Wednesday, January 29

Today I woke up around 10 and was once again shocked to find everyone sleeping in until all hours. After the adults woke up, I went to join them for breakfast and we sat around the table talking for a while. Then we all drove over to the Jumbo and hung out there for a while shopping for Seyla and Gabriel. Seyla and I went off by ourselves to the teenage section and we had a lot of fun laughing at the outrageous clothes they were selling there. Then we drove home and had lunch together outside.

After lunch, I left to go into the center and hang out with my exchange student friends. We met up at Starbucks with Sally, Sally’s Chilean friend, Nicolo, his Chilean sister Mica, Katie W, and me. We then walked around for a while looking for the new kid from New Zealand called Louis until we finally found him outside Instituto O’Higgins. It was really fun hanging out all of us but it was definitely an awkward mix of languages because Nicolo and Louis don’t speak any Spanish and obviously the Chileans didn’t want to speak English. I tried to hang out with the Chilean girls and speak to them in Spanish so they wouldn’t feel left out because I know exactly what it’s like to be in a group and feel alone because you don’t understand anything what’s being said. We hung out in the center of town for a while, then went back to the mall to buy food for quesadillas, and then took a micro back to Katie’s house to make them. I cooked quesadillas for everyone and we put avocado and tomato and beans on them, and then we spent a while watching funny YouTube videos. Then we went outside and talked for a while and it was really cool to be the one talking about exchange from experience instead of always being the newbie. It made me realize how long I’ve been here and how much I’ve done here and been through here and learned here. After Nicolo and his sister left, Louis, Sally, and I made Oreo bonbons and kept talking about our problems until like 11 at night when Eric came to pick me up. Louis asked if we could give him a ride too, but when we got back to Instituto O’Higgins, he couldn’t remember how to get to his house so he told my dad (well I actually told my dad in Spanish after Louis told me in English) to drop him off at O’Higgins and let him walk. It was a little sketchy to let him walk in the dark at night but he insisted and so that’s what we did. You just have to laugh at the awkward embarrassing moments that always come with an exchange. When we got home, everyone was just sitting down to eat a pizza dinner (way too late for dinner but no comment) and so I sat and talked with them while they ate, and then around 1:30 I excused myself to go to sleep.