Firstly.. HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
Close to two months since my last entry! Sorry... semester finals, packing up from Valdivia, goodbyes, traveling with Mom and arriving to the large city of Santiago has taken up all this time. I've kept up to date in my journal so let's go back in time a bit…

Sunday November 16th, 2008 is where we left off: Our Uruguayan friends had Mckenzie, Casey and I over for traditional Mexican tacos with the typical Uruguayan drink to sip out of clay bowls called "consuella tequila" or "tequila soup" made with tequila obviously and fresh squeezed fruits It was quite the delicious fiesta and we met several community members.
Monday November 17th-Sunday November 23rd- Began my ten page reflection paper, couldn't believe it was already time to reflect on the semester.. I know I've been doing it all along but really thinking about the whole semester as a whole was incredible. My spanish has improved so much, I have learned more in the past four months then ever in my life, my travels and friendships have been beautiful.. I am so lucky and extremely happy. No regrets. Dad opened the Whipper Snapper restaurant and it was the first time I've wanted to be home, you know - get a quick plate, give my pops a kiss and congratulation then head out on the next plane back to Chile…. Reality: not happening. I am proud of the website, article and pictures of it I have seen of it so far though. One night Casey and I went out and we had a weird cab driver so we had him drop us off 2 blocks from our houses, got out and walked laughing about how we didn't want the awkward man to know where we lived.. I'm already missing my routes with this neighbor! (Until Oregon Casey!!) Had a Kunstmann brewery dinner.. checked out some more local bars, went to the river and watched a gorgeous sunset- enjoying our last couple weeks in Valdivia. Went with our local friends who are firemen to Parque Oncol, a national park just a half hour or so outside of Valdivia for a night and two days. We had to take a pretty bumpy road to get out there so buses don't go out to the park, we were lucky the guys could drive us.. riding in the truck flat bed was a blast for the part we could ride in it and there were cows all over the middle of the road!! Our cabana was in the middle of the secluded, quiet park.. (others must have known rain was coming!!).Our hike was quite the "rain march." We reached the high peak and couldn't see the view of the ocean nor the volcanoes because it was extremely overcast but the hike was still awesome through a dense forest. I hope to go back there to see the view that is supposed to be spectacular. All the girls went zip-lining in the park!!! Zip-lining, or rainforest canopy is a suspended cable attached to two trees and you hold onto the pulley that takes you across the line.. ours for example was 300ft high and 1,000ft across for one of the lines we did. Ofcourse the first line we did I had to get "rescued" at the end by the guide because I got scared and tightened my free hand (not on the pulley) to the line but that stopped me altogether. The fog and rain added to the rainforest effect we were getting from gliding over tons of beautiful trees. Casey could never stop at the end and always came flying in, it was really funny and a great time. We did several lines, one of which wasn't a horizontal line but vertical.. we walked over a shaky bridge but didn't know we were going to fly through the hole in the bridge! Mckenzie was over the hole first but figured she would swing to where there were steps on the tree and walk down.. but the guide told her to put her feet together and she got levered straight down-SHREAK! Haha.
Monday November 25th-Sunday November 30th- The turkey hunt began, Casey Mckenzie and I planned to make thanksgiving dinner for my host family seeing as I knew I was going to miss Dad's food like crazy! Also, my host family had never had it before and we wanted to show him the tradition of thanksgiving.. I figured it was time after countless meals they have made for me. The night before thanksgiving Casey, Mckenzie and I homemade an apple pie, crust and all, until about 3am! We got a late start from how many hours it took finding all of our ingredients in Spanish. We had to even "borrow" the shopping cart for the night.. pushed it back to my house from the store because it was too much to carry and only 5 blocks away. My host mom was mortified when she saw the cart though, as you can imagine.. but I promised to bring it back in the morning.. she hid it in the garage and asked if I had anything else hiding from her. So I'm still a baby girl I guess. ;) Got video taped ofcourse by my host dad. Still the joke of the house too. On thanksgiving we ate around 8:00pm, it was a great success. Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes with peas, gravy, green beans, fruit kabobs, beats, squash, rolls, cider, wine…perfecto. We went around the table (just like I do at home) and said what we were thankful for. It was a beautiful evening. We watched the movie "Elf" with Will Ferrell after.. funny watching a holiday movie in the snow when it was so hot outside. We all finished up the leftovers throughout the following day. I went to a comedy play with Casey.. we got free tickets for the show from her host mom who is a teacher at the local high school where the performance was. There was a man and two women who presented and are a traveling company from Santiago, Chile. We were really impressed and happy to have understood all of it! The same week I received my certificate from my volunteer work teaching English to students and teachers a couple hours a week. Afterwards we went out with our students which was fun.. lotsss of spanglish. I also had a meeting with my program director and the two other students staying for the year about the next semester, chose my classes and I'm very much anticipating taking them with Chilean students. I went with Casey and her host parents to Angachilla in Valdivia which is her host dad's property where he works. We sat by a lovely river and enjoyed grilled steak and veggies for lunch. Afterwards I took a long nap under a shaded tree, beautiful afternoon with the smell of eucalyptus trees that reminded me of home.

Monday December 1st- Sunday December 7th: December?! Too soon. Bought some art supplies for my final literature project, a three dimensional representation of literature and began watching my favorite tv shows online with Spanish subtitles to help my vocabulary. Really loved the literature I read by Isabel Allende in "La casa de los espiritus" so now I'm reading my first 450 page book in Spanish and loving it. Had some final presentations this week for Chilean culture and my composition class. We celebrated the traditional way to celebrate Christmas with our composition teacher during our last class. We ate the sweet bread, sang spanish carols and he served us their traditional drink. It was fun. Casey and I translated a song in Spanish to English for a waiter and got free desert and our favorite Japanese restaurant. Our friends from the firehouse took us by a dock on the river to watch the shooting stars, I am still completely in love with the sky down here. I'm considering getting an astrology book. The girls were all panicking about leaving Valdivia soon, which was hard, I'm going to miss them. Before we went to the fire our friends from the firehouse jokes that Gabe was bringing his guitar and we were going to sit around the fire and sing.. but the best part was we actually did. He could play Jack Johnson and great songs we knew in English. This weekend I really enjoyed going back to the dance clubs we hadn't been to in awhile and hanging out with some friends we hadn't in awhile from traveling and being busy. We even ended up at a friend's barbeque at 5am one night.. it was delicious meat with sangria, Chileans stay out sooo late, or should I say early? My host mom heard me came in and asked if I was ready for breakfast. I love my host family. Mckenzie and I took one of the ferry type boats that go across our local river, we brought packed lunches. On the boat we asked eachother what we would do if our purse fell off the boat into the water because there was a huge gap between the wall of the boat and the floor..sure enough.. a woman's purse fell in and we had to back track the boat to fetch it in a net, no one dove in though. When the boat stopped and we got out for "once" meal, the poor woman was blowdrying her purse.. we shouldn't have ever discussed that. On our way back on the boat we saw a speed boat going by and cracked a joke that it was probably this guy who always asked us to go in his boat but we didn't know him well and he seemed much older so we never took him up on it.. sure enough.. there he was with a girl in a bikini in the back. Too funny. I'll miss my ridiculous daily occurances that happen when Kenz and I are together. My host sister had her goodbye party for her leave to New York City for 2 months, she is traveling and staying with a past student that came to Chile and lived with her. Her friends were so cute and really brought me back to funny hangouts like that with my friends in high school, miss that group. It was fun going out with my host sister and coming home with her and her friends. My friend Shimi sent me about 50 songs from the states I hadn't heard yet.. still had been so much fun for me to be kind of "caught up." My host sister had a piano recital and played two songs from "Amelie" that I absolutely loved. Mckenzie and I went to a delicious restaurant on the river and when my waiter went to light my chicken on fire.. he nearly burned all of the flowers on the table. Whoops.
Next entry is about Valdivia packing up and traveling with Mom! Besos de chile! T