Wednesday, May 14

Today I woke up at the same time as always, although I wasn’t planning on going to school. Nicolo, Nigel, Katie W, and I met at Terminal O’Higgins at 8:30 to take the bus up to Santiago.

We then took the metro down to Feria Santa Lucia, where Katie and I needed to buy all the souvenirs we wanted to take back to the US with us.

We spent a little while looking around the giant feria with the guys, but we pretty quickly realized that with them there we weren’t going to get anything done, so we told them to go meet up with the exchange students from Santiago and that we would join them after we were done. Then the real work began. We both had long lists of souvenirs we wanted to buy for our families and friends, and so we combed through the feria for about 2 hours looking for everything we wanted at the best prices we could find it all for. We really did end up spending a lot of money, but I knew we would, and I think it was pretty necessary to buy the souvenirs I did for everyone. After our backpacks were stuffed and we were each carrying bags in our hands, we took the metro over to Costanera Center to eat lunch at Johnny Rockets and enjoy some good American food.

After lunch, we went to this really awesome mall called Parque Arauco just to look around since I'd never been before and I'd heard so much about it.

Parque Arauco

Then we took the metro over to Baquedano, where we had planned to meet up with the other exchange students. After a long and confusing phone call with Aidan, where he led us all over the park before finally being able to accurately describe where they were sitting, we joined up with the group. We sat in a circle on the grass and talked for a while. A random dude came up to us and sat down and started playing guitar for us, which was kind of weird but also kind of cool and hippie. When it got to be about 5:30, we all decided to go home before it got dark. We parted ways with Cassidy, Gabrienne, Kristen, Aidan, Felix, Nigel, Nicolo (who were going home later), and Katie and I went back to the bus terminal in the center and got a bus back to Rancagua.

Santiago Center

It had been a long day and we were too tired to talk on the way home, so we just listened to music together. We got to the terminal, and Katie bought us hot chocolate to drink while we waited for our parents to pick us up. Mine came first, so I said bye to Katie and went home. I unpacked all the awesome souvenirs I had bought in my room while Lilian made once, and then we all ate together while I told them about what a great day I’d had. Then they saw how tired I was, and let me go to sleep early.