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!