anduvimos por valparaíso

what a week! today i finished what has probably been the most difficult week i've had so far. not so much in an emotional sense, but just in that fact that i had a ton of school work hanging over my head for the last week, really really weighing on me. i had a project due monday, a presentation in one of my classes wednesday that's the most important grade for the whole semester, and an exam in my literature class today. i definitely read 100 pages in spanish (it was a play so there weren't quite as many words on one page...) yesterday, yes, all in one day... i really haven't hardly stopped studying since saturday (that's 5 days solid...) but today it all ended and i'm free for a week and a half!! that's right. next week's what they call "semana novata." i'm still a little confused of all the details of what this week entails, but it has something to do with the first year students and all the classes after about noon are canceled, and since i only have one class that only meets twice a week before noon, i'm going to travel to southern chile with my friend katie for the week to chiloé (a big island right off the coast) and the area surrounding a town called puerto monte.

seba and i wandered through the streets of valparaíso thursday taking pictures. while we really didn't take that many, we got some good ones. these are my favorites:

me, looking down from a hill in valparaíso and out to the ocean

looking up one of the steep streets

window of a housea latch on a doorperfect example of the dogs in valparaíso, they're everywherethis picture is the jem of the photo shoot, this is probably the coolest cat i've ever seenseba outside an old jail in valparaíso
seba making some sort of pensive face that turned kinda goofywe played the act out emotions game (which i'm terrible at...) i believe this was... crazy? no sé...muy triste... (very sad)

i kinda got out of the habit of giving prayer requests, but i think that should change, so here we go...

• pray for a safe, fun, but also God glorifying trip south
• pray that i'll be able to truly enjoy and make the most of every moment here, because sometime i stuggle a little bit with missing home, not that i want to leave, but sometimes thinking about home so much makes it hard to appreciate all that's going on here
• pray for the relationships that are developing with my family and my friends (chilean & american)
• pray that the Lord would teach me to worship and learn of Him in another language, b/c i feel like things are getting lost in translation sometimes right now

so that's yet another glimpse into my life at the moment. all i can say is i'm blessed, here and at home :)