Thursday, January 16

Today I woke up late again, and chilled in my room reading for a while. Then Maxi came in and we talked about beginning the exchange process and I loaned him my book, The Global Student, the one that inspired me to even go on exchange in the first place. It was pretty cool to look at that book again because I haven’t even thought about it sitting up there on my bookshelf since I got to Chile. It sort of reinspired me and reminded me of all the great reasons for why I came here. In the afternoon, I packed up all my sleepover stuff because I was going to Katie Ward’s to sleep over tonight, and took a collectivo to the mall in the center. They had finally finished the renovations in the mall and they had put in a STARBUCKS! Sally, Katie, and I met there and got in the incredibly long starbucks line. It was a long wait but it was so worth it. While we were drinking our drinks, I got a call from Katie Hagemeier who told me that the new exchange student who had just arrived from South Africa was coming over to her house that night and that we were all invited over to meet him. Obviously, we got into a micro right away and make the 30 minute journey over to her house. When we got there, Nicolo was already there talking to Katie and her family. We sat down and started talking to him, and he’s really awesome. He told us great daredevil stories from South Africa (like the time his friend got attacked by a shark) and he explained a little bit about the racial struggle between blacks, whites, and Afrikaans (sorry don’t know how to spell that), which I found incredibly interesting and I plan to pick his brain a little more about. We all drank café helados and we gave Nicolo his first taste of manjar. Then Katie and I had to leave because we were going to a party in the night and we had to get back to Katie's house to get ready. We were waiting to take a collectivo, but before one came, some friends of Katie’s brother who were also leaving the house offered to take us home. When we got home, we got ready and everything and then waited for Katie’s sister Berni to be ready. Then her dad took us over to this restaurant where we met up with 3 of Berni’s other friends and one of their parents drove us over to the party. The party was at like a dance club with a giant dirt parking lot outside. There was a long line to get in the club and there were bunched of groups outside the club drinking (because you couldn’t bring alcohol in with you). We waited while Berni and her friends drank the alcohol they had brought with them, and while we were waiting we met up with Katie Hagemeier, who had also come to the party. We waited for our friends and talked about how we thought the new exchange student Nicolo was going to be a lot of fun, and then we finally got in line to go into the party. When we got in, there was a big dance floor and a stage at the front with a DJ playing. There were flashing colored lights everywhere and everyone was dancing. We went in to dance for a while with Berni’s friends and a few people that I knew (but wasn’t really friends with) from school. I noticed after a while that all the girls were dancing while all the guys stood around the perimeter and watched. It was so creepy because they were like scoping out their options to ask a girl to dance (and then try to make out with her). Katie, Katie, and I decided right then that we would be more happy just dancing all together so whenever a guy would come up to one of us we would all just hug each other really tight and not talk to them until they got the message and left. Toward the end of the night we did end up dancing with guys for a little while, but overall the night was a great time with just girl friends. Around 4, we found Berni looking distressed as she told us we didn’t have a ride home. Katie told me not to worry and that Berni would figure it out, and soon enough we got in the car with 3 guys that we had met at the party (I guess they were Berni’s friends from before) and they drove us to Katie’s house. We were all starving, so we sat in Katie’s room with the lights off eating bread and peanut butter for a while before we all got tired and went to sleep.