Saturday, March 15

Today I woke up late and feeling only slightly better than before. I got out of bed and got dressed. Then I went downstairs and had breakfast and drank a lot of tea to make my throat feel better and to stop coughing so much. Then, me, Nancy, Tia Cynthia, and Tia Ximena got into the car and went to this street (more like 5 streets) called Meiggs, where there are stores on either sides and booths in the middle absolutely filled with everything you could imagine, for incredibly cheap prices.

We walked around for about 4 hours, and my mission of the trip was to find Chile souvenirs to bring back to my friends and family in the US. I got playing cards, key chains, and bracelets for like 20 dollars total. It was great. Although I was feeling a little under the weather, spending the afternoon shopping with my aunts was really nice.

We stopped to drink mote con huesillo and talk for a while, and they’re really cool. Then we drove home to Rancagua, and ate lunch of cazuela, which is a typical Chilean soup that I don’t really like. Then, everyone was tired and went to take naps, but I wanted to write in my blog before I forgot all the details of what had happened on the trip to the north, so I did that for a while. Matias and Nacho were there, but I was just feeling kind of crappy and really didn’t have the energy to do much more than write in my blog. I showed them and Maxi my pictures from the trip, and told a few funny stories, but then around 8 I was feeling absolutely drained, and so I went upstairs to take a nap. I woke up again around 10 and went downstairs to eat dinner. We sat around the table and ate (Maxi and my parents had already left for a dinner with the rest of the robotics team), and then I decided to go sleep some more since we didn’t have to leave for the airport to say goodbye to Maxi until 2:30. I slept until 2:30, and then woke up and got ready to go. Then I overheard some of my aunts and cousins saying that they weren’t going to go to see Maxi off at the airport, and I took that as my chance not to go either. I honestly found it a little ridiculous that Maxi and his parents were expecting all of his aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents to go to the airport at 3 in the morning to see him off on a 10 day trip. And I had a fever and was feeling like absolute crap, so I didn’t exactly feel guilty for not going. I called Nancy and told her the situation and that I didn’t think I could go, and she said it was fine, although she kind of said it in a way that was supposed to make me feel guilty. It backfired and actually pissed me off that she would expect so much of me, and I told my family I wasn’t going and went back to sleep.