Sunday, June 15, 2014

Wednesday, June 11

Katie W never goes to school on Wednesdays because she hates philosophy, and since this was her last Wednesday, we decided to all skip and go have a fun day with her in Santiago. Katie W, Katie H, Sally, Louis, Nigel, Christine, and I met in the center of Rancagua at 10:30, all wearing our Keep Calm and Kiss an Exchange Student sweatshirts. Katie brought her nice camera and we had a little photo shoot in front of the trademark Rancagua church and statue of Bernardo O’Higgins. I’m so happy we did it and weren’t too embarrassed to be a giant mob of gringo dressed in matching sweatshirts taking pictures in the center of town on a Wednesday morning because the pictures turned out really adorable. If our little exchange student Rancagua family had Christmas cards, this is the picture I would choose to put on them.
Anyway, then we walked over to Terminal O’Higgins and got a bus to Santiago. From there we went to Feria Santa Lucia for some last minute souvenir shopping, and then we went to Parque Arauco to have lunch. We decided we were starving and in the mood for some good old American food, so we went to the only TGI Fridays in all of Chile and ordered burgers. Cassidy and Alexis, two exchange students from Santiago, met up with us to eat. After we finished eating, we went down to this sketchy underground ice rink next to a parking garage to ice skate. It was super lame and flied with little kids, but we were together and we were happy and that made it an amazing experience.
We skated circles around the ice and sang “Libre Soy” from the Disney movie Frozen at the top of our lungs.
By the time our hour ran out, I could have done more, but we had to go. We stopped at a self-serve soft-serve ice cream store and got some ice cream. Then we walked out into the rain and tried to eat it as quickly as possible before the rain ruined the ice cream. We were going to have to take a bus and then a long metro ride to the bus station, but we decided to just negotiate to get a good price on a taxi. Like always, they left the Spanish talking to me. I went to the first driver and asked him how much it would cost to take 6 people to the bus station. He told me the lowest he could go was 15 mil pesos. I told him I was going to ask the guy behind him. I told the next guy that the first guy had given me a price of 12 mil pesos and I asked if he could do any better. He said he would do it for 11.500 and I told everyone to get in as fast as possible before someone found out that I had lied. I felt like a great negotiator and a terrible person all at the same time but whatever. We piled 5 people into the backseat and Nigel sat comfortable in the front. We weren’t comfortable, but that ride to the station was a bonding moment. We rode the bus home, and then Lilian and Manuel came to pick me up from Terminal O’Higgins. We ate once and I went to sleep.

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