another week of school

And yet another week has gone by!
The week started out with watching the Chile – Holland soccer game at school. On Tuesday school ended at 1pm for everyone. I went to have ice cream with Cathy and a couple of other kids from school. We also walked through a little park and saw a pretty cool fountain.

The rest of the week went by pretty fast as usual here. : ) Thursday we had another practice earthquake alarm – we’ve had one every month or so. The first thing you have to do is sit under your table and when the alarm changes, then you are supposed to get up and leave the building to go to the cancha where everyone meets divided up in classes. The whole thing is pretty hilarious but the kids from my class are always really annoyed when it goes off. But I guess it makes sense – they’ve had these alarms every month for the last 13.5 years! : )
At night I went to a music thing from the school. Lea and Cathy sang and José played the guitar with his class. It was really cool!

Yesterday we watched the Chile – Brazil game at Andrés's brother’s house. The game was great but at the end we just suffered! They lost by SO little!! Everyone was pretty disappointed afterwards but after some food the world already looked a bit better. : ) At night some old friends of Paula came over and we had another barbecue. Paula taught me how to make a dessert – Crema de Maracuya. It turned out great, but it was super easy too. : )

Today the boys and I went to ‘el muro’ which is a rock climbing gym really close by. We have wanted to go for a really long time but it never worked out. We did quite some bouldering, which is the one where you don’t need harnesses. It was lots of fun! I hope we can go back next week!

Then I went to Plaza Egaña where I met Lea. We walked around, had some AWESOME cinnamon dessert things and then of course some playing one of the pianos.

Tomorrow is the start of our VERY last week of school here in Chile!! It's SOOO weird!!!

fountain in the park

earthquake alarm

Lea and Cathy

José

Crema de Maracuya

cinnamon rolls

piano

Valle Nevado

On Wednesday we watched the second one of Chile’s games in the world championship. They won again and the whole school (all of Chile really) was super happy as you can probably imagine.

Last Friday we had ‘jeans day’ at school. That’s a day where everyone can wear to school whatever they want to. It was pretty cool to see everyone in different colors and not just read and blue! : )

I had gymnastics as usual at night, and then we went to have dinner at a friend of my host parent’s house. He lives farther up, closer to the mountains – still in Santiago though – and you had a really cool view of the city lights until it started getting suuper foggy.

Yesterday Lea and I had a going-all-about-the-city-day. First we went to a market where they sell all sorts of things. Then we went to my house and Lea helped me get my snowboard ready. Afterwards we went to the mall Plaza Egaña – so that Lea could play some piano. This time my favorite people were a guy who gave her a thumbs up sign as he walked by and some other person who started applauding. : ) Our last stop was Lea’s house, where we watched a movie. Afterwards I went home and then had some more organizing things to do.

Because today we went SKIING!! We went to Valle Nevado. The drive up there takes about 1.5 hours and there’s a part where the road winds itself up the mountains – there’s 39 turns and each of them is numbered. : ) The highest point I went to was almost 3500m above sea level! I think that’s pretty impressive!
We had a great time all day! It was pretty cold at times but I still LOVED it! Andrés drove us up there, but then I only went skiing with the boys. In the afternoon I also spent some time boarding with Cathy and then some more with José. One thing that I think should definitely be something other skiing resorts should think about, is that in ‘Valle Nevado’ there were always little stations with boxes of tissues at the botton of almost every chairlift! I mean how brilliant is that?? : ) On our way back down at 5pm the sun was setting behind the mountains and the sky turned orange and purple. It was beautiful!

Just so you know – even though I did get my license I’m not planning on driving around alone for a while!! I know that I still need to practice a lot and I’m not even thinking about just going about the city by myself. I haven’t driven at all anyway since I got my license! : )

Now I only have another two weeks of school and then another two weeks of holidays to look forward to until I leave this crazy, precious, amazing and beautiful country and then head up to the US to spend a month in yet another one of my homes spread about the world.

mundial

Plaza Egaña

trying to get my board ready : )

tissue station

on our way back down

CAE, mundial and license

Hello again!

So I know that once again it’s been longer than a week… sorry about that but there’s some pretty cool stuff that I’ve been doing!

So first of all on Sunday the 8^th we the exchange students went to Mariana’s house. She’s our biology teacher and the one we went to Tongoy with! We wanted to thank her again and decided that cooking with her was a good idea. So we made Älplermakarone’ it turned out great and we had another nice day with lots of talking and I’m pretty sure Mariana and her family liked it as well.

Then we had another week of school. Lea hurt her foot – it’s broken this time and it looks like she won’t be doing any sports for a while. But that just means we have to find lots of things you can do with crutches around the city. : )

On Wednesday I had the CAE which is a Cambridge English exam. It basically just means that I had tests all day long at some hotel in Santiago and was super tired in the evening. But we were a group of students from my school so it was also fun to hang out with them. The tests went ok I think. I have to wait for like a month and a half until I get my results though.

It had been raining A LOT and lots of parts of the school were flooded. It was really crazy how much it had rained. The streets always just turn into giant puddles as well.

Thursday we watched the opening game of the mundial (world championship) in sports at school. At the end most of the school was watching. Then Catherine and I went to the pastelería and then to Lea’s house because we decided that we can’t just eat our 16 weeks cakes without Lea – she had to stay at home for a couple of days because of her foot. 

On Friday after driving class I went to gymnastics. This evening Chile played their first soccer game against Australia. It started at 6pm, so I was walking along the streets while the game was going. It was the WEIRDEST thing ever! There was NO ONE out! Barely any cars and hardly any people walking. Everyone was at home or somewhere watching the game. The thing you are supposed to do for the games is have a ginormous TV and watch the game with your whole family and then have a barbecue. Soccer is WAY important for the Chileans! Like really it’s hard to imagine!! Catherine and I watched the last 20 minutes of the game at gymnastics (Chile won!). And really it’s pretty hard not to get enthusiastic when everyone around you is just freaking out about the game. Then we had practice but Catherine and I were the only girls – normally there’s between 6 and 12ish of us. After practice I got picked up and joined my familia at the barbecue they were at.

The weekend I spent most of the time at home studying. Sunday was ‘día del padre’ (father’s day) and we had a big lunch at our house, Ignació and María José (older kids of Andrés) joined us as well. The mountains were super pretty though because of all of the rain in the last couple of days.

Yesterday I had another two hours of driving classes and then today I went to the driving test!! 

Well at the end I ‘aprobé’ which means that I GOT MY LICENSE!! : ) I’m really happy but also quite a bit surprised that I ended up getting it. Today I had to be at the Municipalidad de Macúl at 8:30 in the morning. There was a lot of waiting involved the whole day long - always between all of the different tests– it wasn’t too bad though. First we had the theory test – I got 36 out of 38 points but I think I would have passed with just 30 as well. Then after some more waiting there was a reaction test and two more of that sort of thing. After that I had to get my eyes and ears checked. Afterwards it was time to go outside and do the actual driving test. I had to wait my turn, because there were 4 people already waiting in front of me. Today was a REALLY hot day (for winter)! Really in Santiago it gets really hot really fast as soon as the sun gets through the clouds! Well then I drove the route that I had already practiced a couple of times – I had to drive on a couple of streets I didn’t know about though. When we got back I didn’t know if I had passed or not but the guy told me to sign and then wrote ‘APROBADO’ (passed) on the paper. I had to wait for a little while longer and then got my license right there.

I don’t know if my Chilean license will help me in Switzerland, but the classes will help lots no matter what. I might be able to get my ‘Lernfahrausweis’(permit) right away though without having to take the theory test. We’ll see I guess.
Still I’m really happy I passed! I spent quite some time studying lately - first for both the CAE and the driving theory and then just for the theory. Now I’m all done and don’t know what to do with my time. :D No not really – there’s plenty to do and lots that I’ve been wanting to do that I can finally get done now.

Anyway tomorrow Chile is playing again – Andreu gets to leave school at 1pm because of it. The older kids we’ll watch the game at school. I’m pretty excited to see how 140 teenage kids will react to the game!

We only have another 2.5 weeks of school, 17 days until the holidays– it’s the weirdest feeling ever! Although life in Chile isn’t always easy, I’ve really gotten used to everything and it’s going to be weird to leave! I’m going to miss lots of things like the school, gymnastics, and my crazy crazy host brothers. J

See you all soon!

Lena

CAE

WAAATER :)

game

game

16 weeks cake

typical heaters that you can find all around Santiago (these ones are the good ones!)

NO traffic because of Chile playing

gymnastics last friday - because of game

Catherine and I - Chile spirit! : )

preeetty mountains

more preetty mountains

license!!! : )