Isla Negra and the city center

Once again, hello to everyone!
It’s been a pretty exciting week and there’s quite some stuff I can tell you about.

So first of all: On Wednesday we had ‘feriado’, which means no school. : )

My familia and I went to the house of Pablo Neruda in ‘isla negra’. Pablo Neruda is a famous Chilean writer - he was famous all over the world - maybe you know him! :) We left at 11:30 which is early for my family here, then drove for like 2 hours or so and then we got there. It started to rain on the way out so I was already pretty happy. The house was amazing! Right at the beach, it’s really pretty and there’s SO much detail and so many decorations!! There are huge windows all over the house and I especially liked one in a bedroom looking over the pacific. :) The house was really interesting too!  It rained the whole time and not the Portland kind of drizzle, but actually pouring making-you-wet-to-your-bones kind of rain! :) We had to walk some outside too and I was soooo happy!! I got SOOOOOOAKED!! Then we ate in the restaurant of the museum and it was really cool and yummy too! :D On the way back it still rained - the drive back was super cozy! In Santiago it kept raining at night. This means that Thursday morning it was SO pretty!! You could see the mountains better than ever and there was hardly any smog! All the rain had washed it down. And the MOST AMAZING THING: The mountains were covered in snow!!!!!! I spent all of Thursday morning at school just looking out of the windows staring at them. They were unbelievably beautiful!

I’m taking driving classes now; I think they’re pretty fun. And they are WAY cheaper than in Switzerland. So on Friday I had classes, my second one so far. : ) And I have classes every day this and the next week too.

Afterwards Lea and I went to 30 minutes of gymnastics, but then Andrés picked us up and we went to see Ignació play with his band. Ignació is Andrés's older son. It was right next to a ‘feria’ - a market - so Lea and I walked around some in there too. Afterwards we went to eat and had some delicious pizza.

On Saturday I slept in and didn’t do much until we went to the movies to watch the new X-Men movie. I liked it even though I hadn’t seen any of the other ones.

Today I left the house at 7:30 in the morning. Leo and Mathi two boys from Lea’s class told us they would show us around the city center. It was an amazing day! Today is the ‘Día del patrimonio’ so all of the museums were open and you got in for free. After some problems with the metro in the early morning, I met the others at ‘La moneda’ at 8:30. We started out by looking at it but decided not to wait for what seemed like 2 hours to get into it. Instead we went to a museum underneath the Moneda. It was a really cool museum and one of the things I liked most was a mirror in which you could see the universe (look at the pictures). Later we went the old building of the congreso nacional. We just walked by and realized that you could go in there if you wanted to so of course we decided to go. : ) It was unbelievable! There were paintings, windows like the ones you would find in churches and lots and lots of decorations and detail all over. We walked from room to room in a group and in every room there was a different person that would tell us about the room. The room I liked most was the library and then one room that had the most comfortable looking couches! : )

Then we went to the plaza de armas, on the way we saw a couple of closed down streets for bikes, it’s the same thing that they did in Portland! Apparently on some Sundays they close down various streets in the center and whoever wants to can bike, jog or roller-skate around. At the plaza de armas we went into the church. It is huge and really pretty too. Afterwards we went to look at some old stamps in the main post office and then to another museum. That museum was huge but we decided not to stay for too long so we just had a short look around and then went up to the tower. The view from up there was amazing!

Then our last station was the cerro Santa Lucia. It’s a hill in the city center of Santiago; we walked (Lea and Mathi had a race : ) ) all the way up to the very top and had another great view of the city.

That was our last real stop, after this one we went to eat some pizza at a domino’s. The whole day Leo and Mathi were great tour guides and told us all there was to know!

Another amazing weekend went by and tomorrow is the start of yet another week. But as it turns out there's only 6 more weeks of school to go...
Miss you all!

Lena

view from Neruda's house

in this picture you can actually see the rain a little bit

pacific

raaaain : )

pacific

pacific

Andes

view of Andes from school

Ignació's band

floor at the feria next to where the band played

moneda

Universe

blocked roads for bikes

faaaaall

amazing windows in the congreso nacional

decorations

library

my favorite painting in the congreso nacional

typical chilean palm tree

church

Plaza de Armas from the tower

Santiago from Santa Lucia

yet another week

Hello all!

It’s Sunday once again, so I’m going to tell you all about my week.

So:  school and gymnastics as usual!

On Tuesday some of the intercambios went to the centro, now we fiiiiiinally have a Chilean ID and we got to skip a couple of hours of school too! : ) Oh and we stopped to have some ‘breakfast’ at Starbucks. : )

On Friday Catherine, Lea and I did some shopping on Irrarazaval (a street close to Lea’s house). I went to Lea after gymnastics and we watched the hunger games with her host siblings. Saturday morning we went grocery shopping and then made ‘Älpermakaroni’ for lunch. It turned out really great and every one enjoyed it!

Later we went to my house and talked some with my host parent. On the way we went to Plaza Egaña and Lea played some piano for a while - I really love listening to her play and watching the people walking by and just relazing for a while! At night we had a party – it was fun again and I got home at 3ish in the morning.

Today I got to see my host parent’s bakery, it was really cool! They only make two kinds of bread, but lots and then sell it to schools all over the city…

I also bought peanut butter on Thursday and me and the boys have pretty much eaten the whole thing… : ) I also showed Andreu how you can eat Peanut Butter with Jelly and he like it a lot!

So the FIFA world cup of soccer will be in Brazil this year – it’s going to start super soon and everyone is pretty excited about it! In MC Deporte (sports) in school we’re going to organize some stuff, because at school we’ll watch like 4 games and they want it to be more than just the games. I think it will be pretty fun! Another good thing about the world cup is that now you can find lots of stuff that says ‘CHILE’ on it, we’ve already found a shirt and we’re looking for more! : )

Tomorrow is the start of yet another week of school…  But really there’s only a couple more to go (like 7), so it’s not that bad! :)

yuuuuum : )

Plaza Egaña on my way home

world cup

more piano

PEANUT BUTTER

flour at the bakery

relaxed week

Today I don’t really have anything exciting to tell you…

I had a normal week of school with gymnastics.

Thursday Lea and I were in Chile for 3 months so we went to have cake with Catherine just like 4 weeks ago! It was once again super delicious!

On Friday Lea, Catherine and I went to Plaza Egaña (the mall), we had some more desserts! : )

Saturday Lea and I went to see our host brothers who had a volleyball game. Both of them are pretty good! Afterwards we went to a market with Catherine. Later in the afternoon Catherine, Zoe, Steffi, Fede and I went to the cerro san cristobal, but we didn’t walk up much as it was cloudy and cold and pretty late too. Then we had dinner in the costanero (huge mall). I had some frozen yoghurt too! It reminded me SOOOO much of Swirl in Portland! : )

Today we made breakfast for my host mother and at 1 we left to have lunch at an all you can eat restaurant. It was really cool! The grandparents (Paula’s parents), Cata and her parents came too so we were quite a group! There was a lovely garden, so us kids did some walking around outside too.

Well that’s pretty much all!

volleyball

volleyball

cerro san cristobal

FROYO : )

garden at restaurant

Cumple y Concepción

Hello once again!

I’m going to tell you all about my 19th birthday in Chile and then about our weekend in Concepción.

My birthday was Tuesday and I had a great day! It started when Safi from my paralelo had a cake when I got to school. Everyone sang Feliz Cumpleaños, then I had to do ‘Tortazo’, which is where the birthday kid has to take a bite from the cake and someone smashes that persons face into the cake – if you didn’t get it there’s some pictures below! : ) It's a tradition that they always do here.
Well I thought it was really cool and definitely an interesting experience! : )
In the first break all of the kids in my class and some exchange students 'helped' me eat the cake - it was gone before you could blink! : )
Then at lunch I went to have pizza with a couple of kids from my curso - they invited me!

Then in the afternoon we had ‘book day’ which means no classes but random other stuff for the two classes. It was pretty neat! No math on my birthday! : )

Then after school I went to the cinema with the other exchange students, it was really cool too! We watched ‘Divergent’ and all of us loved the movie!!One girl Nina, made a cake with manjar for me - it was reeeally good and we ate it in the cinema.

Then the last part of my birthday: we had a family dinner at the house. It was the whole family: Andrés, Paula, José Ignació, Cata, Mónica (Cata's mum) and Paula's parents!
Of course there was also a cake and I got to make a wish while blowing out the 19 candles. (I don't have more than a picture of the cake from that part of my day...)

Then after a long but awesome day I fell asleep really soon and very happy!

tortazo

torta

lunch

cinema with the exchange students

cake at home

On Wednesday Lea and I got invited to spend the long weekend with Catherine and her host family in Concepción. We did and we had a great time!!

We left Wednesday night after gymnastics, we got to Concepción at 6:30 in the morning – it’s a 450km drive. On Thursday we didn’t do that much after sleeping all morning, we did go to the beach though where we (of course) did some gymnastics. The beach was reeeeeally pretty, the sand was super dark and you could see far far along the beach.

The whole weekend we played lots of games with Catherine’s host siblings Amanda (10) and Amaro (8), and her host uncle who is 24 years old and lives in the house we were staying at.
The kitchen was really big and nice so we three decided to bake and cook some: one day we made crepes and one day brownies.  And then the best one of all, one morning we made ‘Zopf’.

On Friday we went to Huascar, it’s a ship that they turned into a museum. It was really awesome too; it’s the oldest ship museum in the world!

On Saturday we went to a Mercado (market) and on Sunday we went to a coal mine. We got to go down there and when everyone turned off their light on the helmets you could really see NOTHING! Honestly it was pitch-black!!

We drove back Sunday night and got to Santiago at 1 in the morning. We slept at Catherine’s house and then went to school directly from there.
Oh it rained down there!!!!! One night Lea, the kids and I actually went outside and they ran around while I just stood there feeling the rain!! You can't imagine how happy I was about the rain! 11 weeks is a LONG time without rain!! : )
Anyway it was super nice of Catherine's family to invite us to come and we had an awesome, awesome weekend!

playa

playa

playa

Läckerli :)

huascar

mercado

coal mine

I've been here for more than half of my time! It's really weird! Right now I feel like I'm finally getting the hang of the language and in so little time I'm on my way again... 
See ya!
Lena