Thursday, October 17

When I got to school, I was shocked to find that the senior boys had come to school in the girls’ skirts and the girls in the boys’ pants. It was an uncomfortable and slightly disturbing sight. The seniors last day of real school is tomorrow because after that they will still come but they don’t have to wear uniforms and they don’t go to classes, they just take practice tests for the PSU (like the SAT but more important) which is in December.

Today we had a field trip at school to La Universidad Catolica in Santiago. We came to school in jeans and the polo shirt from the uniform, and we went to our first three classes like normal, and then we ate lunch and got on the bus for Santiago. I sat with Chichi and Thomas on the bus, and she taught me more bad words in Spanish while he just laughed at my accent.

When we got to the university, we went to like an expo with booths from each major, and we got some information. Then Katie, Coti, and I went on a tour of the engineering department in the university. After a while we decided the tour was boring and so we walked across the campus to Starbucks instead.

Having Starbucks twice in a week after not having it at all for two and a half months was like a dream come true. We met up with a lot of other friends in Starbucks and talked for a while, and then we went back to the expo to look around some more because I really wanted to see the campus and maybe actually get some information about international relations since that is the career I am currently pursuing while applying the colleges in the US.

I went to the international relations table and was surprised to find that if I were to go to a lot of the schools I’m applying to, I would be eligible to do a yearlong exchange to study at la Universidad Catolica in Chile. It’s not a fully baked idea, but it would be pretty cool to come back, use my Spanish again, and be able to visit all of my friends here again.

Later, we got back on the bus and drove back to school. I was going to have to take a micro home, but  I left my wallet in Katie’s backpack, and she left before my bus got back to school (because each class A, B, and C had their own bus and I’m in A and she’s in C), so I asked my friend Vicente for a ride home. When I got back I was dead tired from staying up so late yesterday and having such a big day today, so I made myself some food and then I showered and went to sleep early.