Thursday, April 3, 2014

Wednesday, March 5

Today I woke up early and went to school, but I was kind of excited because after school I would be leaving for Santiago on the North trip with Rotary. Today was the first completely normal day of school, with lunch and everything.
It passed really fast. After school, Nancy picked me up and I went home to quickly pack up my suitcase for the trip. I had to be totally prepared with both warm and cold clothes. Then, around 4:30, Nancy dropped me off at the bus station. I was the first one there, and so I bought a coke and waited like 30 minutes for everyone else to get there. Once Katie and Louis arrived (they were the only other ones from Rancagua besides Pierre and Nigel who were going up separately that were coming on the trip), we bought our tickets and got right on the bus to Santiago. On the bus, I finally got a chance to fill Katie in on everything that had happened to me, since she is no longer at my school. Her family here is having some financial problems, and they can no longer afford to pay the tuition at Instituto Ingles, so they changed all their kids to a semi-public school that is close to their house. Katie will start at her new school when she gets back from the trip, and I think she’s definitely feeling a mix of excitement and nerves, but she’s really taking the unfair situation well. When we got to Santiago, I called Lilly, my German exchange student friend whose house I was staying at that night to tell her that I’d arrived. She and her mom were waiting at the terminal to pick me up. Louis’s Chilean friend Leandro, who had gone on exchange to New Zealand the year before and with whom Louis would be staying that night, was also waiting. We all got onto the metro together, and then Louis and Leandro got off, then Katie got off to go meet her friend Anika (another German exchange student), and Lilly, her mom, and I continued traveling.
The metro ride lasted almost an hour and involved a change of line, but it passed really quickly because Lilly and I hadn’t seen each other since the south trip in December and we had a lot to catch up on. I love hanging out with Lilly because we speak in Spanish together, so I don’t feel guilty. We met up with Lilly’s dad at his work, and all drove together back to their house. Lilly and I went to her room for a little while and talked, and then the family called us out to have dinner. I met Lilly’s little sister, who is absolutely adorable and amazingly cool for a 13 year old. We had completos and they all were really interested in me and my family and how I’ve spent my year here so far. Then after dinner, Lilly’s sister invited us to play Just Dance with her, and we played for a really long time. I had so much fun just forgetting myself and dancing like a crazy person in front of them. Around 10, Lilly and I decided we should shower and go to sleep early since we had to wake up at 5:30 the next morning. When I showered, I was horrified to find that all the bottles in the shower were written in German! Shampoo was a very similar word, so I found that, but I literally could not find the conditioner, so rather than guessing wrong, I just didn’t use conditioner. Lilly laughed at me a lot when I told her that. Then we set up my mattress in her room, and lay down. We talked for a long time longer, about basically every single subject possible, even the harder ones, before falling asleep. I love Lilly so much and I think it’s really cool that I found someone whom I connect so well with but who lives so far across the globe.

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