Off to the Land Beyond: December 2009

So sorry about how long it has been.

After the last post, my life was pretty reguar.

But now, I have some really great things to share. :)

First. I would like inform everyone that I am officially on Summer break now and will be till the end of Febuary.

School came to a good ending. I performed in a piano recital and did great. Finals were hard. I passed one of the classes I need for graduation and finished the class with a 5.6 which is sort of like a great solid B. The other class that I need, I took the test on my last day of school and still have yet to know if I passed or not. I´m waiting for my mom to bring my grades home. (fingers crossed!) All of my other classes varied, Bio, I didn´t do great. Bio, I would have to say, is the hardest class to take in spanish. Math was my strongest point. I finished that class with a 6.4 and that is a solid A. Here, if your grade is high enough, you don´t have to take the final. I didn´t have to take the final for math. :) So, it ended up being about half good, half not as good, but I liked my results.

School got out the 16th of december, but I had my trip to the south and left for Viña on the 11th. Let me just start out saying that this is was the trip of my life. I will put the pictures at the end of this blog so you can read all of the great things I did first. First. Stacy, Jennifer, and I (the other exchange students in my city) left on a bus to Viña at around 12 afternoon. It was about a 6 hour bus ride there. I slept most of the way, listened to my iPod, nothing new. We arrived and found out we were to make our way to the hotel by ourselves. This lady caught us and asked us where we were going (a tour guild) and she insisted on english (she wasn´t that bad), but she wouldn´t even let us speak spanish. That usually doesn´t happen to me, but there is a first time for everything. We paid 3000 pesos for their taxis to take us to the hotel. We got there and went into our rooms. The kids already there were out exploring. They came back and I hadn´t seen my friend Kelcie (another Minnesotan) since we arrived. It was her, Peter, Leo, and Rickey already there. No on had met Leo before, he is from Germany and didn´t make it to the first orientation. He was quiet at first but ended up to be an amazing addition to the group. The first night, we ate dinner and then another new person showed up. Another new girl named Leah showed up. She is a doll and everyone loved her. After Rotary stuffed us with a huge dinner, we went for a walk. We decided to walk by the ocean side. We went around a bend where I saw a big sand mound and so I and the others decided to climb it. To our surprise, there was a little beach on the otherside. It was about 11:00 at night and I decided to go swimming. Almost everyone joined me. We finally went back to the hotel in soaked clothes and took our showers. A bunch of us stayed up all night. The next day, we had our orientations and even more people showed up. It was about a group of 25 people. We talked about all the rules and about our life in Chile. It was sort of boring a long but still fun to be together with eachother. Finally that was over and we all enjoyed a starbucks by the ocean. Night finally came and we were suppose to leave Viña in a bus around 12. We arrived at the Santiago Airport around 1ish. We arrived and were met by the Southern Rotary District (we are the northern). There were about 40 more exchang students there from all over the world. It was great fun. I memorized the names of everyone person I met that night. At around 2am, we got on the plane and head towards Punta Areans. One of the most southern cities in the world. We arrived that morning at 5:30 and I hadn´t slept at all on the plane. I was way to excited. My roomates and I slept through breakfast and the tour of the cemetary. During our freetime, after lunch, me and the kids who missed the first part of the day went to the Artesenia and bought ourselves some awesome new clothes, and then finally found the cemetary but only had about 5 mins to spend there. We all (the northern district) jumped on our tour bus and drove about an hour out and went to see the pinguins. It was amazing. The southern group showed up and it was really fun. When we were leaving, we ran into a skunk. I never knew how cute they were. No worries, no one got sprayed. After that we had the rest on the night in the town. We did some exploring and met up with the other kids. The next day, we spent most of the day in the bus traveling north. We visited a historical fort where with in a week, everyone from around the world arrived at chile and started to settle. We also took a nature hike along the rock edge of the ocean. I climbed a big tree and picked some of the "fungus fruit" that grows on there. I really tasted like nothing but was a cool texture. The day was amazing. We finally arrived back in Punta Arenas after a long day in the bus. We all went exploring around the town and bought some more stuff. The next day we all hopped back into the bus and made our way to Punto Natales, our new sleeping destination. On the way we stopped at the cutest cafe/shop. It had all these anitques and even the man was as old as the things hanging up. We all bought snacks and continued on. We saw amazing mountains and lakes, feilds, sheep, cows, and horses. We finally arrived in Punto Natales. We arrived right at dinner time, ate, and started to explore. It is right on a huge huge lake surrounded by mountains. Also, it is so Southern that it doesn´t get completely dark untill about 11:30. Almost like Alaska, but on the other end of the world. During our exploration of the city, we ran into a random gringo from NY. He has just graduated from college and decided to travel all around South America. He had received a grant and had about $4000 left over. He had been all over and probably right now is in Argentina where he plans to celebrate the new year. He is flying solo but meeting lots of friends down here. Brave of him, and I´m jealous. The next, it was back to the bus. A longer day in the bus again but once again, ever so fun. We visited a Sheep Sheering Factory/Farm. They guy there showed us how it was done. It was pretty cool, untill you see that the sheep actually get cut sometime, and sometimes really badly, but, I´m hoping they were all showing off for us and that they are more carefull when there isn´t a croud watching. Later, we stopped at lots of gorgeous look outs. We saw the native animal huanaco. We stopped at a little lake that was a salt lake. The boys and I all walked in it. The bottom was like semi wet tar that came up in layers. It was very interesting and very very salty! We all had legs of salt when it dried. We finally stopped for lunch at a little motel place in the middle of the mountains. It was right on a emerald green lake and was surrounded by snow top mountains. We all ate delicious food and skipped rocks on the lake. Leo, Marei, and I wanted to go swimming (a thing that Leo and I always tried to do if we could) but they wouldn´t let us cause of how rocky the bottom was. We then started our trip back up, and my favorite part came! The next place we arrived at were.... THE GLACIERS!!! Oh gosh, they were very very cool! First, we say a lake with big big chunks of glacier in it. They are a magnificent blue, like a light blue crayon. Then we walked furth around the bend and there it was. The first glacier I would see on the trip. It was amazing. We climbed up the hill and saw the full glacier. It was lodged between two mountains. We climbed around the hill and saw all the bits and pieces that were broken off. Leo and Peter went swiming! We later found out it was prohibited and that we had missed the sign while coming in. I would have loved to, but my feet frozen when I put them in. It was crazy that they could even take their shirts off. It was so windy. It was so beautiful. After that, we went to a big cave. It was really cool and had great sound echos. It would had been cool to have a concert in there. The cave is what summed up our day. We were all starving and ate lots. I think I dyed my hair that night. Just a tint red. Nothing really new. The next day was pretty exciting too. We spent the day on the lake in a boat with a bunch of people from all over the world. We boated and saw sea lions, bird nests, rainbows, moutains, waterfalls, and glaciers. We got off to climb up a bit and see another glacier, just as gorgeous. We stopped at a little barbaque place on the side of the lake for lunch and I finally got to taste the Lamb of Chile. It was good. I wasn´t sure that it was different like it was suppose to be, but it still was good. Later on the boat, Pisco with Glacier Ice was handed out, and the Rotarians let us have some. The ice was actually so good, fresh, and clear as glass. We came home from a great day on the lake and did some daytime town exploring. We went shopping and then later in the night, Leo, Raleigh, and I went swimming the lake. Oh God was it cold! I only stayed in for like 3 minutes. The boys stayed in for like 10 mins. The next day was our last day of the south. Our last 24 hours. It was a long bus ride from Punto Natales to Puna Areas. The day earlier, I had remembered that I lent Leo my scarf, I asked him if I could use it and he told me that he had bad new. He has lost it and thought he left it in the cute cafe we went to. But that he called and he was soooo worried cause it was a gift from my mom. Yes my mom was nice and bought it for me, but I lost the scarf, it wasn´t such a big deal. But, on our way back to Punta Arenas, we stopped at that same cafe, and there it was, stuck to the fence. It was a very funny coincidence. Anyways, we stopped at sort of a family zoo that also had small restaurant. They had a Ñandu (kind of big bird), pinguins, llamas, and an Ostrich! It was very cool. I got a feather. We ate Lamb for lunch and once again, it was delicious. We finally arrived back to Punta Areans. We visited the mall *yawn* and tried to get a tour of a brewery but were not able to. We roamed the city and ran into a Frei Party (running for president). They got us a hotel where we could wait untill 11 at night to be driven to the airport. It was dreadful. We didn´t want to leave each other. We were family now. Finally, the time came. We headed to the airport and took our last group picture. We arrived in Santiago that morning around 6ish and went our seperate ways in buses to our cities. We were all worried that we would have to wait till the next orientation. We managed to plan a big party for MY BIRTHDAY! I´m hoping everyone can come! The party is coming up soon and I am very very excited to see all of them. So that sums up the trip to the south. Here are some pictures. (CLICK TO ENLARGE)