Wednesday, August 21

Today, I woke up around 6:50 and almost made everyone wait for me because Eric drove us to school today and he likes to leave at exactly 7:30, whereas with Nancy we usually leave around 7:35-7:40. At school, I had Religion, where we watched a movie about some saint (I can’t remember which). Then during the first break, I taught some friends how to braid hair, and one of them did a fishtail in my hair. After break we had Spanish, where I had to do a worksheet with 40 short answer questions about the book Don Quijote (which I’ve never read).

 After the second break, I had PD3 Chilean History and PE Algebra where we learned la ley de cosenes (law of cosines). Then we ate lunch and went to English. We weren’t really doing anything in English—we had to do a worksheet, and I finished quickly and let people copy me. Sidenote—learning English at a Spanish speaking school is super weird. They learn grammatical structures that I’ve never even had to think about because it comes naturally to me, and sometimes I’m not even confident in my answers.

 Anyway, in the middle of English the Religion teacher came into the classroom and asked if he could see me outside. During religion class the week before, I had told him that I was Christian but not Catholic and he asked if I wanted to learn more about the Catholic faith. I’m here to learn everything I can, so I figured why not? He took me to a little room on the second floor where another girl was waiting. She is from Canada, but has been staying with her aunt and uncle in Chile for about 6 months. She wants to learn more about Catholicism too. The professor asked us about our faith, our church practices, and what we think about god in general, and then he told us a little about Catholicism. There is a mass held every day in the tiny chapel at school at 7:30am, and he invited us to attend. We decided to meet with him every Wednesday after lunch to talk more about the Catholic faith. I know it’s kind of weird, but hey what the heck I’m here to take advantage of every opportunity right?

After school, Monse and I watched TV for a while, and then Maxi showed me videos of Club de la Comedia (the Chilean version of SNL). I didn’t understand any of the jokes, but hopefully one day I will. After that, I went for a run, showered, dried my hair, and ate dinner with Monse. We had completos, which are hot dogs with tomatoes and guacamole on top. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but here we have a “nana” names Sra. Adela, who is in the house from 8-6 everyday cooking for us and cleaning and doing laundry. She’s like the friendliest person ever and I love talking to her. All I have to do is ask one question and she will talk to me for like 10 minutes! I love that because sometimes I can’t think of a lot to say in Spanish, so it’s nice to have someone else keep the conversation going.

After everyone got home, we watched TV for a little while and then we Skyped with Cristobal again. He’s doing really well and seems really happy. It’s really funny for me to hear him talk about the weird food that he’s tried because for me the food seems totally normal! He was like shocked to try raspberry lemonade. But I totally understand the feeling because all the food here is super different for me too.