Tuesday, May 27

Today was a boring Tuesday. We had school, then practiced barras some more. While we were practicing, some people from our generation came in with the senior sweatshirts that we had ordered in March and had finally arrived. The tradition of every senior class having a sweatshirt is in all of Chile, and so I am really lucky to be able to take part in it with my class. Some of the sweatshirts are super ugly with pictures of Simpson characters and quotes about beer on the back, but our are nice and classy with CII (Colegio Instituto Ingles) on the front and the words “Generacion 2014” on the back, which I love because it means I can wear it in the US without being embarrassed and having to explain why I have a giant embroidered Bart Simpson drinking beer on the back of my sweatshirt.

After barras, I went home, went for a run, took a shower, worked on some college stuff, ate once with my family, and went to sleep.

Monday, May 26

Today was a very productive Monday. I went to school, stayed after to dance barras and learn a new dance (the whole dance is like 10 minutes long and made up of little 30 second clips of a bunch of songs), and then got home around 4:30. At home, I got completely caught up on my blog, went for a run, practiced the dance I had been taught, and started the online orientation packet I have to fill out for Berkeley (since I will be missing actual orientation due to the fact that I’ll be about 5,000 miles away in Chile). It was about 9 at night and Lilian still hadn’t gotten home and Manuel and I were starving, so we decided to prepare once for ourselves. We proved that we don’t need a mom in the house to do everything for us, and we ate once all by ourselves like big kids. Lilian arrived, and we sat with her as she ate too. I enjoy talking with my family, but I have also learned how big Manuel’s ego is. I feel like every chance I get I have to remind him that he can’t just tell me things and have me blindly believe them (because honestly I can hold my own in the topics we discuss, even in Spanish). I enjoy hearing his opinions, I just don’t like when he says his opinions like they’re facts and lessons for me to learn, and I like to constantly remind him of my own opinions that are different from his but no less correct. Also, Manuel repeats the same stories, bad jokes, and speeches all the time, and Lilian and I started making fun of him for it. It was all in good humor, but honestly it does get old having to listen to his same old braggy stories like a thousand times a week. Overall, I just like the vibe we have as a family. We aren’t perfect, and there are some things I really don’t like, but I like that we can all say what we want to and make fun of each other but know that it’s all in fun and good humor. Anyway, I went upstairs around 10, watched a little TV, and went to sleep.

Sunday, May 25

Today Katie and I woke up late, ate breakfast, and then went outside to wait for a micro to take Katie home. Saying goodbye to her was a little sad today because she is going home in a little less than 3 weeks (on June 14), and even though we know we will make the 6 hour drive to visit each other in the US, it will never be the same as living in the same city in Chile. Katie has been one of the most important parts of my whole exchange, she’s my best friend in the whole world, and I’m going to miss her so much. Anyway, after she left, I went upstairs to work on my blog for a while. Then my parents called me down and told me we were going out to Gatsby, a buffet in the mall in the center of town, for lunch.

We ate a lot of yummy food, then walked around the center of Rancagua for a while and took some of the family pictures that I had been wanting to take for so long.

Then we drove over to the nearby town of Rengo to look at some stone fountains and wooden furniture that they want to buy for the house.

Normally, today would have been incredibly boring, but it was fun because it was one of the first full days I’ve spent just hanging out with my family, and I’ve learned to make every single day I have like that count because I really don’t have many left. We got home around 6, and I went upstairs to continue working on my blog. We ate dinner around 8, and we were all feeling really lazy and tired, so the whole house went to bed around 9:30. It was a perfectly nice day with my new Chilean family.

Saturday, May 24

Today Katie and I woke up at 8 and we were on the road with my parents to Santiago by 8:30. We arrived a little before 10 at La Moneda, which is the White House of Chile.

Manuel used to be a Colonel in the police force, and he actually used to work in La Moneda, so he has special privileges. They let us into the Moneda to take a private tour with one of the policemen who was there guarding it. We got to see where Michelle Bachelet holds her press conferences, where she works, and the main courtyard where all the important events are held.

Katie and I were impressed with the lack of security (we didn’t even have to go through a metal detector to get in, and there are very few guards around and they are only carrying radios with them), but then again, terrorism does not exist in Chile, so there is really no need for any more security. After the tour, we stopped for a quick coffee, and then went back to the plaza of la Moneda to watch the changing of the guard.

It wasn’t exactly like Arlington National Cemetery because there was a band marching in and some people mounted on horseback, but it was still a pretty cool ceremony to watch. After it ended, we went around to the other side of la Moneda to take some typical touristy pictures, and then got back in the car to drive over to Patronato.

Patronato is this big street filled with hole in the wall shops and lots of street vendors selling cheap clothes. Clothes are so expensive here in Chile that everyone always goes to Patronato to buy expensive things like jeans and jackets. I really just wanted to look around since I didn’t need to buy anything, but it was still fun just window shopping and looking through all the clothes in all the stores with Lilian (who absolutely loves shopping) and Katie (even Manuel got excited about some men’s clothes he found).

I ended up buying a few cheap pairs of hippie pants to bring back to the US and shamelessly wear even though they are totally not fashionable at all there. We stopped at this little hole in the wall restaurant to eat the best schwarmas of my life (it’s Turkish food apparently).

After Patronato, my parents drove Katie and me over to Estadio Nacional while we put on all our layers of warm clothes in the car. We got out, said goodbye and thanks for the fantastic day to my parents, and went to wait in the growing line around the side of the stadium of people waiting to get into the Fall Out Boy concert.

We looked at the super punk looking Chileans around us and decided we were probably a little out of our league, but we still had fun laughing at ourselves and making jokes about the people in English with the confidence that they wouldn’t understand us. We met up with our classmate Anto and her cousin Fefe a little later, and pretty soon we were allowed into the stadium.

There were no assigned seats, just seats around the outside and a big open area in front of the stage. Obviously, we ran down to the open area to be closer to the band. The problem, however, was that everyone else had the same idea, and pretty soon we were so squished in that I couldn’t even fully expand my ribcage to get in a good breath. The warm up band, some Chilean bad I’d never heard of, came on around 8, and I could forget a little bit about being so packed in with about 500 other Chileans in about 30 square feet of space. They left around 8:40, and that left us with 20 minutes of nothing to do before Fall Out Boy came on.

That’s when the pushing started. One side of the mob would push the other, and I would almost be knocked off my feet every time, except there was no way I could actually fall because the bodies around me were too close to me. It was literally freezing outside, but with all the body heat around us, everyone started sweating a lot, and I wanted to take off my jacket and scarf but I literally couldn’t move my arms enough to take the jacket off. We decided to wait until Fall Out Boy came out, listen to a couple songs, and move to a place farther back where we could actually enjoy the concert. When they came out, the energy was exhilarating. Everyone was jumping up and down, and the crowd moved me too, so I had no choice but to follow suit. The band played The Phoenix, and we got some cool up close pictures of them, and then Anto, Katie, and I moved farther back where we still had an excellent view, but could also move around and dance and most importantly breathe.

I sang along at the top of my lungs to all the songs, we had a great time dancing and laughing and talking about how hot Pete Wentz is. It was really weird being at a concert in a Spanish speaking country though because all of the Chileans knew more of the song lyrics than we did, but when the band would make little jokes and comments in between songs, not many people understood or laughed. We kind of felt like it was our own private concert since we were some of the only people who understood everything Pete was saying.

The concert ended around 11, and we went outside the stadium to wait for Anto’s dad. He picked us up, and as we dropped Fefe off at her apartment in Santiago, she invited us up for dinner, so we ate a quick dinner with her, and then drove the hour back to Rancagua. It had been an exhausting day, and Katie and I slept in the car. When we got back to my house we didn’t even talk to each other, we just fell right into bed.

Friday, May 23

Today was a happy day because it was Friday. We stayed late again today practicing barras, and I arrived home at like 5. My parents were taking Katie and me to Santiago early tomorrow morning, so we met up in the center to hang out for a little while and buy hair dye, and then we came back to my house. We first bleached, and then dyed strands of our hair pink. While we waited with the dye in our hair we watched all of Fall Out Boy’s new music videos (they go in series to make one big movie type thing), since we were going to their concert tomorrow night. While trying to wash the dye our of our hair in the bathtub with my removable showerhead, we had a few mishaps, and after a lot of screaming and scrambling to grab the showerhead, the bathroom and ceiling ended up completely soaking wet. Just as we finished with that little adventure, my parents called us downstairs to eat once. We went down and talked to them for a while, and then came back up and addressed the flood in the bathroom. By that time, we were both tired, so around midnight we got into my twin bed (Katie and I are so used to sharing a tiny bed now that it doesn’t even make an impact anymore) and put Harry Potter 4 on my computer. We didn’t even make it through half the movie before we were both sound asleep.

Thursday, May 22

Today at school was a pretty normal day. We stayed after school to practice barras (the dance for the alianza), and then I went home, went for a run, showered, and then wasted a lot of time before eating once with my parents.

Billboard outside my house... Catolic propoganda

Then I went upstairs and watched the news for a while (I really like watching the news in Spanish, but the thing is that if I want to see international news stories I have to watch BBC in English because the Chilean channels only really show Chilean news).

Wednesday, May 21

Today I woke up late and relaxed in my room for a while (we didn’t have school because it is the anniversary of la Batalla de Iquique). Then I went with Lilian into the center to return a shirt she had bought from the mall and to stop for coffee. We walked through the center and had a really good talk. Then I got home, put on more layers because it was freezing outside, and got on a micro to go to Pablo’s house. Pablo lives by the Jumbo, which should take me about 15 minutes to reach, but this micro took a bunch of weird turns and ended up going all throughout Rancagua and arriving at the Jumbo 45 minutes later. I walked through the rain to get to Pablo’s house, and by the time I got there, all I wanted to do was stand next to the stove and get warm. Vicente and Dani were also there, and we talked for a while, and then played this super nerdy board game that Vicente had brought over called Catan. We all basically sucked and Vicente ended up winning by a lot. I had been planning on going home before it got dark so I would be able to get a micro without it being sketchy, but Pablo’s mom wanted me to try this pastry she was cooking, so she offered to drive me home later. We all sat in Pablo’s kitchen and drank tea and ate calzones rotos (literally translated to broken underwear). Then around 8:30, Pablo’s mom took me home. We rode in the car alone together, and she talked to me the whole way and was super incredibly friendly and sweet. She seemed truly interested in what I had to say. When I got home, I ate once with my family, and then showered and got ready for school the next day.