Friday, August 30

Today I woke up tired but happy that it was finally Friday. In the morning while I was getting ready for school, I felt my first Chilean earthquake. It was really small and nothing even fell over, but Chile is the most earthquake prone country on Earth, so earthquakes are kind of a big part of their culture. Everyone at school congratulated me on having survived my first “temblor”.  School was nothing special: Fridays suck because we have all of our hardest classes on the same day. We also had time to decorate the classroom for Chilean independence day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After school, Nancy and Sra Adela picked up Monse and me and took us to this bakery that sells traditional Chilean cakes and candies. We bought so much food!!!

Then we went home and I played catch outside with Monse and Maxi (they don’t play baseball, but Maxi found a glove that his uncle had given him and he offered to play with me because he knows it’s my favorite sport). Then we ate dinner, and at 5:30 I left to go meet my friends at the Jumbo. I had planned on walking alone, but Maxi insisted on coming with me. It was kind of sweet that he feels the need to protect me, but also kind of annoying because I’m 17 years old and I’m pretty sure I can walk 5 minutes away from the house without running into any serious trouble. Anyway, we met up with Mariana, Vicente, Fernanda, and Stefano in the Jumbo and we went to this fast food place called Doggies to eat some more food. We had empanadas and French fries.

Then, we walked to the movie theater. I thought it was like a 10 minutes walk but it turned out to be about 45 minutes in the cold! Still, it was fun because it was the first time I had walked around the city. In the line for tickets, we met up with our other friends who were coming—Matias, Cata, Juan Diego, Jerko, and Diego. We bought tickets and went into the theater. We saw The Conjuring in English with subtitles in Spanish (that’s how they like to watch movie here—they prefer to read the subtitles than hear the weird dubbed voices). I was so scared, but I had a lot of fun screaming in the theater with them.

They all laughed at me after the movie because when I was really scared or shocked I would scream in English instead of Spanish and they thought that was really funny. After the movie, we walked over the Papa John’s and ordered pizzas. We sat around and ate and talked until like 11, and then my mom came and picked me and a few others up and we all went home. The group that we went to the movies with was kind of awkward because not everyone knew each other (and it was my fault because I received invitations from Cata, Mariana, and Juan Diego, and so I suggested that we just all go together, even though they all aren’t really friends) but I still had a great time. When we got back to the house, my uncle and two cousins were there. My dad and uncle invited me to sit and talk with them, and I did, assuming that we would be done soon. Talking to them was really interesting. We talked about politics in Chile, and a little about Chilean history (in the 70s Chile had a socialist president named Salvador Allende, and then in a military coup, the dictator Pinochet killed Allende and seized control over the country. He then proceeded to reign over a military dictatorship, killing and threatening any people whom he believed were somehow related to socialism.). The weirdest thing about Chilean politics is that here it is like acceptable to say that you are a socialist or even a communist. I have met people who freely admit this, and who passionately believe in the power of socialism to improve the lives of the people. It is very different from the US, where to say that you are a socialist or communist is basically to say that you are a lunatic. Three hours later, at 2am, they left and I went right to sleep.