Sunday, December 29

Today I woke up late after a horrible night of intense toe pain. I was up around 11 and then sat for about 3 hours on the couch in the living room reading my book with my foot propped up and ice on my toe before anyone else even woke up. When everyone finally woke up, I showed them my toe and Nancy immediately gave me some ibuprofen. I showered, and then we all ate lunch together. Then I got ready, packed for the sleepover party I was going to that night, and went to the train station to meet up with Katie H, Sally, and Christine.

The party was a going away party for our exchange student friend Nikita, who lives in Buin, which is about an hour away by train. While we were waiting for the train to come, we walked over to a local grocery store so they could buy alcohol for the party. It still impressed me how easy it is for my under age friends to buy drinks. Anyway, then we got on the train and were joined by Nigel and Julius. We got to the train station in Buin about an hour later and met up with all the Santiago exchange students who had also come down by train for the party. Nikita met us outside and we had to walk a while to get to a collectivo stop (on the way we stopped at another grocery store for more people to buy booze). Nikita started putting like 3 people at a time in collectivos, and since there were like 30 of us, it took a while for all of us to arrive at her house. When we got there, people were already in the pool swimming, so I put on my bathing suit and joined them. We played around in the pool for a while, and then around 9, people started busting out the alcohol. I was shocked that a group of exchange students would be so ready to drink, but I think since they were all together they decided to let their guard down. They drank pisco, and beer, and did neck shots of tequila. Everyone got absolutely wasted. I spent the better part of the night taking care of my drunken friends and making sure they didn’t do anything too stupid. People were outside dancing, making out with each other, and spilling drinks all over themselves. Around 2 when things started to calm down, a bunch of us went out to lie in the grass for a while and talk. We then moved inside where around 4 am these crazy Germans started doing jagermeister (or however you spell that type of alcohol) shots in the kitchen while my friend and I watched and ate pineapple ice cream. I came to the conclusion then that it is so much more fun to go to parties and be the sober one and be able to watch all the hilarious drunk people do stupid and funny stuff. I had a really great night and feel like I got to know my exchange student buddies on a whole new level.

The only problem was that the whole night Nikita’s incredibly drunk cousin Cristian followed me around and tried to talk to me (but he was actually trying to make out with me) and I had to constantly avoid him. Anyway, I was dead tired around 5:30 in the morning, so I laid out my sleeping bag on the floor (all the beds, mattresses, and couches were already taken) and went to sleep.