Thursday, December 19

Today I woke up early again, this time to go to Maxi’s premiacion. This one was a lot more important because Maxi is super studious, and he won a lot of awards. I understand how great it is to finally be recognized for every day hard work that usually goes unnoticed, so I made sure to make a big deal of all the awards he won. During the day, Maxi and I stayed home to take care of Monse, who was sick and throwing up. We actually had a lot of fun together making jugo de durazno from scratch and telling dirty jokes. Another thing I’ve noticed here in Chile is that women here do not make sexual jokes around men. I know that among guys they are super dirty, but when women are there, they just don’t do them. In contrast, my friends and I can be all together, guys and girls, and we will tell jokes regardless of the company. I complained to Maxi about how much I miss stupid dirty jokes, and so he agreed to start including me. I feel like that means we’ve reached a new level of friendship and trust hahaha. Anyway, I also finished all my college applications today, and sent them in to the universities. So I’m finally done with that and I feel like I’ve had a weight lifted off my shoulders. Now I’ll have more time to spend with my family and less time to spend worrying and stressing and procrastinating on college apps. After I finished, Katie H’s mom came to pick me up and we went together to the office of Techo Para Chile to turn in raffle tickets that we were supposed to sell for the community service trip we’re doing in January. Then we went to Katie’s house, where there were a bunch of her brother’s friends over. We sat talking to them for a few hours (nothing is ever a short conversation in Chile), and then we went up to Katie’s room, each of us took a shower, and then we sat talking for a while with her little brother Julian. Julian is hilarious and absolutely hyperactive crazy, and I can see how he could get annoying as a brother, but I had the best time ever with him. He’s so funny and not ashamed to do really weird and funny things. We stayed up till like 2 and then we were so tired that we all fell asleep on Katie’s twin bed together.