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Wow! Its the end of November already? With only 3 weeks of class left its getting kind of hectic here trying to fit in everything we want to do. It seems like there are so many things that we've talked about doing that we want to fit into these next few weeks. We don't have the luxary of saying "we'll do that another weekend" there are only two weekends left!
Overall it has been such an amazing experience. I have learned so much, and the majority of it was not inside the classroom. Last night I went to dinner with a few good friends from the trip and we were talking about our first impressions of eachother, a fairly common topic since we've all surprised ourselves with how good of friends we are, and we realized just how true the phrase "You can't judge a book by its cover is." Some of my best friends here are people that I thought I would never get along with. Even people I thought I knew, because I'd had a class with or had met once or twice, I realized I didn't really know at all. And I am so glad that I've had this opportunity to get to know them well enough to realize that I was wrong about every preconcieved notion I had of them. Though I know I won't have the opportunity to dissolve every prejudgement I've made of people in my life, I hope that I can really take this experience and remember it the next time I think I know someone from just a few conversations with them.
We have been blessed with some gorgeous weather the past few weeks, and I have been doing my best to enjoy it as much as possible. Especially when I know that back in Minnesota it is definately becoming winter weather. When I checked my email yesterday I laughed to myself at the two polar opposite emails I had from friends. One was from someone on the ski team, telling everyone to bring running shoes to practice because there was a bit of snow on the ground and they wouldn't be able to roller ski. The other was from a friend on the Chile trip telling everyone to come to the beach because it was gorgeous, sunny and warm out. I think I made the right choice of climates to be in right now :) As I write this I am sitting in my backyard in my shorts and tank top enjoying the sunny 80 degree weather while my host dad is grilling for a barbeque we're having this afternoon What a life!
On Friday we had a wine tasting excursion as part of our senior seminar class. We got to visit three distinct wineries in the area and tasted 6 different kinds of wine. It was probably the best school field trip I've been on! The first vineyard we toured was a large Chilean owned vineyard that had been making wine since the 1800s. We got to see how they fermented and bottled it back then and it was very interesting. The next vineyard was owned by an American from California that came started his vineyard in Chile in 1997. Most of the wine the make is exported to the U.S. and had a very modern fermenting and bottling process. It felt more like a science laboratory than anything else. The vineyard was called William Cole and I'm sure you can find the wine pretty much anywhere back in the U.S. if you'd like to try it. Their Sauvignon Blanc is excellent, one of my favorite white wines I've tried. The last vineyard we went to was a small organic vineyard that was connected to an old french monestary. It was gorgeous and had beautiful stained glass windows everywhere with a very old world feel. The wine was also delicious but none of it is exported so you won't be able to find it back home. I'm becoming a little bit of wine expert being here, because we live in an area where a lot of wine is grown, Vina del Mar means vineyard of the sea. I'm going to miss it a lot when I go home because I know I won't be able to afford it. Here I can get a good bottle of wine for about $2, where the same bottle in the U.S. costs $17!
Last week we had an interesting run in with the gypsy population here in Vina. There are a few of them that roam around by the beach asking for money for their baby and trying to tell your fortune. We've gotten pretty good at avoiding them though and pretending we don't understand what they're saying. This one had a different tactic though. She stopped me and a friend to ask us what time it was and we paused for just a second to tell her and tried to walk away. She insisted on giving us a gift to show her grattitude and made it very difficult to walk away. She and her gypsy friend gave us each a leaf and tried to give us good luck. They said they needed to put the leaf with our money and to open our wallets, it was the only way that we would get the good luck. In the end they blessed my friend by taking $1.50 from him and squirting breast milk on him. It was one of the strangest things I have ever seen and quite a funny experience. We decided it was worth the $1.50 that got stollen from him just to be able to tell this story now. Just another day in Chile :) Whenever I start to think that Chile is just like the U.S. I remember things like that and realize that would never happen there.
Be sure to check out my photo albums because I will be posting lots of pictures both from the vineyards and from some other travels that I haven't had a chance to put up yet.
Thanks for keeping up with my travels. Less than two months and I'll be home!
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