final adventure

Turned in that darn paper yesterday!! And I think it went ok :)

Over the course of the next week, our Spanish professors will edit our papers and send them back to us for final revisions. So we have six days and really very little do... hmmmm. This is our chance!

Suggestion number one: My family invited me to go to Arica (the desert up north) for their half brother's baptism. That could be interesting to check out a new area but they told me they hate it up there and do I really want to pay for a plane ticket to a baptism? Not really. Shhh- I'm a bad host sister.

Suggestion number two: Five hour bus ride to La Serena to a cute little town a ways south of here. Activities ranging from a pisco distillery to an observatory with some of the best star gazing in the world. Now that sounds fun!

But then came along suggestion number three: Maybe we should check out Easter Island? Um... heck yes!! Easter Island is an island about 2,300 miles east of Chile. I don't have the exact history down but I was told that there used to be these two rival tribes. They tried to prove who was better by building these huge statues (called Moai) but in order to move all these statues around, they had to cut down a bunch of trees. Turns out they ended up deforesting the whole island, ruining all of their natural resources and killing each other and resorting to cannibalism.

Easter Island is now a tourist destination where people go to check out these crazy sculptures and enjoy some of the clearest waters in the world. Hello, scuba diving. It was also ranked the 10th most isolated area on earth and its airport was ranked the most remote airport in the world. And that is where I will be spending the next three and a half days.  Wahoo! (And then I come home six days after that. Holy cow!)

giveaway!

I'm on page 11 of my essay! That means between 10 and 14 to go by Thursday. There isn't too much to blog about because I spend most of my time typing away, drinking iced passion tea at Starbucks so today I am letting my friend Maddie do the blogging for me.

Maddie just reached 100 followers on her blog spark and because of that, she is having a jewelry give away. The jewelry is simple yet super cute. Here's what you have to do to enter.

1) Go to Ayofemi Jewelry at http://www.etsy.com/people/ayofemijewelry.

2) Pick out your favorite piece.

3) Go check out Maddie's blog, spark, at www.missstilley.com.

4) Comment which piece of jewelry you want.

I entered for the Arizona Fortune or the Sparkler Champagne bracelet :)

Have a great day and go enter the giveaway!

Teletóning!

Every Saturday Teletón has a program called Diviértete which is basically a bunch of really cool kids doing fun activities. They can go out to breakfast, go to the movies, go to a museum, whatever they want!

Today, I went with the 14-17 year old group to a park to learn about Mapuche culture. We played the kultrun (drum), trutruka (horn), and the wood flute whose name I forgot and then we ate spicy potatoes and sopaipillas. It was really fun because after living with a Mapuche family for two weeks in the south, I actually knew more than they did so I was able to help answer questions.

Unfortunately for me, today was also my last day observing and spending time with Teletón which means after the last two awesome weeks, it's actually time to write about this whole experience. 

it's working!

Sorry for the break in posting- my blogging website decided for a few days that it didn't want to let me post anything. I've just been working away on my essay. The first 12 pages are due Wednesday. I've written four but my advisor essentially told me to redo two of them. So... two down, ten to go!

Today, I was walking to Starbucks to get some work done. (I know I should be in some cute Chilean restaurant but cute Chilean restaurants expect you to order more than one drink if you are going to sit there and use their wifi for five hours). Anyway, I was walking to Starbucks and I just saw the saddest sight in the whole world. Right between Starbucks and McDonalds, they are building a Ruby Tuesday... Globalization at its finest.

Me gusta Pomaire

I got to go on an adventure today! Unlike Europe, I can't just hop on a train and check out a new city every weekend. Attractions down here are much more spread out and trains and much less available. That's why checking out the city (town) of Pomaire today was extra exciting.

Today, my host mom, grandma and aunt took a drive about an hour and a half (two because we got a little lost) to the southeast. We came across this little town that is seriously just a giant artisan fair. This region is known for their pottery and boy, was there a lot of it! Every store was full of mugs, bowls and vases. And every store that wasn't full of pottery was full of jewelry, sweaters, mirrors and anything else you could want. A lot of the pottery stores sold fire hydrant replicas (for only about $10) and I wanted one so badly! How funny would it be to have a fire hydrant in your room? But I wasn't so sure about bringing it home...

All of the restaurants in the area are typical Chilean food and the four of us ordered a giant meat platter. It was actually pretty terrifying. It consisted of chicken, sausage, beef, ribs, liver (from a mystery animal) and other intestines. I took a picture of it about ten minutes into the meal so keep in mind we had eat already eaten at least one piece of meat. 

While we were eating, we got serenaded by two musicians playing typical Chilean music. They finished their song and the first thing the man said to me was, "Are you from Miami?" No, I am not from Miami! Why would you ask me that? Gosh darn it! Do I really stand out THAT much that you immediately know I'm American. There are 195 countries in this world. I wasn't even speaking so there was no accent involved. My host mom was nice enough to correct them and say, "Colorado!!" to which the man smiled and said, "Still the United States!" What does that even mean?

After that, we stopped by San Antonio, the second largest port in Chile after Valparaíso, and then Isla Negra, where Pablo Neruda had one of his three houses. I was hoping to check it out but we were running low on time so instead we just drove through. Overall, it was a wonderful Chilean Mother's Day and I'm glad I got to spend it bonding a bit more with the fam. Hope you all had a very happy mother's day too!