So... You´re not really from Gringolandia then....

Gotta love thoes Germans and dual citizenship.

Anyway, I know I havn´t been too faithful with updating this lately, but what can I say, I´ve been culturally submersing myself these past few weeks. Taking that into consideraton, I have a lot to catch up on. Starting from oldest to most recent, here we go:

September 8-10 AFS Midstay Orientation

Just the name kind of freaks me out. Midstay, it´s half way over and I feel at times that I just got here a week or so ago. But anyway, this was the first orientation that we got to meet the rest of the exchangers in the V region, not just the semester kids, but the year ones also. In total there are 29 of us from Japan, Tailand, Germany, Austria, NZ, and the US. We were told that this would be a serious 3 day orientation, but the fact of the matter is that when you get 29 exchange students plus exexchangers together, you cant help but party. I would have pictures of this, but my camara broke on the second night. How, the world will never know. But it broke. Outside of the dancing and talking, we learned some traditional Chilean games and dances to help us prepair for the Fiestas Patrias, which celebrate the first collective government in Chile.

September 11 Viña del Mar

First official school field trip to Viña del Mar, which is the largest port of Chile. While in the US we are remembering the tradgity of the Twin Towers, in Chile September 11th, has and almost equally tragic event to remember. Here, September 11th is refered to as the death of democracy in Chile. On September 11, 1973 the Chilean army, led by Agustus Pinochet, put an end to democracy in Chile. The then President Allende was one of the first victims of the regime that was established and maintained for 17 years through terrorism. To ¨commerate¨ this day, there are huge riots in santiago, fires, and things like that.
In recent years, the violence has turned against foreigners, so my parents were very worried that I was leaving the house on this day. But thankfully, the action is pretty much centralized to Santiago, and the fieldtrip went perfectly. We visited a few art museums and a museum of easter island and got to see one of the actual rapa nui head statue thingies (i think i should have learned the real name, but oh well.)c´est la vie!

Fiestas Patrias

Probably the most important holiday in Chile, the 18th celebrates the first ¨colective¨ government. That´s probably a really bad translation, but I can´t think of the english for ¨Primero junto del gobierno¨. Anyway, it´s celebrated as the independence of Chile. Unlike the 4th of July, los fiestas are celebrated for an entire week. There are town wide dances called ¨ramaton´s¨ which include a bunch of little stations with different music where you can dance, eat, and just have a good time; traditional Chilean games and the two most important things about the 18th, empanadas and cueca. Empanadas, little meat filed pies, are the official food of the fiestas patrias, and not exagerating, I think i ate only empanadas for the enitre week, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Good thing they´re God´s gift to gastronomy! And then theres the Cueca, the national dance of Chile. It´s a requirement of school to be able to dance it, and there are tests in PE. Everyone here was suprised that the US dosn´t have a national dance (or do we...).
With my family, I spent the fiestas in San Fransisco (or house in the mountains) and we had parties with the extended family for the enire week.

September 29-30 Viña retreat
Our first unofficial AFS overnight orientation. And I have to say that the unofficial ones are sooo much funner than the official ones. The volunteers from Viña, in my opinion, are the coolest volunteers in the entire country! lol... so our first day was filled with shopping in the mall of Viña ( well not really shopping, its kind of hard to do real shopping with 20 girls who all want different things, we were there for 5 hours and only one person ended up buying anything) and shopping in the feria artisional. That night, however, was one of the most interesting, unforgetable nights ever. It started off with the Italianas cooking dinner for all of us, and playing about 2 hours of ice breaker games. Then the real fun started. We left the apartment at about 11pm, for the disco. But there´s a problem, the discos here are 18+ and I´m the oldest of the bunch. A few of the kids who have been here for the year have fake ID´s to get them in, and thank goodness for US drivers permits that write the date of birth (month-day-year), instead of (day-month-year)like they do here, so on October 9th to every doorman in Chile I offically turned 18, lol. Anyway,back to the problem. In the bigger cities they actually inforce the 18 and older rule, and the median age of the exchangers here is 16, that being said, we had a bit of a problem getting into any club. First stop - Scratch, the most popluar Disco in Viña del Mar. The only plan we had was to enter in pairs, thoes with fake id´s or who were ¨18¨ with someone who didn´t have an id. This worked unitl the second to the last pair wasn´t allowed in, and the rule is if one cnat get in, we all cant get in. Second stop.. I don´t remember, lol, but it didnt work. Third try we had the plan to all speak in our native languages and pretend like we didn´t undestand. Which again, worked until the last pair of italians. boo.. so then, we tried one more time, at this kareoke resteraunt place which had a dance floor. We were there until 2am, and then went back to the apartment and talked until 4am. Woke up at 8am, to tour the near by city Valparaiso, which is the capital of the V region. Toured the city, ate some really good pizza, toured the harbour, and didn´t get back home until 11pm, and still had to go to school the next morning. (the like of and AFSér)


Alianza naranja October 1-5
Best described as the Chilean version of homecommming, Alianza is the celebration of the founding of the school. Because my school is relatively small, we were split into two alianza´s Azul (blue w-the theme of High school musical, but that´s another post on HSM has invaded south america) and my alianza naranja (orange with the theme of grease). For the entire week, classes are cancled and it´s an all out war to accumulate points. Brining your dog to school, your grandmother, the police, firemen, priests, all help to gain points, but the most points are gained by creating the most ¨to theme¨ float, dance competition, and the singing competition. I ended up singing in the competition, and my alianza won. The prize has yet to be anounced, but more than likely it will be a tickt to Fantasy Landia, which is like SixFlags. que churi!

La lista negra
or in english ¨the black list,¨ is colegio hazing at it´s worst. The senior class gets together and makes a list of everyone in the highschool that they don´t get along with, or simply like to mess with, and secretly plans a day of attack. This tuesday was ¨lista negra¨in my school, and I have never seen anything like it. In the middle of first hour, the entire senior class storms in wearing fatigues and ski masks, with bottles of water, eggs, flour, tomato sauce, mustard, jelly, and stuff like that, and starts pulling people out of the class room. Some escape out of the window only to be met by more seniors with water hoses. So pretty much the entire day was running and hiding. Almost everyone went home that day smelling of the wonerful smell of eggs and mustard. wonderful right.!

So I think that´s it, all caught up with the wonderful world of Jazzmin. This weekend we´re leaving for Copiapó, which is in the North of Chile, to visit my brother Sebastian, and then Next next week is the South Tour! So the next post will be full of new stories! Love you all! 71 more days.
xau!

Progress

So a little more time has passed, and a few more things have changed. I´ve gotten into a rhythm here and the culture shock is getting better. Even the staring dosn´t bother me anymore. But I still can´t help counting down the days until I leave. It´s not like I´m unhappy here or anything, It´s just really obvious that this place isn´t home.
But, on a slightly brighter note a list of things I´ve done in chile that I thought I would never do in my life:

1. Eat Churky- So it´s basically dried and salted meat shreaded and served with fresh herbs and a chili past. Sounds good right... well Cristhian decided to tell me after I had eaten 2 servings that the meat was dried beef(pretty normal) and horse. HORSE! It didn´t help that the place where we were eating was a farm and right there two my left were three horses. Pobre caballos.

2. Chicha- Half processed wine... pretty nasty and it looks like vomit. But everyone drinks it here on special occasions.

3. Making snow angles in the Andes

4. Have 5 siblings

6. Staying out on a school night until 3am, and it be perfectly normal

7. Graduate high school twice

I´m sure there´s a million more, but one thing about a family of 7 is theres not a lot of time for me to just sit and think. Anyway, it´s lists like this that make me happy that I came.

Happy one month anniversary to me!

As of today, I have officially been here for one month.
A month is time enough to have grown a bit; and do I feel like I have grown? Yes.
I think I´m finally getting the hang of this being in a big family thing. That doesn´t mean that I would have loved to grow up with 6 siblings, but it´s getting better. My Spanish is progressing too. Not something that I would have thought was true, but today at lunch, everyone was complimenting me on how much better my Spanish is, so I guess it must be true. I don´t think that I´m talking half as much as I should, but I´m slowly getting over the whole second-guessing every word that I say, and just going with my gut.

As much as I would love to say that I am some sort of sophisticated world traveler who can adapt to any environment whatsoever, but that would be a lie. I´ve come to the conclusion that I am a mall/street market kind of girl, not a South American flea market one. I would love to explain what I mean, but I can´t find the words. It seems that as my Spanish gets better, my English gets worse.

Kind of a short post because I don´t really know what to say except for that I´m alive and well. 140 more days here seems like a long time, but I´m sure it will fly by. But for now, I´m content with it just being today.

School and Barney

So, i´ve almost been here a month and I really can´t believe it. It´s going by really really fast.

I started my second school [Colegio Curimon] on tuesday and I hate to say it, but it was a better first day than at the first school. A good 70% of the kids in 3 and 4 medio (11th and 12th grades) have either been or are the siblings of exchange students, so they know exactly what i´m going through. Which is a good, and a bad thing. Good thing, they know how akward everything is, and go out of their way to make me feel part of the class. For example, my school prides its self on the students involvment in the perfoming arts, so they put on 2 plays every semester. The play was to be performed 3 days after my first day. Instead of having me just watch, the kids wrote in a part for me, a small part, but a part all the same. They´re so nice, and the guys at this school are actually good looking (smiles) not that it matters. lol

Anyway, monday, i went to work with papá. Which was cool. He and his brother own a steel engenering company. I met everyone that he works with and got asked, ¨is hawaii part of the united states¨about a million and a half times. Then they would say ¨oh so you´re american¨ to which papá would respond ¨no, she´s Chilena.¨ I´m one of them!! lol.

I didn´t realize how good my spanish had gotten until we went to McDonalds (not my idea, i promise) and i could order without any problems. Then, all of these tourists came in who couldn´t speak any spanish, and i felt sooo proud of myself. lol. I should have helped them out, but i was translating for Cristhian. lol.. ooops. Just add, i like McDonalds here soooo much better. They have waitresses.

Yesterday was also my youngest sister Agustina´s 3rd birthday. We had a party and invited her favorite person in the world Barney! lol, the sad thing is that when he got there, she started to cry and wouldn´t go near him for the entire night. lol

Well i have school tomorrow, and I´ll add pictures and maybe another entry after that.

Colegio, Carrete, que mas!!

Update anyone?

Well this week has been an interesting week to say the least. I ¨started¨ school and ¨finiished¨ school all in the same week. Let me explain. So tuesday I offically started school, because monday was a holiday. Maria Montessori is the name of the school, and it has to be the smallest school that i have ever gone to [ well, not the smallest mom, but i do think that little flower was just a little bit bigger] Anyway, i think in total, grades 1-12, there are only about 150 kids at the most. In my grade, quarto medio, which is the equivalent of 12th grade, there are only 13 kids including me. Super small!!! It´s a private school, so yes, i do have to wear a uniform, grey skirt or pants, red and grey polo shirt and black dress shoes. Pretty snazzy if I do say so myself.

Here it´s the teachers who change classrooms, not the students, which I think is pretty cool. And they have 13 different classes that everyone in all grades take, only in different degrees of dificultly. The kids in my class are all very nice, which leads me to my next story...

My first party in Chile!!!
So saturday night i went to my first carrete, which is chilean slang for fiesta. It comes from the verb carretear, which means to party. I left with 3 other people from my class, luis, fransisca, and paulina, at about 11pm, which is pretty early by chilean standards. So then we drove for about 30 min. to the town of rinconada, the town didrectly to the west of los andes, to another girl from my school, Connie´s house. BTW, if you google hacienda rinconada, you´ll see that it´s all fields and horses, so it would only make sense that the party was in a barn. This was pretty cool, all except for the fact that it was about 20 something degreese outside, and we only had one space heater. But it was still fun, we danced, listened to music, all the regular party stuff. It was over at 3am, which again, is still pretty early by chilean standards.


Que mas... oh yeah for rae, the food.
Breakfast [desayuno]- usually is fruit and coffee or tea or calientitos, which are little ham and cheese sandwitches that have been warmed up.

lunch [almuerzo] the biggest meal of the day. usually consists of some type of meat [today it was chicken] bread, salads, and again, tea or coffee.

Once- tea or coffee and bread with butter, jelly, cheese, or whatever. usually served around 5 ish

dinner [comida]- a smaller version of lunch.

I promise i´ll take pictures of the food and stuff for you rae. We don´t really eat alot of typical chilean food, for example, yesterday we had chinese take-out, and the day before, we had arabic take'out. but it´s all really good.


Well that´s all for now, i´ll post more if i remember anything.

xau!