Saturday, June 21

Today I got to sleep in late. While I was getting ready, Lilian walked into my room with a tray with breakfast on it. She said “I have to spoil my daughter sometimes” and then left. It was basically the cutest thing ever. Then I got to work taking apart a pair of boys running shorts and sewing them together again. In the alianza, we have to do a parade of clothes made completely from recycled things, and to make the shorts count as recycled, they had to be sewn together by one of us. I volunteered because I really want to help as much as I can in the alianza as like a last little thing I do for my class before I leave Chile. Around 12:30, I got in a collectivo to go to school. Everyone was just leaving Peru (like SAT prep classes but mandatory by the school) when I arrived. I met up with Vicente, Fernanda, Nico, Dani, and Diego (he’s a self-proclaimed communist and USA hater but kind of a cool guy if you get past his shyness), and we started our journey down to a town about an hour and a half south of Rancagua called Santa Cruz. We were going to a famous museum there. The car ride was really fun (except for the fact that there were 4 of us squeezed into the back and I had about half of a butt cheek on the seat the whole ride) because Vicente was driving and it reminded me of typical car rides in the US with my friends.

The museum had absolutely everything in it, from prehistoric fossils, to ancient South American civilizations, to the beginning of technologies like cameras and cars, to World War 2 guns, to, my favorite, a giant room dedicated to the Chilean mining accident and the 33 miners who were trapped under ground for so long.

That was the only news I had ever heard about Chile before coming here, so it was pretty cool to find some mention of it here in Chile. All the Chilean flags with messages for the loved ones trapped below, plans and designs for how to rescue them, and a model of the capsule used to get them out one by one were on exhibit. I thought it was the coolest thing ever, although everyone else thought that part was kind of boring. After the museum, we walked around the tiny town for a little while. It is super small, but also really pretty and old fashioned. I liked it a lot.

We drove home and I arrived around 7:30. I had such a great day with them (I love the fact that they make me laugh really hard until my stomach hurts, something that not all Chilean senses of humor accomplish), but I came home dead tired. We ate once together, and then sat by the stove for a long time warming up and talking and just enjoying being together as a family. Around 10, I went upstairs, watched Ender’s Game in my warm bed, and then went to sleep.