Colegio

Colegio (school) started this week. I've been the new girl at school before. Back then, I got lost a bunch, repeatedly arrived late for class, couldn't find my locker/had a broken locker that didn't shut, forgot every single person I met, and went right to sleep as soon as I got home. But that was nothing compared to going to a school in a foreign country where not only did I not know how things worked but I couldn't understand when it was explained to me. Only, thank god, this time all my classmates were extremely helpful and aware of the fact that I didn't have a clue. Well, all might be a bit of an exaggeration. There were still a few teenage boys trying to convince me that some swear word or another was actually a polite way to greet someone. And there were the people who introduced themselves with an adjective instead of a name, like "soy rico" which loosely translates into I'm hot. But I either realized what was going or the girls I was with told me every time so it was all good fun.

This is how school works:
There are 1,000ish students going to my school from Kinder (Kindergarten) to 4 Medio (12th Grade). The school has two stories and two gyms. Each grade has two (I think... there might be some with more) cursos, or "class" of students. You stay with your curso from Kinder to 4 Medio. Each curso has a Profesor Jefe who is the teacher who takes care of everyone in that curso and, when you reach 2,3, and 4 Medio helps you plan for graduation and class trip and such. Until 3 Medio, all your classes are with your curso. In 3 Medio, you choose Humanista or Cientifica track and have three classes in that track that are different from your normal, curso classes. (I chose Humanista because Cientifica included a bio class and the kids here took bio last year so they're just continuing it while I know nothing about bio. Also, Humanista means an extra English class. And I like the elective Lenguaje teacher which makes that impossible class bearable. Also, I am a humanities type of person.) Nearly all the girls who I hang out with chose Humanista.

My classes: Educacion Fisica- Gym
                   PD Lenguaje- Spanish literature class for the Humanities track
                   Languaje- Spanish literature class
                   Filosofia- Philosophy
                   Historia- History
                   Religion- Religion
                   Matematicas- Math
                   PREU Matematicas- Math preparation for the PREU test (like SAT or ACT in US)
                   Ingles- English
                   PREU Lenguaje- Spanish literature preparation for the PREU test
                   PD Historia- History for the Humanities track
                   Biologia- Biology
                   Musica- Music (theory and playing and rhythms/listening stuff)
                   C. Curso- the time when the curso gets together with the Profesora Jefe to talk about our class
My uniform:

From left to right: Cony, Nacho, Carlos, and me on the first day of school. Cony is wearing the sweatshirt, skirt, tights and shoes. Nacho and Carlos are wearing the shirt, pants, and shoes. I am wearing the shirt, skirt, tights and shoes. You can wear either the shirt or the sweatshirt, it doesn't matter. Girls can only wear pants during the winter when it's cold. There are also sweatpants, but those are only for gym class (which is unfortunate since they're much more comfy than the skirt and tights). 

Wednesday: First day of school. We only had school from 8 until 1 because it was the first day (being an exchange student, I didn't realize that we weren't going back to school after lunch until my host mom told me to change into regular clothes so I could come to the grocery store with her). The first class wasn't actually a class. It was the school making sure that everyone who was supposed to be in the curso was there and the Profesora Jefe talking to us about this year. We had to fill out a form with our information (I realized that I have no idea what my address is, why my parents phone numbers are, etc. Carlos basically filled it out for me). Then we spent the rest of the time talking (talking in class is a big thing here. Also, formal respect of teachers does not happen here the way it does in the US. Everyone calls the teachers tio and tia (uncle and aunt) and they have to call for attention every two seconds. A normal class here would be considered really rowdy and loud in my school in the US.). There aren't many girls in my curso and they basically split up into two groups. The other exchange student and I were automatically included in one of the groups because one of those girls is Aim's host sister and they are all friends with Carlos. Aim and I had already spent time hanging out with all the girls in the group. Having friends is especially important here because during class everyone moves the desks into clusters and if you're not clustered with your friends you're the only one whose desk is still in the proper place. Second class was Humanities English. The teacher just moved here and she'd never met any of the students in the class except the exchange students. (I mentioned before- she speaks English really well and studied in the US for awhile). She introduced herself and announced this class would be all about communication (easy peasy). We started the unit "the world of teenagers" by using our prior years of classes (or fluency) to introduce ourselves. You know, the standard "My name is Sarah. I am 27. I like to shop. My favorite color is purple." We started out introducing ourselves to a small group of people then each group had to elect one person to introduce themselves to the class. My group, of course, elected me. All the other people presenting themselves used their notebooks. Apparently it's really hard for people here to say fifteen. I spent at least half an hour repeating "fifteen" over and over again so they could copy me. They kept saying fixteen (except for the one guy who said he was fifty. I tried really hard not to laugh.) After break, we were supposed to have chemistry class and instead had a high school meeting/welcome thing in one of the gymnasiums. A whole bunch of stuff happened and a bunch of different people said things. Everyone stood up and sang the national anthem (oops, don't know that) and the pastor (it's Catholic, so he's not a pastor but I can't remember the word right now) led prayers. The principal told us the rules: arrive on time, dress properly, no pololo-ing (pololo is the word for boyfriend which is also used as a verb to mean something like participating in couple-y behavior). At the end, Aim and I got to walk up in front of everyone and stand there while they talked about us. (I didn't catch what they said because it was all over the microphone system and there was enough static that it would be hard for me to understand in English let alone in Spanish. Although, I know that they told the students to take care of us because I only spoke a little Spanish and Aim spoke none and we had never gone to school in Chile before.) After that we went back to Chemistry and played two first-day games. One was "Me Pika". You say "Me llamo Christina y me pika el dedo" (my name is christina and my finger itches, you use your own name and whatever body part hasn't already been said) and then the person to your left itches the body part you said. It goes around the room without repeating any body part. The next one was a way of telling people about our summer vacations (yeah, didn't have that since it's winter in the US right now). We made two circles, girls on the inside in a small circle and guys on the outside in a big circle, and walked in opposite directions. When the Prof. called out stop, we turned to the person across from us and talked about our summer vacations. It's hard enough to understand everything in the first place, but in a room where its so loud you can nearly feel the vibrations in the floor, it's nearly impossible. At one, I went home with my siblings, ate a delicious lunch, and slept for a solid four hours.

Thursday: A normal school day. I understand the majority of PD Lenguaje because it was about communication and she wrote nearly everything on the board while she explained it. On the other hand, the only thing I got out of Biologia is that this is going to be very difficult. It was a class just for reviewing the material from last year. The only thing I reviewed was my ability to copy other people's notes. Historia was another story. I understood small parts of it, but it is very, very difficult to focus on an hour and a half history lecture when you only understand one out of every couple sentences. Basically, a long history lecture is one of the more boring things in the world (in my opinion) and that's only multiplied by a million when the words coming out of the professor's mouth might as well be nonsense sounds. On Wednesdays and Thursdays there isn't enough time to go home for lunch so you can either buy the actually passable cafeteria food (the cafeteria is tiny. A thousand students and its only slightly bigger than a normal classroom) or you can bring your own food. My little brother gets out of school at the same time we have lunch (he's in first grade at the same school) so my mom brings us freshly cooked food. After lunch, we have Lenguaje. All I have to say is the best grade I can possibly get in that class will be a 4 (lowest possible passing grade, out of 7). I already have an essay to read in the next two weeks for PD Lenguaje and we were assigned another essay for regular Lenguaje for the same time frame. She said that this was a very difficult essay to read and most of the class would struggle with it. That's gonna be fun. Oh well. I'll learn a lot. 

Friday: Another normal day of school. Whoever designed the schedule for my school wisely recognized that nothing gets accomplished on Friday afternoons so I have three classes in the morning and school ends at one o'clock. I have PD Historia, Musica, and C. Curso. I understood a surprisingly large amount of Historia and Musica. C. Curso was just electing president and deciding what fundraisers to do and the like. In the late evening, I went with Carlos and a bunch of our classmates to one girl's house. We made pizza (here, making pizza means putting tomato sauce, cheese, oregano, and ham on a flat, round piece of bread and heating it. Muy rico), played futbol and other games, sang karaoke. 

Saturday: All the exchange students in my town had a get together. We ate a delicious breakfast filled with sweets (cookies, brownies, some sort of pastry with manjar in the middle, and cake) and then went to the campo para hacer canopy (zipline). It ended up being too windy to do anything, 100 km/h winds, so we might be going back tomorrow. 

    Dion from Denmark, Max from AFS, Jan from Denmark, Carlos from AFS (not my brother), me, Prisci from AFS, Aim from Thailand

Note about time zones: Chile was previously two hours ahead of the USA (8 in the US, 10 in Chile). Today US jumped an hour ahead on daylight savings for springtime and Chile jumped an hour back on daylight savings for fall time. So, for the rest of my stay, the time in Chile and the time in the US are the same. 

Second note: I may have been lying about this. I'm not sure. The Internet says that the official time has not changed and will only change in April but all the electronic devices (phones, computers, etc) have moved an hour ahead. Everyone is confused. 

My Life

Mi Casa

      My family lives in a complex of houses for military families. The man of every family that lives here works for El Ejercito (the army). Seeing groups of men in army fatigue (camo clothes, boots, army backpack thing, and floppy hat) is an everyday, normal occurrence. Slightly up the hill, towards the center of town, there is a small building that functions as the center for the complex and for the men working in the army. I've gone there with my host brother to buy coca for lunch when we're out of it and my host mom doesn't want to go all the way into town. 

the houses

My Week

       Most of this week I've spent relaxing with my family and trying to figure out how to understand Spanish. Wednesday, I walked around Puerto Natales with Max and Carlos again. We then had onces at Baguales, a super popular restuarant that's a 5-ish minute walk from my house and right on the main downtown plaza. For anyone who ever goes to Puerto Natales, I seriously recommend this place. As the Chileans say, "muy rico". It opens at 6:30 and its got tons of locals and tourists every night. (I've already gone there twice- the second time with classmates). For onces at Baguales, a group of Chileans typically order Mega Papas (1 kilo de papas fritas caseras con pollo apanado, tocino y queso/1 kilo of french fries smothered in breaded chicken, bacon and melted cheese) $5.950. (Note: smothered means something completely different here. They have a light topping of chicken, bacon, and melted cheese. They are not the American version of smothered where everything is covered by the cheese. Also, $5.950 does not mean its 5 dollars and 95 cents. It means its five thousand nine hundred and fifty pesos, which converts to approximately $11 USD.) 

For some reason, one of the tourist attractions is fingers coming out of the ground. I asked why, but they didn't know. They thought it was something about some guy who cut off his fingers and then did something memorable. Clearly it wasn't that memorable.

Giant bear. You can't see it, but there's a sign that says Welcome to Puerto Natales, Capital of Adventure Tourism in Patagonia in spanish.

    Thursday, I .... Well, I actually don't remember exactly what I did Thursday. I'm fairly certain that Thursday was the day it rained most of the day and I chilled inside the house, having tickle and pillow fights with my 5 year old brother. 

     Friday, on the other hand, was a very busy day. I went to bed at the usually 2 or 3 am, forgetting that I had to get up early in the morning. So at 8, my host mom woke me up and I showered and dressed. The president of the local AFS chapter picked me up from the house and drove me to the Color Cafe (the one the AFS volunteer owns, which I've now been to a bunch since he's the older brother of one of my classmates as well...) There I had breakfast with Aim from Thailand, three AFS volunteers some of whom spoke English, Antonia from Germany (she's been here for 6 months and goes to a different school), and a student from Denmark who has also been here 6 months and goes to a different school. After breakfast, all of us went to the school Aim and I will be attending (we're in the same curso, or class. Her sister and my brother are also in our curso.) We toured the school and met a bunch of the teachers including the English teacher. She actually speaks really good English, nearly perfect even. I'd been thinking that I would have to keep my mouth shut in English class because we were warned in Santiago that our English teachers probably wouldn't be as good at English as us and we should not in any circumstance correct them in front of the class. She told us that if we ever have any communication issues to go straight to here and she'll be able to help us translate. The school is large (for me), a little more than a thousand students. But then again, it includes twelve grades of students, so for each grade there are the same number or fewer as my 600 person 6 grade school at home. Because there are so many grades, the school has a bunch of different parts. There are two floors and the way it's constructed there are two halves to the second floor and you can't access one half from the other. There are tons of rooms that aren't classrooms but look like they might be and there are bars on the windows and gates in the middle of the hall to stop you from going into the wrong part of the school. It's pretty much guaranteed that I'm going to get very, very lost at some point in the first week or so. After I returned home from school, I went to the bank with my host mom and then made empanadas with my host dad. They are delicious. The dough is water, salt, and flour and its rolled out into a long rectangle. You plop the meat mixture (it's called pino, which is the Chilean name for the mix of carne picada and cebolla) in several spots in the center of the dough then add hard boiled egg and olive on top. You fold over the dough and cut out the empanadas. You can either cook them in the oven or fry them (al horno or frita). Then Aim, her host sister, and another classmate came to pick me up. We walked all the way to the other end of town (like a 30 or more minute walk) to pick up another classmate and then went to Color Cafe where another classmate met us. After hanging out there for a while, we walked to Baguales, met another classmate and had Mega Papas for onces. Then we walked down to the shore and walked along the sidewalk there. Understanding them is really hard, but they loved asking questions about me and Aim (I had to translate the questions for her). Some of them tried teaching me how to swear without telling me that I was swearing, but I caught on to it. When we walked back to the plaza, we met a bunch of boys in our curso, including Carlos, and again some of them tried to get me to swear at the boys. I didn't. Then at something like midnight, Cony and I went to a neighbor's house to watch a movie with the 14 year old daughter and her friend. We ended up falling asleep on their couch around 4 am and didn't come home until 6 am when we had to press the buzzer for a really long time before someone got up to let us in.

 my empanada.... I need some more practice

walking with mis compañeras

      Saturday, Cony and I walked with Nacho all over the place, trying to wear him out and get rid of some of his ridiculous amount of energy. (I have this quote on my iPod which describes the situation perfectly- "kids have so much energy because they siphon it out of their parents like midget gasoline thieves"). It worked until our parents picked us up from our walk (we'd been walking for an hour or something plus time spent playing in the park) and took us to family's house in the campo, or countryside. As soon as Nacho saw the other kids there, he regained all his energy and started running around like crazy again. We arrived at the countryside house at 9 o'clock and left at 12. It was my first asado, or barbeque, which is a huge thing in Chile. My host mother's family was all there- tons of cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents and tiny adorable little children. The food was the meat, baked potatoes, lettuce, tomatoes, and bread. The meat was actually pretty good (sorry, Dad, but your cooking does not compare) and I ate way too much food. 

 Nacho riding on Cony's shoulders

                                                                            Asado

Differences between Chile and the USA

-meals... there are four here. Breakfast (if you wake up early enough), Lunch, Onces, and Dinner. Breakfast is very light, some toast or cereal or eggs or something of the sort. Lunch is the biggest meal, always always something with meat. I've had pollo asado, lentaje y arroz, carne, sopa de pollo, and other things I'm not remembering. Lunch is usually served around 2 or 3. Onces is tea time and it occurrs around 6. Dinner is optional and depends on the day, the setting, the family, etc. It's usually small amounts of food. At every meal, the food is put in the middle of the table in large serving dishes and you serve yourself.

-smoking... every other person smokes. The majority of adults smoke and a third of the teenagers smoke. I've already breathed in more smoke here than I would in weeks in the US. I still notice the smell but it no longer makes me feel like getting out of there as soon as possible.

-buzzer vs doorbell and locks... All homes here have doors that are always locked. If you shut the door behind you, you can't get back in. For whatever reason, almost no one in the family has keys. So when you get home, you press the buzzer to be let in. The buzzer is the same thing as a doorbell only the sound is like the buzzing of a gym buzzer. I always jump when it goes off and I'm standing near a speaker.

A Long Journey

It's been a week since I left home and so much has happened its unbelievable. First off, I left home Tuesday evening last week in order to stay at a hotel in Hartford with my mom. (My flight to Miami left too early for us to drive straight there in the morning.) In the morning, we got up and took a shuttle to the airport.  I checked in and went right through security without a problem. That flight went off without a hitch, although the flight attendant making the announcements kept throwing in little jokes like "please return your seats to their upright most uncomfortable position. Please make sure you have all your belongings before editing the plane. If you leave anything and still really want it tomorrow morning, you will find it on eBay." In Atlanta, I luckily did not have to change terminals, but I did have to walk from the very end of the terminal I was in to the very beginning. Waiting for the plane, I saw some AFS tags on some girls' bags. I walked over to say hi and discovered that one of them was going to Chile too! We all had different seats on the plane, but we regrouped after the flight and collected our baggage. Then we had the interesting experience of flagging down a shuttle to the hotel. First, we flagged down a shuttle to the wrong Marriott hotel (apparently there are a bunch of them, which is confusing) and then when we found the right shuttle there were too many cars in-between us and the shuttle and it almost drove right past without noticing us.

After we arrived at the hotel, we had free time until 5 when the true orientation stuff would begin. There were 27-ish kids there-- 8 to Chile, 2 to Paraguay, 1 to Panama, 1 to Uruguay, and 15 to Argentina. It was a really nice hotel with a beautiful palm tree and pool courtyard. The orientation stuff was all about AFS and safety and policies. None of it was really anything I think would be absolutely vital to a successful trip, but talking to all the other kids was really great. 

The flight to Santiago, Chile left at 11:35 but we were at the airport at 7:30. We met a junior pro tennis player (she's a senior in high school but she travels all around the world for nine months of the year to compete) and she brought us cookies and hot chocolate from the lounge for first class flyers. We flew into Santiago around 10 in the morning (there's only a 2 hour time difference). 

Going through customs was an interesting experience... First for going through the immigration line we had to split up into two groups because half of the Americans going to Chile didn't have student visas since they hadn't received certain papers from their Chilean schools in time. So the four of us who did have our student visas went through faster and met two AFSers in the line- Rannveig from Iceland and Natalia from Russia. When I got up to the immigration officer, he stamped my visa and did a whole bunch of official looking stuff then rattled off a bunch of instructions in Spanish and wrote down an address on a sheet of paper. Hoping that someone from AFS would know what to do with it (I understand I needed to register my visa, but other than that caught nothing), I moved on with the other students to get our baggage and go through customs. The line was really long but it moved quickly. The customs people let everyone else pass through without searching their bags, but stopped me. The guy opened my bag, took out the half gallon of maple syrup and started speaking rapid fire Spanish with the other customs guy. He came to me and asked "¿Qué es esto?" I told him maple syrup and tried to explain that it's a sweet syrup that you put on food, but he didn't get it. Eventually, the girl from Iceland helped me out by saying that it's a type of sugar and he let me pass through. For a while though, he definitely thought I was trying to blow up his country or something. 

Then, the exchange students from Japan, Russia, Iceland, Norway, Finland, USA, and probably other countries that I'm forgetting took a bus to the place we were having our orientation. Santiago is very dry compared to New England. There's dirt everywhere and the greenest things are the palm trees. 

We stayed at religious retreat for nuns which was beautiful. There were wonderful gardens and delicious ripe grapes and lots of little rooms. The showers were finicky, not always producing hot water (in Chile, you have to turn on the water heater in order to have hot water) and the toilet in my room kept having issues (the chain connecting the handle to the flushy-thingy kept detaching). The rest of Friday was spent hanging out with all the other exchange students. English was the common language, but everyone except the Americans, Austrailians, and Kiwis (New Zealand) spoke at least one other language. The Japanese and Thai students didn't really speak English so they spent most of their time with the kids from their own country. Surprisingly, a ton of students spoke German (there were large numbers of students from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland). There was one guy who is fluent in German, English and Portuguese because his family is Brazilian, he lives in either Switzerland or Austria and he goes to an international school. 

Saturday was dedicated to actual orientation stuff and everyone was super helpful. The sessions were actually really informative and gave us a lot of information that was really helpful as well as another run down of the rules of AFS. 

Sunday morning, those of us going way south to Punta Arenas or Puerto Natales as well as the students going way north, got on a bus around 10:30 to go to the airport. Other students had to leave at 5:30 and 7:00 to catch their flights and bus rides. The AFS guy put me in charge of the three other students on my flight saying that I looked the most awake (I'd slept for maybe four hours) and sent us through security. I found the gate we were supposed to be at and we waited there for awhile until we heard a bunch of announcements where the only thing I caught was that they were saying our flight number and Punta Arenas (our destination). Because I had no idea what else they said, I looked at the computer screen and found that we had a new gate. Luckily, we got to the new gate in time to board and we were off to Punta Arenas. 

When I arrived, my host brothers and father picked me up at the airport. We drove to Puerto Natales from there, me in the back seat with my little brother who likes talk a lot and doesn't really understand that I don't speak Spanish. 

It's very flat in Punta Arenas, though here in Puerto Natales the flatness turns abruptly into mountains around the edge of town. There are lots of sheep (we were driving by a field full of rocks and from experience, I thought, man that pasture must be really hard to maintain with all those rocks. Then one of the rocks moved and I realized they were very dusty sheep.) and almost all trees are bent over from the wind.
Sunday night, after arriving in Puerto Natales, I ate dinner (pollo, or chicken, arroz, or rice, and ensalada, lettuce and avocado) and then the teenagers played Monopoly. There are four teenagers in the house right now- me, Carlos (my 16 year old brother), Constanza (my 13 year old sister) and Max (my cousin... I'm not really sure if he lives here all the time or just right now). Their Monopoly game is the typical American version though it says avenida instead of avenue and they use plastic credit cards and a machine instead of paper money. We ended up having to stop after a couple hours before anyone won because the machine stopped working and we couldn't tell how much money anyone had.
Monday, I slept until 2 o'clock (a personal record for me, but normal for people here) and when I woke up we had lunch and Cony, Carlos, Max, and I went for a walk around town. I don't have many pictures from that walk because Max mostly took them on Carlos's camera. They showed me around the town and I've got to say, it's beautiful here. Very different from home, but very beautiful. There are lots of little shops everywhere and everything is very colorful. There's also a plaza every couple streets.
Today, I woke up slightly earlier, at 12. We had spaghetti for lunch and then one of my classmates/Carlos's friend came over. Another girl, also a classmate, came over with her exchange sister Aim from Thailand (she arrived with me Sunday). We went to a cafe in downtown Puerto Natales. I had strawberry juice, yummmy. The owner of the cafe is an AFS volunteer who speaks a little English and we sat and talked with him for awhile. I had to do a lot of translating because he didn't speak much English and Aim speaks no Spanish and just a little English. It's very difficult to communicate with someone who basically only speaks Thai when everyone else in the room speaks Spanish or English. Oh well. When we got back to our house, we had onces, which is the Chilean version of tea time. We had crepes, absolutely delicious. As we were eating, my host dad was dropped off by the army vehicle (he works for the army) and he joined us. He proceded to try to learn English. Their pronunciations always make me laugh, but it's not like my spanish is any better. (Note to Dad: thank goodness you don't speak Spanish, you and my host dad would get along too well and I would be doomed. He's just as crazy as you.)

Differences between Chile and the US
-greeting... it's always, always a kiss on the cheek for girls, guys greeting each other do the classic guy-hug-thing. It's really hard to get used to kissing strangers on the cheek.
-driving... if there's no one driving towards you, you can just drive in the middle of the road. If you're about to turn left, you drive on the left. Seatbelts are only put on when you're about to pass by los carabineros (the police)
-identity... here everyone has an ID card (except me, haven't gotten that yet) that they have to carry around all the time. If a police officer stops you, and they can whenever they want, and you don't have your ID card, they can take you to jail where you have to wait for someone to bring you your ID
-speaking... anyone who thinks that people from Spain speak quickly think again. Chileans speak so quickly I'm surprised they don't wear out their tongues. they only pronounce a tiny bit of each word, never ever say any 's' and often just skip over some words they consider unneccessary
-bedtimes... my 5 year old brother is up until the early hours of the morning each night and no one in the house wakes up until something like noon.
-food.... Dad, you would love the food here. The only meal I've had that isn't centered on meat is onces. And that's more a snack than a meal.
-There are dogs everywhere. They all belong to someone, but no one keeps their dogs in their houses or their yards, so they just kind of wander the streets. Somehow, they don't die in all the crazy traffic.

-bebida... When a Chilean says "¿Quieres una bebida?" he means would you like coca cola. It's served with every meal and is the default beverage. My family must drink several liters every day because all seven of us drink at least one glass at every meal. The exception is onces where you either drink tea or instant coffee. 

-shoes are worn everywhere. Inside the house you can wear sandals and slippers as well as normal shoes, but sneaker-like shoes are a requirement when leaving the house. Yesterday, when we were getting ready to leave the house, I had flip flops on (it's still summertime here, mind you) and my host mom asked me if I was planning on putting on shoes. It hadn't even occurred to me that flip flops didn't count but I put on my sneakers anyway.
-Fingers are not for eating. I had french fries for onces today (and for dinner last night, mixed with egg and meat) and you use a fork. My host brother looked at me funny when I said that in the US we always use our fingers. Also, for every meal, the food is put in the middle of the table in big dishes. You use your silverware, even if you've already eaten off of it, to take from the dishes and put onto your plate. Occasionally, you can eat directly from the dishes, but that's often considered rude.

There's definitely more, but I can't remember what. I haven't said anything embarrassing yet, but that's probably because most of the time the words coming out of my mouth are "sí", "no", "¿qué?", and "no entiendo".

(Note: I forgot to mention that not only am I the tallest in my family, I also have the largest feet. Jajaja.)

Cony, Me (swatting at a fly), Carlos, Max on our way al campo 

American students going to Chile: Sydney, Erin, Grace, me, Sara, Stephen, Marie, Jake

the garden in the center of the retreat in Santiago

Erin, Marie, Stephen, and Jake practicing the cup song for the talent show

my bed in Santiago

Puerto Natales from the airplane

Patagonia from the airplane

el campo y Carlos

el campo y Cony

the cat, sleeping on my bed

    Me getting picked up at the airport in Punta Arenas- my host dad (Carlos), my host brother (Carlos), me, and Ignacio (my little host brother). 

Miami

Hey everyone!

Just so you all know, I'm in Miami, safe and sound. All the travel thus far has gone perfectly. I've had the Gateway Orientation and am now chilling until its time for the red-eye flight. There's eight other people going to Chile from the US and there's also nineteen kids going to Panama, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina (the majority are going to Argentina). I will post again when I'm settled in Chile, but I just wanted to let you all know that I'm all set.

Adios

It's a normal February break morning. The house is cozy and the sunlight is streaming in through the windows. Outside, a thick blanket of snow is nestled on the ground, glittering in the light, making the outdoors look deceptively warm and welcoming. The cat is curled up on my bed and I can hear the soft murmur of my sister's Glee club music coming from her room. In the middle of my rug, the giant suitcase towers. In a few hours, me, my carry-on (a laptop backpack 'cause this laptop is huge), and that giant suitcase are off to Chile.
Getting there is a very long process. My flight to Miami leaves early in the morning and I live a long way from the airport, so my mom and I are going to drive to a hotel near the airport tonight. When I get to Miami around lunchtime tomorrow, I have an orientation with AFS there. Then all the American kids going to Chile (I think there are 8 of us) are going to get on a flight to Santiago (the capital) around midnight on Thursday. We arrive Friday morning and have an orientation in Santiago until Sunday morning. Then I get to fly down to where I'm staying!

I've said goodbye to nearly everyone- fellow skiers, friends, extended family, my dad and my sister. It's only just beginning to sink in that I won't see any of these people until August. (Hugging my dad and sister for the last time in six months was a surreal experience... What will I do without my dad's corny puns and my sister's weirdness?) I've been dreaming about leaving for a study abroad for so long that it feels weird for it actually to be happening. Even packing up hasn't been enough to convince me that this is actually happening. I think it will hit when I get on my flight to Miami tomorrow morning.
Currently, the biggest worry I have with all my travelling is the luggage. On my American domestic flights and my international flight, I am allowed to have one checked suitcase weighing 50 pounds and one carry-on weighing 20 pounds. On the Chilean domestic flight, the suitcase has to be 44 pounds and the carry-on 17 pounds. These restrictions wouldn't be a problem, except I am packing everything I need for six months as well as gifts for my host family. Let me tell you, maple syrup and butter crunch are deceptively heavy. Together they take up about seven pounds of my luggage. So I'm scraping by the weight limits and hoping that no one in the Chilean airports are too picky about exact weight.


                                            My current packing situation... I think I'm done

                                               
Now I'm off to go finish all the last minute chores I've been putting off. The next time I update, I'll be in Puerto Natales.
¡Hasta luego!

Application

           One of the reasons I started this blog was to help students who are looking into study abroad or applying. (I spent a lot of time reading blogs as a form of research before I started applying to AFS-Chile.) So I thought I'd share the process I went through to find AFS and apply.
Step 1: Google
          Originally (this was back in 6th grade, which should tell you how long I've been obsessed with studying abroad) all I knew was that sometime in high school, I wanted to spend as long as I could living in a Spanish-speaking country. So I turned on my computer and Googled study abroad in high school. The results that came up were intimidating. 50,000,000 results in 30 seconds. AIFS, Student Travel, AFS, StudyAbroad, CIEE, LPI, Greenheart, Quest, Rotary. But, with free time at hand (or possibly, not-so-free time- I probably skipped doing my chores) I dutifully went to each website and wrote down all pertinent information in my notebook. This resulted in a mass of information that, when shown to my mother, seemed to make her reconsider her thought that I was just kidding about this study abroad thing. With all this information at my disposal, I spent the next four years deliberating about what exactly I wanted to do. By the end of my freshman year of high school, I was fairly certain that AFS was the program I would apply to.
Step 2: Parental Permission
          This is a key step to the process. It's very hard to leave your home for between six and eleven months as a teenager without your parents' support. Luckily, they agreed.
Step 3: Country
          Some people know exactly where they want to go. Others have a more oh I'll just apply to wherever sounds the coolest attitude. I wanted to go somewhere where I could become fluent in Spanish. That narrows the number of countries down to a dozen or so. Within that amount, some were ruled out by my parents because of the safety factor (my mom didn't like the idea of me in Mexico with the drug wars, wonder why...). Then I researched all the remaining countries and found that the ones I liked the most were Chile, Costa Rica, and Argentina. (Chile ended up being my first choice because there are a ton of people I know that have gone to Chile and loved it. And, let's face it, Chile is an amazing country.)
Step 4: Application
          I started applying to AFS in February of 2013. (The way to do this is first attend an online info session then use the discount code you get from that on your preliminary application fee. The prelim. application is just stuff like your name, address, and GPA. Then you get an access portal to the full application.) The application took me awhile, just because I didn't feel the need to rush through it and it's a lot to fill out. The application consists of: cover picture, personal information, placement information, health forms, self introduction, photos, parent statement, academic record, participation agreement, consent, letter of recommendation, and a scan of your passport. I submitted the whole thing in May and a week or two later received an email that there were a few things I needed to correct- my health forms didn't state my respiratory rate, my transcript didn't have an official school seal, etc.
Step 5: In-Home Interview
         One of the parts of the AFS application process is the In-Home Interview. Basically, an AFS volunteer in your area comes to your house for an hour or so to talk to you about your possible study abroad trip. They ask you lots of questions about your life and tell you a bunch of things you'll need to know in the next couple months. I was insanely nervous about this, but it's really not that big a deal. I did this in July. A week or so later, I received an email from AFS that my full application had been received and was under review (they don't consider the application completed until the interview happens).

Step 6A: Acceptance

             In August, I got an email from AFS-USA stating that I had been accepted (yay!!!) and my application was being sent to AFS-Chile so that they could review it and accept/reject it. 

Step 6B: Acceptance

             In the beginning of October, AFS-USA told me that AFS-Chile had started reviewing my application and had a few clarifying questions for me. A week later, I was accepted and officially going to Chile!

Step 7 (the last one): Placement

           Now that it had been determined that I was going to be setting off for Chile in February, the only remaining question was where in Chile was I going? Being accepted into AFS-Chile meant that I would definitely have a Chilean host family and attend a Chilean school, but it didn't tell me anything about where in the country. And, let me tell you, Chile is a very long country and it is nearly impossible to prepare to live there when you don't know where you're going to live. I could end up anywhere from the Atacama desert in the north to the enormous metropolitan capital, Santiago, to Patagonia in the south. 

          In the beginning of January, I opened my email to find an email labeled "AFS: Your Permanent Host Family Placement". Even before opening it, I was jumping up and down. It was a link to my AFS access portal and the new information contained within: the name of the town and my host family. I would be living in Puerto Natales, in the far south of Chile, in Patagonia. I had a host father who worked for the army, a host mother who was an accountant, a 16-year-old host brother, a 13-year-old host sister, and 5-year-old host brother. A week later, I got a similar email with the information about my school, a private Christian school (this is a really common type of school in Chile) that I would be going to along with all my siblings (it's kindergarten through high school). 

A really long journey to where I am today, but definitely worth it. 

Mi Intercambio: Prezi Style