. Our whole team worked extra well together. I think I played 45 minutes of the 50 minute game. We played our little hearts out. You know what we got for it? EVERYTHING!!! We won for the first time! ALMORRICAS! It was such a thrill. After our celebration we all ran down to the river to cool off and have a victory swim. The river was absolutely gorgeous. I was also the first goal to jump off of this huge rock. A few boys did it and it looked really fun. You had to climb up the side of the rock and it didn’t seem very high up until you got to the top. It was crazy and a ton of fun. We all got out and took showers. While I was waiting for my shower, I found a huge spider in our cabana. I freaked out and made a boy go in and get it. It freaked me out! Then I showered and went to dinner. I was starving so I ate two good platefuls of pasta. Then we had another talk and again I was pretty lost but I did some journaling and that was good. Afterwards we split the guys and girls up and the girls got to ask the men on the El Oasis staff questions while the guys got to ask the girl members on the El Oasis staff questions. It was pretty cool hearing the questions and the answers. It got done at about 1am and then we went and made a campfire. Everyone was singing and having a great time. Then we made s’mores!! I love s’mores! It was a great time with everyone though and I stayed until about 3:30am and then I was about to fall asleep. In the morning I went to breakfast and ate eggs and an apple. Then we did music and communion. After that a student went and got baptized in the river. It was very beautiful. The band played a couple of songs and it was just really awesome. Then we packed up, cleaned, and headed out. The bus ride back seemed so long because my body was so sore from soccer and I couldn’t get comfortable. We eventually got home and after about an hour everyone had left so I did laundry and watched tv while it dried. Then I slept for a good 11 hours. It was an awesome retreat and I’m so glad I got the chance to experience it. I got to know a lot more about the students and grow closer to everyone. Awesome! 

me and my friend Susana!

our victory swim

the number of goals we scored = 7

campfire

the gorgeous river

Caroline's baptism

Almorricas!

Happy Halloween!

how I celebrated Halloween

(10/29-11/1) Monday when I woke up Eli and Claudia reminded me that I was supposed to go shopping with them to pick out shirts that the girls are going to wear during the Flamenco Futbol game. So we left once I threw some pants on. We went about 100 different places and weren’t having much luck. Everything just wasn’t quite right. After four hours though, I had to leave them because I needed to cook my dessert for the night which was going to take a lot of time. I decided to make cinnamon rolls from scratch which sounded like a good idea at the time. It took a long time and it was really hard. They tasted pretty delicious though. Most people seemed to like them, just some people thought they were too sweet. Cinnamon rolls are not common commodity in this country. We ate mashed potatoes with meat, cheese, hard boiled eggs, and onions for dinner. I might have talked about this before because it wounds disgusting but tastes delicious. They call it pastel de papas. For the remaining Donce’s here, the staff decided to let students give their testimonies. The first student went Monday and his name is Plass. I didn’t catch a lot of it because I can never understand this guy, but the parts I did catch were very emotional. You could tell it was hard for him. Tuesday was pretty slow. Not much happened in my world. We had our Café a lo Gringo meeting and our Exchange Student Meeting and both were good. After that is when my day picked up. We had a Café a lo Gringo event at a pizza restaurant! We called it Pizza a lo Gringo. We invited all the El Oasis students who wanted to practice their English to come and have dinner with Katie and I at a restaurant. At first it was kind of frustrating trying to order pizzas for 20 people and having to find someone to share a pizza with that wanted the same toppings as you. It took about an hour just to get the food handled. Once that was taken care of the night was great. The conversations were good and the students really enjoy talking in English. It was weird though because it was kind of difficult to just talk in English. It was a blast though. After we got home we did Insanity and then I went to bed. Wednesday was an insanely busy day. I woke up a little later because I had a bad night sleep Tuesday night. I blame the full moon. Anyhow, once I woke up I went and mailed some letters at the post office. Then Katie and I went to a nearby church that a lot of El Oasis students attend to volunteer at Noche de Luz, which is what they call it instead of Halloween. We painted some clowns and angels when we got there for about 2 and a half hours, but there was a pretty awesome pizza break in the middle of that. Once that was over we pumped up 200+ balloons, set up chairs, found costumes, set up games, and a bunch of other random jobs to get ready for the night’s activities. It was supposed to start at 7 but Chileans use Chilean time so it started at 8. It was really fun though. Everyone had a costume and the little kids were adorable. I dressed up as an ewok from Star Wars...sort of. I found a bears head and called myself an ewok. There was a sketch, a ton of games, and songs. Everyone got a lot of candy and these awesome fresh fruit cups. After we cleaned up and as we were leaving they handed all of the workers a bag of candy! It was awesome. We got home at about 11, oh and we rode bicycles which I just remembered. I don’t ride bicycles a lot so I just figured I would mention it. We did Insanity and we went to bed. Thursday we went to this HUGE market with a friend of ours from El Oasis. Her name is Nani and she picked us up at our house along with her mom, dad, brother, aunt, uncle, and two cousins. The market was really awesome and I got to buy a few things. Including a jersey for myself that I didn’t even know I wanted until I saw it. We spent about four hours there. I appreciate Nani and her family taking Katie and I to the market, but the next time I would rather a smaller group. We kind of got rushed or slowed down depending on the situation. It was still a great time though. We got back to El Oasis and I immediately made the brownies. I forgot to do the Café a lo Gringo stuff I was supposed to do so I rushed to finish all of that as well. I did it all in perfect time though, with a few minutes to spare. Café started and we did a telephone theme like what types of things to say if someone were to call you on the phone. The first game was called telephone. It’s a classic where someone starts it off by whispering a sentence in someone’s ear and then it goes around the entire room until at the end when that person says it out loud. It never really makes sense at the end but it’s fun none the less. The second game we gave them situations and had them create a dialogue with another person about the situation. It was fun hearing what they had to say. It was good. Tertulia started after that and we ate pasta, which was delicious. This Tertulia was another Break Out because we finished the Our Father series last week. It was cool, there were three different sections with different students who talked about why certain missions were import to them. Oh yeah, the theme was missions. One station was talking about a mission trip to Bolivia El Oasis is going on in January. Another station was about the home for boys that a lot of students here work at. And the last station was a student who was talking about going to Globalscope because she leaves in December to go to Thailand. It was neat hearing what all of the students had to say. After Tertulia I spent a lot of time playing ping pong with the boys upstairs. It’s something I recently found that I enjoy doing here a lot. Then all of a sudden, the cops showed up! Apparently they had gotten a noise complaint. It was so strange. They went away though and things resumed as normal. That was the week! 

Pizza a lo Gringo!

me and some of my Chilean friends

me as a very angry ewok

me and my candy