no puedo creerlo...

(the title means: i can´t believe it)

ok, it´s always good to get the bad news over with first, right? well, i was walking home from the metro station today after a long, fun day of hiking in la campana parque nacional when i looked in my backpack to find my keys and realized that my cell phone wasn´t in the pocket were i always put it. i decided not to worry about it, because there was nothing i could do standing on the sidewalk outside my appartment, so i went ahead and went in and got a shower. afterwards i thoroughly looked through my backpack and sure enough-no cell phone. so at this point there were too posibilities. a) i forgot it on the metro and one of my friends had it, b) i was robbed as i was walking home, which was quite possible because i noticed my zipper was unzipped when i looked for my keys and i never leave my zipper unzipped. so i decided to mention to my mama chilena and my sister that i´d lost my phone, so they decide to call it. sure enough, so random chilean guy answers. daní tells him that he´s got my phone and he insists that it´s his mom´s so she hangs up. we then confirm that we sure enough had called my number so we call back and a lady picks up and says she´d just bought a new chip for her phone-my chip (which is like a SIM card). so apparently this is what happened. i was talking back from the metro with my backpack on my back. i´ve been told a million times to watch my stuff when i´m walking places because petty theft is very common here, but i thought that because it was the middle of the day and i was in well populated areas and being very allert of my surrounds that i´d be fine. plus i thought that i´d surely notice if someone were lurking behind me or that i´d feel someone tugging on my zipper to open it. well i didn´t. someone got in my bag and took my cell phone without me having the slightest inclination. and i really wasn´t walking with my head in the clouds, i sware! then what happens is these thiefs take the phones, take out the chips and sell both the chips and the phones and they get more money. so some lady, less than two hours after my phone was stollen, had already bought my chip and was using it. crazy, huh? and the worst part is that people buy this stuff, knowing full well that it´s stollen goods. people wouldn´t steal if other people wouldn´t buy. ugh! i think my brother calls the people that do this ¨flietes¨ or something like that, and it´s really a shame because this small group of people give chileans a bad name because they have made these acts of theivery so common that you almost expect to be robbed. well i´ve been robbed. hopefully that´ll be the one and only time. i´m a little more educated now and i know how to be more carefull....

now, i want to be optimistic. sometimes i use my blog as an outlet to blow off some steam when i get frustrated (as i did below), but i want all my readers to know that aside from the at times negative things i discuss here, there are a bazillion wonderful things happening that sometimes go left unsaid. so here´s a list of some of the wonderful blessings thus far. and let me say that the blessings far outway the frustrations and dificulties. sometimes i forget that and let myself get weighed down, but that´s not the reality of the situation. ok, here are the things i have to be thankful for (yeah, i know it´s not thanksgiving, but we need to make lists of these things all year around!):

• my amazing family. i couldn´t possibly ask for a better family. and that´s the complete truth. i love every single one of them and i´ve been blessed with some really great bonding time with every one of them. they daily bless my life. my brothers and sisters have become my best friends. they´ve been willing to share with me their friends, their spare time, and are always willing to help me with my school work. i could go on for days about all the fun things, both little and big that we´ve all done together ranging from watching hours of 24 with seba to translating song lyrics with felipe to long conversations with my mom over tea to trips to the beach with daní and dancing and tickle fights with maría jesús. they are truly a gift from the Lord.
• las pololas de mi hermanos (the girlfriends of my brothers). both cata and eva have helped me feel so incredibly welcome here and have been wonderful friends to me. eva´s in santiago now so i don´t get to see her very much, but i get to see cata quite a bit and she´s quickly becoming one of my closest and most charished friends here. both girls speak english quite beautifully so when i just can´t express myself in spanish i can use english, so my feelings and emotions don´t get so lost in translation when i´m with them. cata´s also become a friend who will hold me accountable and tell me when i´m being dumb and need to snap out of it, something that i need dearly and am SO thankful for.
• american friends as well. i´m starting to develope some really great american friends too that i can hang out with and talk to about the things only we gringos/extranjeros understand.
• classes where i can learn. some of my classes are hard, but i know that i´m going to come away from this knowing so much more spanish. the teachers are very knowledgable about what they teach and also eager to help.
• a church to go to with a body of believers and opportunities to make chilean friends. sometimes the church overwhelms be because it´s just so much spanish, but all of the people have been so welcoming and understanding of my igorance at times.
• family and friends at home who love and care about me. i´m so thankful for the people that leave comments, send faceboom messages, write e-mails, answer cell phones, talk on skype, whatever because i really do miss you all and i can´t tell you how much it brightens my day to know how life back home is going.
• a beautiful country full of new people, new opportunities, new places, and new adventures.
• being surrounded by the beauty of God´s creation. from the beautiful beaches and seemingly infinite expances of the pacific ocean, so the excentric beauty of valparaíso, and the tropic more distant beauty of the surrounding towns in chile, i´ve really been in awe of God´s creation as i´ve been here.
• the fact that even when i feel most alone and most lost, i know that the Lord is with me. yeah, it may sound cliché, but that is really something to be thankful for. i have purpose in Him in all that i do here. that makes the day to day worth it. makes everything worth it.
• and so much more, but i´m getting tired...

well, it´s time to go to bed, so that´s all for this addition of rachel´s exploits in chile. love you all!

"the things no one tells you about studying abroad"

have you ever watched a movie, or maybe even been in a real life situation, where there was a person in the scene that was constantly putting themselves in such an awkward position or doing something incredibly ridiculous, that you almost hurt for the person and it’s almost hard to watch what’s going on. and the worst thing is, the person has no idea what’s going on, or that the other people around them are squirming or laughing on the inside because of the awkwardness of the situation. or even if they know, they can’t do anything to change that situation. well, my life has become one of those weird movies and i’m all the sudden the queen of these incredibly awkward, ridiculous situations.

luckily, i’m not the only one going through this. i was talking about this to some of the other girls in the study abroad program, and they were feeling the same way, but geez it gets frustrating sometimes. there’s nothing like sitting in a room full of people and not feeling like you can talk to anyone. or knowing exactly what you want to say, and then say it in the most ridiculous way possible. or get stared at as you walk down the street and have lord only knows whispered to you by the random man walking past. or my favorite, is when you try to say something, and you say the right words, but you just know that you sound completely ridiculous b/c the words come out completely forced b/c you’ve had to translate them (nothing like watching a movie and trying to produce exclamations of surprise or disbelief in a different language… they never come out right…). i say all of this not so much complaining, or in a “woe is me” manner, but i just wanted to illustrate the reality of my life at the moment. i completely understand that all of this is just part of it, and that being a foreigner who is learning a language is going to be awkward at times… but i really think i thought i’d left all the awkwardness behind me… oh how wrong i was. i think i’m going to write a book titled “the things no one tells you about studying abroad.” its chapters will be as follows:

1. forget being independent, prepare to feel like a kindergartener again.
-having to rely on other people for everything b/c you know nothing!

2. you’re about play the staring rold in an awkward teen movie!
-dealing with the awkwardness your very existence will create
3. conversation skills with a 100 word vocabulary
-how to get pack “me llamo ____, soy de los estados unidos, y tu?” with the
volcabulary of a 5 year old.
4. yes i have blond hair.
-how to walk through the streets when it’s obvious you’re a foreigners
5. nice to meet you, can i give you a kiss?
-learning that in some cultures it is ok to kiss on the first date… or the first time you
ever meet someone.

ok… so that’s all i’ve got so far, i’m sure i’ll have more to come soon. i guess i’ll stop being cynical for now. sorry, i just had to get it out. i really do love it here and in some ways i don’t really mind the awkwardness of this situation, but it was all just bubbling up and i though sharing it might help.

in other news, i’ve been reading “through painted deserts” by donald miller, which is pretty perfect for me right now b/c it’s about a trip he took when he was younger across the country. he pretty much leaves everything he knows for an unknown journey to an only vague destination. anyways, here’s some of my quotes i’ve marked so far:

“it’s interesting how you sometimes have to leave home before you can ask difficult questions, how questions never come up in the room you grew up in, in the twon in which you were born. it’s funny how you can’t ask difficult questions in a familiar place, how you have to stand back a few feet and see things in a new way before you realize nothing that is happening to you is normal. the trouble with you and me is we are used to what is happening to us… well, it isn’t normal. nothing is normal. it is all rather odd, isn’t it, our eyes in our heads, our hands with five fingers, the capacity to understand beauty, to feel love, to feel pain.”

in the month i’ve been here, being exposed to so many things that are outside my normal, but are so normal here, has definitely made me think about a lot of things i have always known and accepted. not to say that everything here is better, or everything back home is better, neither in the case. but like donald miller says, it’s so good to step outside of all you know, to get a chance to look at your life from a little bit more objective viewpoint. to look at your “reality” or your “normal” and see it from a different perspective. i haven’t formulated too many specifics yet, so i’ll leave it all at that, but it’s definitely an interesting experience to almost be able to see all you believe from a different set, or at least altered set, of eyes.

“[talking about everyone’s need to leave and what it will be like] and you will not be alone. you have never been alone. don’t worry. everything will still be here when you get back. it is you who will have changed.”

i just like this quote, not too much explaining required.

well, that’s enough rambling for one night. chao mis amigas y mi familia. ¡les quieren y les extraño mucho! (bye my friends and family. i love you and miss you a lot!)

¿¿¿¿el no sé QUÉ????

so the ridiculousness of this experience has reached an all new high (ok... it´s really not ridiculous, but my brain can hardly hold all that just happened, so for the moment, it´s ridiculous). about an hour ago i got out of my second installment of ¨literatura española 3." yesterday´s class was rough, but the teacher was just lecturing about naturalism and relativism and who knows what else, so it wasn´t too bad. today, she gives us a piece of work called "el no sé qué" that we were supposed to read, comprehend, and analize, in 15 minutes (i could barely read all the words, let alone understand them in this amount of time). we then continued to all get in a circle (oh, btw, this class is a class with chilean students, so it´s about 1/3 extrajeros like me and then a bunch of chileans that actually know what´s going on) and discuss all the complexities of the story. i was having a hard enough time understanding the words that were coming out of people´s mouth, let alone even beginning to comprehend the ideas behind them, and then the teacher wanted to know what all us extranjeros thought. i wanted to laugh, or cry... i´m so tired now after an hour and a half of solid concentration that seems like it got me no where. then, at the end of class we stay after to talk to the teacher, to find out where we can get copies of the works so we can read them before class so we know a little more of what´s going on, and we realize the extent of the works we´re going to have to read. i´m talking whole, complex, long, intelectual book EN ESPAÑOL. say a pray for me folks, because i´m going to need all the prayers i can get. oh, did i mention the fact that i also missed the first two classes because one of the isa ladies promised me that the classes didn´t started until this week? ugh... i would just not take this class, but i´m afraid if i don´t, i won´t be able to transfer back enough hours. plus this class will give me a credit i need for my spanish major. so i really want to take it, but it´s just going to be ridiculously dificult.

but there´s a little light at the end of the tunnel, because we have a tutoring session set up already and the professora is very nice and seems to want to help, so hopefully all will get easier as my spanish skills increase. i really don´t think it can get harder anyway. ok, well i´m going to stop complaining and go eat some lunch. hopefully i´ll write a more optimistic post soon. many great things have been happening besides this one terrible class. i miss you all. remember to be greatful today as you sit in class (if you´re in class of course) that you can understand the words coming out of your professors mouth. it´s really a blessing!

sledding down a volcano on your butt? who comes up with stuff like this?

what a weekend. i got back to viña this morning at about 8:00 after a weekend spent down south in the lake district of chile in a small little touristy town called pucón. ISA, my study abroad agency, took all of the students there this weekend to see all the beauty that the area offers and do some fun outdoorsy stuff. we left thursday night at 9:15 and drove 12 hours south. they housed us in these little "cabanas" that were a bunch of little houses all clustered together in what looked like a little jungle. the cabanas were connected by a maze of wooden platforms amid thick almost bamboo looking vegetation and trees. it was like something out of a fairy tail, or fern gully. i really enjoyed being in a little town for a few days where there wasn't tons of traffic. the town looked like many of the mountain towns i've seen in the US in alaska or colorado, if it weren't for the fact that it's super touristy, i would have loved to live there.

friday, we spent the day driving around to many of the beautiful waterfalls that are nestled in the hills and mountains around pucón. while hemmed-in-hollow back in arkansas is quite beautiful, these waterfalls are absolutely incredible. the pictures say more than i can, so i'll leave you to look at those. we finished out the first day with a soak in natural thermal baths and then some pretty good pizza back in pucón.

me at "salto la china" which is this super huge beautiful waterfall. supposedly it got it's name because some cow who's name was china fell off the top of it or something ridiculous like that (i'm not ever kidding). i decided that if i were a cow and i had to die, i'd much rather die falling off this waterfall than at the butcher block!this is "ojos del caburgua" which are these three beautiful waterfalls that run into this crystal clear, blue reservoir.this is "luguna azul" or blue lagune i wonder if this is where they filmed the movie... ok, probably not, but it's pretty beautifulme trying to act like i'm walking on water at lago caburgua, but the guy who took the picture didn't exactly do what i imagined, but it's still a cool pic!

saturday was the big day i was planning on climbing the volcano, but we'd been told that the past four days before they hadn't been able to climb because of poor weather, so we weren't sure if we'd be able to climb after all. we woke early to be ready by 7:30 to meet up with lizette (the program director) to find out if we'd be able to go. we all gathered to hear the bad news that they were calling off the trip b/c the forecast for the day was questionable. very disappointed, we all went back to our cabanas only to have lizette come knocking on our door telling us we may be able to go after all. ten out of the original fifteen decided to take the ride to the volcano to see how things looked from there and make the final decision when we arrived. so our group hurriedly went to the tour agency to get suited up in all of our equipment. we then took the ride to the volcano. as we drove out of town we got our first glimpses of the volcano that had been covered in clouds the day before. little did we know, the entire town of pucón in nestled in mountains, but you just can't tell when the low clouds come in.

the view of the volcano as we were hiking to get onto the chair lift. the volcano is called volcan villarrica.

when we arrived at the volcano, the weather looked good, so we decided to take the risk of possibly having to turn back half way up and lose our money. we rode in a chair lift for the the first 500 vertical meters up the volcano. this greatly helped reduce the time the journey takes and helped our chances of making it to the top before clouds had a chance to roll in and make us turn back. the first stretch of the climb was on loose volcanic soil/rocks. the boots that we were making made the already somewhat difficult hike much more difficult because they were so heavy and cumbersome. as we hiked on, the soil soon turned to snow as we zig zagged our way up the mountain. we stoped after about 30-45 minutes for lunch where i encountered my first incidence of a string of bad luck. as i pulled out my lunch sack, i realized i had grabbed the wrong bag in my rush out of the cabana. so instead of having a yummy turkey and avocado sandwich, i had a bag of uncooked spaghetti and kool-aid mix. luckily my generous friends gave me some of their lunches, so i had plenty to eat, but i still lugged spaghetti all the way up the volcano and back. after eating, we strapped on our clamp-on spikes onto our boots which greatly helped hiking in the snow and but also made the boots even heavier.

this is a view of part of the volcano, you can see the little people hiking down.

after lunch, we had about two more hours of pretty intense hiking before we reached the summit. as we got closer to the top, the wind picked up and the incline got steeper and i began to wonder if i was going to be able to make it all the way to the top. with about an hour left, my legs were beginning to feel like jello and every step was a struggle. the prayer, "Lord, be my strength" became my constant plea as i climbed the volcano literally one step at a time. i had known before i started that the climb would be physically difficult, but i didn't know what a mental battle it would be. i had to convince myself that i could take a couple more steps, that i would be ok if i lost my footing, that i could make it to the top. but the Lord provided all the mental and physical strength i didn't have myself. the journey up wasn't all toiling for nothing though, b/c every time our guide would stop to give us a 30 second breather or so, i'd be blown away by the all the beauty that surrounded me. off the volcano were views of distant mountains jutting up out of the clouds and large lakes and tree covered hills below. if i had gotten nothing else out of climbing the volcano, the views i was able to see would have been worth it.

this is my favorite picture. i don't know what the old structure used to be used for, but it made for a beautiful picture!this is a view off the mountain, you can see the mountains that are even taller than the volcano jutting out of the clouds in the distance. the pictures really don't do the beauty of it justice.

after about 3 hours of hiking up, we finally reached the top and the relief i felt to have made it all the way was incredible. i felt the most amazing sense of accomplishment after working so hard to get to the top. of the 14 of us that started out in our group, there were only 10 that made it all the way to the top. as we crested the top, the reality that we were indeed standing on an active volcano hit us as we breathed in the sulfur fumes spewing out of the giant, rugged crater. a couple people in our group decided to hike a little more through the thick sulfur fumes to try to see some lava, but i could have cared less about lava at that point (plus they didn't end up seeing any lava, so it's all good). we took many victory pictures at the top as we rested and prepared for the decent.

this is the ISA group that made it to the top.
this is me after conquering the volcano!this is me barely catching myself before i slid all the way down the volcano... ok, j/k, but it was fun to pretend.

i was a little bit nervous about the decent b/c the accent had been so difficult and steep, i didn't know what it would be like to hike down. we hiked down the first little bit with not too much difficulty, but i was definitely a little nervous about losing my footing in the snow. we soon stopped and our guide told us to take off our cramp on spikes. we all thought we had misunderstood or that he was going crazy, but he convinced us by telling us that we'd have to walk all the way down if we didn't, so we followed suite (he's been climbing the mountain for 20 years, so i figured he knew what he was talking about). we soon realized that the rumors we'd heard about sliding down the volcano were true. see, the way it works is a guide from another group would go down before everyone else and make a sort of tobaggon track, then all the rest of us would follow after, literally sledding on our butts down the mountain. here i met another bit of bad luck because i didn't have in my pack the extra thing the other members of our group had to strap onto their backsides to help keep their butts dry as they slid down. it ended up being fine, i just got a big wedgie and a cold, wet butt. but anyways, sledding down the mountain was probably one of the funnest things i've ever done (sledding at home will never be quite as cool). their were probably almost 10 different runs down the volcano. we'd slide down and use our ice picks to slow ourselves down when we gathered too much speed (i actually lost my pick on one run, another bit of bad luck, but pepe, our guide got it back). it was really crazy to zoom past all the ground we'd hiked up with so much difficulty just hours before.

our guía (or guide) pepe, who had been climbing this volcano for 20 years. i think he has a pretty sweet job!

the decent took only about 1 hour compared to the 3 it took to get to the top. we slid down probably about 2/3 of the mountain, but the last bit was hiking on the loose volcanic soil down a wide, but somewhat steep path that was easy to walk on compared to all we'd done earlier. at some point on this last leg of the trip i ended up a little behind the people i was walking with because i was a bit slower. here i got a chance to process alot of what had been going on in my head throughout the day and days past. as i climbed the volcano and also in the days earlier, i'd been really missing josh alot and had been thinking about him constantly as i saw all the beautiful mountains and waterfalls and went on these crazy adventures. as i saw all this beauty and did crazy things like sledding down volcanos, all i really wanted was for him to be by my side. to be able to hear his laughter and his exclamations of joy and awe at all of the beauty. of course this is ridiculous, b/c even if josh were alive, he wouldn't have been on that volcano with my, but i wanted so much just to call him or write him a letter, to be able to share that experience with him b/c i knew how much he would have delighted in that, and the reality that i couldn't do any of those things hit me really hard. i cried as i walked down the mountain, grieving the loss of my friend, but i think i needed to let myself grieve. i need to remember. it's ok to be sad. but in the sadness, i still know that as beautiful as that volcano was, and as grand as that adventure was, it's nothing compared to what josh has for eternity in heaven. so i find my solace in that, and i'll live my life following after what he started!

needless to say, after climbing the volcano, i was exhausted, so i showered, at some pizza at a cute little place in pucón and then crashed for the night. sunday morning i woke to rain in time to go white water rafting. rafting was really cold but it was alot of fun. it was a pretty short trip, i think we were barely on the river for an hour, and there were only rapids that went up to class three, but it definitely made me want to do more rafting when i get a chance. at the end of the day, we got back on the bus to make the overnight trip back to viña.

well, i'm sick of writing (i've accidentally deleted large parts of this two different times and had to rewrite it) and this is the longest blog ever, so i'm gonna call it quits for today. i love you all and i'd love to talk to you and know how you life's going (get skype! my name's rachel.dton ). i'll update again soon!

oh p.s. i found out this weekend i'm going to be an RA in yocum next year. whoop whoop!! i'm pretty excited

¿rica, linda, o tiene algo?

so my brother sebastián took it upon himself today to describe to me some very important terms chileans use alot (they have alot of weird terms that no one else understands, so it was an important conversation). after explaining the meaning of "piola" and "pillín" he asked me if i understood "rica." this is a word that the chileans use all the time to mean that something's delicious, or beautiful, or they really like it, or it's really nice, etc so i thought i'd pretty much figured at least that word out. but apparently there's another meaning when it's used to describe a woman. he continued to tell me their are three classifications men use to describe women. 1. is "rica"or hot. 2. is "linda"or pretty or cute 3. is "tiene algo"or she has something (this one i don't really get, cata seemed to think that it was someone who was nice, but it seems like there's some other connotation i wasn't quite getting). i'm pretty sure that my brother also told me that if a boy calls me "rica" that that means "danger danger" he said. it was pretty awesome, a pretty classic big brother/little sister talk about the way things are. i thought i'd share it even though it's probably not half as interesting to you as it was to me...

in other news, my first classes started this week. i only have my spanish grammar and culture classes this week, and then next week my literature and history classes start. i had expected that the spanish classes would be pretty easy because they're entirely with extranjeros (foreigners), but i think i may have been wrong. i ended up in advanced level ones, and it seems that when they said advanced, they meant it. it's not that i'm lost, but often i just feel like i'm not smart enough to be in these classes. everyone seems to speak better than me and understand more, but it's only the first week. i think once i get comfortable with the people and the professors i'll feel alot more confident about them. it is nice however to feel like i have at least something that i'm doing here, some reason, something to fill up time. after two years of barely stopping to breathe, it's now weird for me to have times when there's literally nothing i have to do. college has made me somewhat of a busy body, i'm not so good at doing nothing anymore. it's not so much that i don't like not doing things, it's just that sometimes when i'm not doing things i feel like i have no purpose, like i'm wasting valuable time. please pray that i'll be able to fill my time with things that really matter, but also that i'll be able to learn how to rest and just be. i think learning how to be is something i need to work on, or maybe not work on, maybe that's the point...

anyways... the reality of this situation sinks in more and more every day. the fact that i can't communicate like i want to hits me like a brick every time i have try to have conversations with my family and we all struggle to be understood and understand. communication is a very delicate and wonderful thing, but it takes a lot of work. to speak you have to be able to formulate words that tell what you're thinking or feeling in a way that the other person will understand. to hear you have to be able to comprehend not just the meaning of the words, but also the person's thoughts behind them. this is often difficult enough in solely english, but for a spanish speaker and a spanish student... oh it can be excruciating. i generally understand at least the gist of what's going on or being said, but in alot of cases, just the gist isn't enough. and i can express myself in very basic ways, but often basic ways can't convey what i want to convey. so my family and i are continually struggling to understand and be understood, but we're getting better. yesterday i had a conversation with sebastián about this very same thing. it seems he has a friend who had studied abroad in the states or who was a study abroad student from the states (it's stuff like that that i'm never clear about) who had told him many of the difficulties they experienced while abroad, that were very much like mine. it was so good to know that he at least understood my desire to be understood and understand and how frustrating and difficult it can be to be unable to do these things we so often take for granted. but in all of this frustration and the loneliness that not being able to communicate sometimes creates, i understand that this is all part of the deal. this is how it works. i can't expect it to be any different. and it'll get better over time, but i can't expect it to be some magical occurrence like i think i sometimes convince myself it will be.

oh, on a lighter note, i've failed to mention in previous blogs an aspect of the chilean culture that has taken some serious getting used to. my first encounter with it was as soon as i got through customs and was greeted by the ISA director lizette with a huge hug and kiss on the cheek, and then the same thing happened with the other ISA ladies. i then realized that they're one of those kissing cultures, women kiss cheeks (or it's usually more like air) when they greet, no big deal. well, then i meet my host family, more kisses on the cheeks, this time by boys too, but they're my family that i'm going to be living with, no big deal. well, not too long after that, i realized the full extent of the kissing situation: everyone you greet, whether you've known them for your whole life or never seen them before, you great with a kiss. and there's no getting around greeting people either, you greet everyone! and then when you leave, well, it's time for more kissing! when chileans enter a gathering of friends they literally go around the room greeting and kissing every single person, and then again, before they leave, they kiss every single person again. it's pretty intense for the girls who was once (and in some ways still is) a kissing virgin. brittney, if you're reading this, it's probalby better that you never visit chile b/c i think your personal boundary lines would be ridiculously violated!

well, that about wraps up most of what i have on my mind at the moment that i wanted to share. this weekend i'll be traveling with ISA to pucón, a town about 12 hours south of here to climb a volcano, go river rafting, some sort of canopy thing, and all kinds of other fun adventures hopefully, so expect some pretty awesome pictures when i get back. i love you all and would love to hear about your life as well b/c i really miss that!

am i going crazy or was that an earthquake?

the last two days have been absolutely beautiful here. as eva (felipe's polola-girlfriend) predicted, the cloudy day we had wednesday was followed by two beautiful days of sun and warm temperatures. i don't like cloudy days too much-they make the homesickness worse. so these pretty days have been really wonderful.

yesterday i registered my visa at el registro civil which is like the DMV times 500. it was ridiculous. i'll never complain about the DMV ever again. i think i was the 5th person in our group to go and i was still there for over 3.5 hours. ugh. but then i got to sign up for my clases which went pretty well, except for one scheduling conflict that was resolved today (yay!). so i'm going to take gramática 3, español comunicacional y cultura chilena advensada, literetura española 1 o 3 (i'll decide which ones once i try the classes out), y historia de latino american en siglo XX. my schedule works out really well b/c i won't have any classes on friday. i'm sooo excited about that.

after my kind of hectic day of DMV visits and scheduling classes, i came home and my sister daní invited me to go with she and her friend ricardo to the beach. we drove just north of viña to a little town called renaca (don't know how it's spelled) where the beaches are better. it's less protected by the bay so it has beautiful waves. i think it's by far the most beautiful beach i've ever seen (which isn't saying too much because i haven't been to a ton of beaches, but it was really great!). i took some pictures and played some paddle ball and just played in the sand, and then we ate empenadas as a little place right off the beach while the sun set. it was pretty amazing (see pictures!)

i was able to sleep in this morning b/c i didn't have to be at the university till about 12:30 or so, so i woke up at about 10:20 ish. as i was laying in bed i thought i felt something a little peculiar, like my bed was moving. sure enough, the moving got a little stronger and i even thought i was my light swaying. everyone else in my house was either asleep or out, so i wasn't able to ask about it, but i was pretty sure i'd just experienced my first earthquake (or temblor as they say here) or i was going crazy. and then, sure enough, this afternoon my little sister asked me if i had felt the earthquake, so i was excited to know i wasn't going crazy! i talked to mi mama about it and she said that the little ones are pretty common and we can feel them in our apartment more since it's taller. nothing was hurt at all, it was just a little one, but it was kinda exciting!

tonight, i'm going to visit the church my family and the ladies that run the ISA office go to, which i'm really excited about. i think it's going to be a wonderful way to meet other chileans and make some good friends. i just hope i can kind of keep up with what's going on. the spanish is just so hard to understand here! so sometimes it's even harder to connect with people b/c i can only partly understand what's going on and only partly express myself. it definitely gets frustrating, but i just have to remind myself that it's all part of the deal, i'm gonna get frustrated, but that's just part of learning a language; learning to do anything really. you're gonna be bad at it before you get good. so many things have come easily for me in my life, that sometimes when things are harder i get more discouraged, but i'm trying to stay upbeat.

well, that's all for now, i'll update again soon! love you all!

i'm excited about the beach!the sun's setting!que lindo (how beautiful!)!