Friday, July 4

Today Sally and I were supposed to wake up at 8 to be able to get to her school by 9:30 (we were missing he first class because they had an English test). Her alarm didn’t go off until 9, and we had to rush out the door.

We arrived at Colegio Quimahue at like 10:30, and entered in her classroom in the middle of history. Her school is about 1/5 the size of Instituto Ingles, and it is completely red (the floors, the doors, the walls, the railings, all red).

Her classroom was about half the size of mine and there were only 20 people in her class. There are only 40 people in her whole generation (in mine there are 110). I met all of her friends during the breaks, and they were really nice and made me feel very welcome. The guys, as all Chileans are, were very flirty, and whenever any of them would talk to me all of their friends would stare and whistle, but it was still fun. After school, Sally and I went with her friends Paula and Elena to eat sushi. We laughed a lot, and they were amazingly sweet with me and included me in their conversation. I think if I had been in Quimahue they would have been really good friends.

Sally told me that one of the main differences between her new school (which has a reputation for being for a poorer class of people) and her old school is that in her old school, her friends would buy everything for her, and in this school, her friends can’t even eat out at restaurants that often because they don’t have the money. I didn’t really notice any differences in the way the people behaved. My Instituto Ingles friends told me that at Quimahue I would be so afraid of the low class people who talked with bad words (like my friends don’t do that) and were reckless, but I actually found Quimahue’s kids just as welcoming and sweet as Ingles’ kids. But it’s true that the two schools wouldn’t have been friends. They are different types of people. I took a collectivo home after sushi, packed up a bag, and then Manuel took me into the center in the hunt of sparklers for the “4^th of July” party I was having tonight. We went to 3 different stores, but apparently they’re illegal here in Chile, so I had to show up to Pablo’s house with only my USA sunglasses, “American cut” potato chips, ingredients to make s’mores, goldfish that my mom sent me months ago and are now stale, and American flag key chains as presents for people. Nico, Dani, Fernanda, and Vicente arrived later, and we all sat around and talked and laughed and watched funny YouTube videos. I had an amazing time with them and laughed until my stomach hurt like I always do, but in my mind the whole time was the fact that this was probably our last get together. Manuel came to pick me up around 9:30, and I left, wishing them all a Happy 4^th of July (although it was without fireworks this year, at least we had s’mores and good company). I went home, talked with Manuel and Lilian for a while, and went to sleep early.