Campamento

Part of the deal with being an AFSer is you go to Orientations to help you adjust and cope and enjoy and make the most out of the experience. The first orientation was in New England, a couple weeks before departure. The second was in Miami as we were departing. The third was in Santiago as we were arriving. For the people living in Temuco, Puerto Montt, Chiloe, Coyhaique, Puerto Natales, Punta Arenas and Valdivia, the fourth orientation was in Puerto Montt. Of all of them, this one was the most interesting. There were thirty people from countries all around the world, all of us living in Chile and going through the same experiences. There were students from the USA, Australia, Japan, Thailand, Czech Republic, France, Italy, Brazil, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Denmark, and I don't know remember what more. The only bad part is I'm no longer such a big fan of the US. It makes you feel pretty bad to be in a room full of thirty teenagers who all speak their native language, nearly fluent English, and half of who speak nearly fluent Spanish and be one of four who only speak English and a little bit of Spanish. For example, Sunday was the birthday of the host mom of Lucas from Finland so he made a video of us all saying happy birthday in our own languages. He started it off by asking, in English, "How do you say happy birthday in your language?" My very boring response: happy birthday.
So this is how the trip to Puerto Montt worked:
I didn't go to school Wednesday, instead sleeping for an extra hour and a half before jolting awake with the realization that I had yet to prepare in any way for the trip and needed to leave in two hours. (I'm slowly becoming Chilean.) After having desayuno (pan y cafecito) by myself in the kitchen (my siblings were at school and my mom had to take my sister to the doctors because she had fainted the day before), I haphazardly put five day's worth of clothes in my backpack. At eleven, I was at the bus station with the other exchange students, saying goodbye to my host mom and boarding the bus. After the three hour bus ride to Punta Arenas, the four of us- Antonia from Germany, Dion from Denmark, Aim from Thailand and me (sounds cooler in Spanish- Antonia de Alemania, Dion de Dinamarca y Taiwiporn de Tailandi... Aim's real name is Taiwiporn) dropped our stuff off at the house where we were going to spend the night and then went to the Zona Franca for lunch and then to the mall to watch Rio 2 (Dion refused to watch it on the principle that it's a little kid's movie, even though it was his idea to watch a movie in the first place). It was, of course, in Spanish without English subtitles, but I still managed to understand everything in the movie. High five for me. Then we went to the centro to have dinner and explore a little. We went to the casino (no, not to gamble) and went to the top floor which is pretty much made of glass. It's awesome because you can see all of Punta Arenas from above.
On Thursday, we had a flight in the morning to Puerto Montt. In the Punta Arenas airport (PUQ for the locals), we met with the five girls living in Punta Arenas from Finland, Germany, USA, Italy, and Thailand. We were the first ones to arrive in Puerto Montt followed shortly by the two in Coyhaique from the US and Thailand. In the afternoon, the rest of the students arrived in various groups. After dinner, we played various name learning games (none of which worked all that well). If you're bad with names like me, this is one of the worst situations for learning names. There are thirty people whose names you need to learn and nearly every name is difficult to pronounce and remember because it's from a different language. Ademas, a good half of the thirty have nicknames to make their names easier so you have to learn the nickname and the real name. In Thailand, people have full names and then nicknames that are seemingly unrelated a their real names. For example, Phatcharawan is also known as Paggad; Thanvarat is also known as Mo; Lucka is also known as Lucy; Kensuke is also known as Ken; and then there are the names like Tadeas, Linnea, and Lenia.
On Friday, we spent the entire day doing activities about our experiences here and getting to know each other. On Saturday, we went to Puerto Varras, a smaller cute city near Puerto Montt for several hours and then were planning on going to downtown Puerto Montt but that was canceled because it was too cold and rainy. It should probably be mentioned that the Punta Arenas and Puerto Natales kids reacted to this with a what are you kidding me kind of attitude. The "too cold and rainy" weather was nearly the same as the weather I walk home in (a twenty minute walk across town) everyday although it was a little more rainy and a lot less windy. On Sunday, we had a few activities, but it was mostly just hanging out.
Overall, I would say the most valuable part of the weekend was the people. It was also the part that made leaving hard. Because we are from countries all around the world, I haven't a clue if let alone when I'll see any of  them again. Normally, four days of knowing someone would not be enough to make me want to cry when thinking about never seeing him or her again. But this was different. There's something about the shared experience of being exchange students that just makes the relationships click. It's also that I met some of the best people I've ever met. And, apologies to everyone I love in the US, but more than ever I'm not satisfied by returning to the US and starting a normal career and life in the US. I want to go to Prague to visit Lucy, Brazil to visit Guilherme, Italy to visit Serena, Germany to visit Antonia, Finland to visit Maija and Lucas. I want to live in Thailand and Japan. (Which brings up another thing about Asia... more on that in a minute.) All my exchange student friends proved to me is that there is so much out there in the world that I will never be able to see it all, but I have to try.
So on the Asia thing... I have no idea why, but for the entire weekend, I found that the people I clicked with the most, the people who had personalities closest to mine, were all from Asia. At this particular orientation, that meant Japan and Thailand. For a good half of the meals and free time, I was the only non-Asian in the group. To explain this remark, at the orientations we typically separate into different groups, not on purpose, just what happens. There are two main groups which I can pretty much summarize as the East and the West. In no way is anyone pushed into one particular group because of their origins or not allowed to spend time with everyone, but Easterners tend to spend most of their time with Easterners and the Westerners with Westerners. My theory is that this is because the two distinct groups of cultures share a lot of similitaries within the groups. Add to that the language barrier (in this case, all the Asian kids arrived in February and spoke minimal Spanish while everyone else was able to use the language more fluently) and most of the time the groups spent their time apart. I, for whatever reason, found it more enjoyable to spend my time with my friends from Asia. There were other people (my closest Western friends) who also spent a good amount of time with the kids from Thailand and Japan. So, I spent a large portion of the weekend conversing in broken Spanish and simple English with my friends while they conversed with each other in their native languages. So I can now recognize Thai and Japanese by sound and I can introduce myself in both languages. Also, I learned how to read a conversation by expressions and tones of voice even better than I had before.

Pascua

"Do you have Pascua in the US?" was the question of the week. Pascua is Easter and yes, we have Easter in the US.
The second most frequent question was "¿Tienes el conejito y los huevitos tambien?" Again, yup, we have the Easter bunny and the chocolate eggs he brings us.
The third most frequent question was "So you're Catholic then, right?" Um, no, I'm Christian. "But it's the same thing." People here don't really realize that Protestant churches are as much a thing as the Catholic church. In the US, the Catholic church is considered one of many different types of Christianity. It doesn't help that I go to a Catholic school where we have a Catholic prayer session in the gym for fifteen minutes at the beginning of every school day (officially titled Buenos Dias).
Despite the talk about religion, Easter turned out to be distinctly unreligious in my household. Some time around noon Easter day (keep in mind it's completely normal for literally everyone to still be in bed at noon on the weekends), my brother (the one who's my age) and my cousin (also my age, he stays with us on the weekends occasionally because he lives in Punta Arenas and he's close friends with my brother and his girlfriend is one of my classmates) hid the chocolate eggs in various spots around the living room then went back to bed. When my little five year old either woke up around twelve thirty, we told him el conejito had passed through the living room and dropped off his eggs. He searched for them while my host mom gave the four teenagers each a couple handfuls of chocolate eggs.
During lunch, we talked about going out to the Cueva de Milodon, a well known cave that was once inhabited by native people and is a common tourist destination. But it was decided that's going to wait for the weekend we spend in Torres del Paine park in the future. So it was a day of relaxing.
Cony ate all her chocolate and went absolutely crazy. Carlos played Minecraft on the computer and kept calling me over to translate the English info into Spanish so he could understand. Nacho went out to play with the neighborhood kids in the park. My parents went to go visit some friends and family in town.
In the late afternoon, Cony and I decided to enjoy the beautiful day (read: I asked my mom for permission to walk along the costanera and she handed Cony money for ice cream and pushed us both out the door). We went for a long walk along the coast and up through the center of town. On our way back to the house, we spent a good twenty minutes trying to find an open store so we could buy ice cream. That was not because it was Easter but because it was Sunday. Sundays in Puerto Natales are very quiet. Pretty much the only people in the centro are the tourists.
On Monday, I had the religious part of Easter that I didn't have on Easter. First in the morning with the elementary school kids (I was in my fourth grade class to help with English), I had a shortened church service in the gymnasium. Then later, there was a mass in the school's chapel for the high school students. I said the Lord's Prayer in English while everyone else was saying it in Spanish and all my friends turned to listen to me.
The best part of the day at school was the school version of the Easter bunny. The kindergarteners dressed up like bunnies with white clothes and bunny ears and they went around the school with their teachers delivering baskets of chocolate eggs to the classes. It was adorable.
Also on Monday, my host dad left the house for three weeks. He works for the army and he has a three week training session where he's going to be camping outdoors and doing physical training. The house is oddly silent without him. He has a very big personality and it's obvious when he's gone.(For those of you who know my dad, imagine the same personality with a touch less sarcasm and more exuberance. But similar enough that I hadn't gone into dad withdrawal until my host dad left. Now there isn't anyone to annoy me and tease me until I die laughing.)

This is the street my house is on. Yes, this is where I live. This is a normal view for me (well, not quite, it's very rarely this sunny)

I know this is really bad lighting but I just had to take the picture because the background is so beautiful

Flags- Magallanes, Chile, not really sure

There are a ton of swans that live near the shore here

Cony's the left, I'm the right and this picture is misleading 'cause I'm actually a lot taller than her

There were a bunch of kittens sprinkled around town like the Easter Bunny had dropped them off with the eggs

We walked past my school

This is one big, beautiful dog

My sister is short, but not that short and this dog is still taller than her

Skyping with my Family

No Way

The other day, I was Skyping my parents, talking about my life and what I've been doing and what's going on in the US right now, when the topic of my blog came up. My dad asked me why I hadn't updated it recently and I replied that I've been really busy in the last week or so (very true) and he pointed out that it's been a month since I posted anything. That's not true, I immediately thought. There's no way it's been a month. I opened my browser, typed in blogger.com and realized that yes, it actually had been a month. Oops. To rectify that, I have a slew of blog posts coming, and they will be in chronological of what actually happened in my life. So be prepared for an onslaught of awesomeness!

(I should note that the way my dad brought up the subject of the blog was by telling me that the guys at work were asking him what had happened that I was no longer writing blog posts.... So to all the "guys at work" thank you for reminding me!)