Thursday, April 3, 2014

Saturday, March 8

Today we got up at 8:25 and went to breakfast at 8:30 in our pajamas. After eating, we went back to the room and the four of us took turns showering. We had to leave our suitcase packed and ready to go in the hotel. We left at 10 for the harbor, where we boarded a boat. We went on a cruise out of La Serena to see La Isla de los Lobos Marinos and just to look at the La Serena skyline. It was absolutely gorgeous, and also really fun to be standing out on the top deck with the boat pitching up and down.
We kind of felt like we were on a roller coaster. After the boat ride, we went to a nearby feria artesenal to shop for a while. Then we drove up to this giant church in the shape of a tall cross in the hills overlooking La Serena.
We first saw the museum inside that explained how the Vatican had taken part in building the important church, and then we took the long elevator ride all the way to the top to get just about the most incredible view of the city of La Serena.
We took some pictures with our countries’ flags, and explained to a bunch of very interested Chileans what a group of 40 blond haired and blue eyed people speaking English was doing there. I get stared at a lot just for the way I look, and so when we were all together and speaking English, German, and French instead of Spanish, those weird looks are multiplied by 40. So are the cat calls from men on the street.
Anyway, after the church, we went to a nice restaurant to have a lunch of salmon. At lunch, I sat next to the French people. I always feel really bad for Paul and Pierre because they are the only two in the group who don’t speak English, and so they usually get left out of a lot of things. We talked in Spanish at lunch. After, we all piled onto the bus and went quickly back to the hotel to load up our suitcases.
Then we were off on a 6 hour bus ride. First, a bunch of us got together to play Uno with the cards Fritz had bought at the feria. It was a little challenging to play with cards on a moving bus, but we made it happening by laying seats down and having a bunch of people sit cross legged in the aisle. After we got tired on Uno, I decided to ask everyone if they wanted to play a game that we had played in Techo Para Chile. Everyone had to choose a dare from a hat and then without telling anyone, they had to complete their dare sometime during the rest of the trip. Everyone absolutely loved it. We ended up modifying the game so that girls thought of dares for the boys and boys for the girls. If someone didn’t complete their dare by the end, they had to pay 2 mil pesos (4 dollars). We spent about an hour writing 20 dares each, in a various range of difficulties. Then when we stopped for dinner around 10 at night, we had everyone who wanted to play (there were about 5 who didn’t) choose dares. Some were really funny and some were a little stupid. My dare was that I had to dye my hair. After we got back on the bus after dinner, we watched the Conjuring. Then when the movie ended, we all tried to get into comfortable positions to sleep on the bus. Katie and I were sharing a seat. She went under the seat to lay all scrunched up on the floor and I lay on the seat with my legs out and back against the window. Then halfway through the night (everyone basically woke up at least every hour), we switched and I slept on the floor. It was cold on the bus, the blankets weren’t big enough to cover us, and it was an overall incredibly uncomfortable night.

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