Sunday, September 29

We all had things to do on Sunday, so we woke up early (I only got like 5 hours of sleep and I was dead tired). We ate cake for breakfast and talked for a while before my dad came and took me and Marianna home. When we got to my house, Coti was already waiting outside to take me to the Siempre por la Vida meeting.

SPLV is a campaign that my school is participating in where a bunch of kids go out in the streets for one day and ask people to sign petitions to ensure that abortion stays illegal in Chile. Personally, I am not sure that I am completely against abortion because I do believe that women should have a choice about what happens to their own bodies, but I figured that this cause was very important to my classmates and I am here to experience the full culture, so why not help out? Anyway, this meeting was like a briefing on what we would be doing.

We all sat down and there was a long presentation on why abortion should be illegal and how to answer the common reasons people have for supporting abortion. It was all actually really interesting, and I learned more about the other side of the argument. Later, we broke into our groups and each group was assigned a place to go and stand and ask for signatures. I don’t know how much help I’ll be with explaining the problems with abortion to people in Spanish, but I’m going to help in any way I can and hopefully nobody will pick a fight with me (apparently sometimes people who passionately support abortion will get into big fights with the kids in the campaign). After Coti dropped me off at home, my family ate lunch, and then Nancy asked me if I wanted to help her cook some desserts (we literally always have way too many desserts in the house… it’s not going to help me keep off the 20 pounds that exchange students usually gain). Maxi and I walked to the store to buy the supplies that we needed to cook. When we got back, I started baking peanut butter cookies (since nobody eats peanut butter here, obviously they don’t have peanut butter cookies, and everyone has been wanting me to make them for a while so that they can try them for the first time).

Maxi made this one dessert that he likes, and Nancy made cream filled donut holes and flan. Then my grandparents and uncle came over, so I finished the cookies (I burned the first batch but the second actually turned out pretty good and everyone really liked them) and went to go talk to them. Then, our neighbors and good friends came over to eat dinner. We all sat around the big table and ate sopaipillas and tomatoes and then all of the desserts we had made. The food was fantastic, and I ate way too much dessert. Then, by about 9:30, I was dead tired after 2 days of lack of sleep, and so I excused myself from the table early (In Chile, when people sit down to eat a meal, they don’t just eat and then leave. They sit at the table and talk for like 2 hours after the meal is over. Every single meal. Even if it’s just the family. It’s a nice time to catch up, but sometimes I really just want the meal to be finished!) and went to go shower and get ready for school tomorrow. I got to sleep around 11.