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!)!