bus rides, vocanoes, and brothers

The past two weeks have been a blur of travel and changes in my house. Last weekend i went to Coquimbo and La Serena with some friends. These are two smallish towns about 6 hours north of Santiago. it was a lovely trip, we went to the beach, a gigantic cement cross on a hill, a fish market, and just wandered around. it was slightly more hectic than i had anticipated as we crammed more and more things into our long weekend, but still nice.
We came home early Sunday (Easter) which was surprisingly low key at my house. My sisters and i ate McDonalds for lunch, then we ate chocolate eggs my host dad had gotten us, then had hot dogs for dinner (side note: hot dogs in Chile are eaten with avocado, tomato, and mayonnaise. Delicious).
Monday brought the real excitement, the return of Sergio, my long lost host brother. it's all my host mom has been able to talk about for the past few weeks. When they came back from the airport at 9 am, i was dragged out of bed, pjs and all to meet my new hermano. He is 24, a chef who spends half of the year abroad, half in Chile (most recently he was working in Andorra). He is also a musician and is constantly playing, singing, or whistling something. He is also quite the chatter box which is great for me, i can use all the practice i can get. He is the polar opposite of my sister Vale (who just moved out into her new apartment). Sergio likes the country side, nature, controversial books and crazy music, while Vale likes the beach, going to dance clubs, shopping and regeton. it was an abrupt change from Vale to Sergio, but i think we will get along swimmingly.
Then this past weekend i had a trip with the program to Pucon, a delightful town 9/10 hours south. This was such a nice trip, mostly because i didn't need to plan anything, it was a real vacation. Some of the highlights were the natural hot springs (termas), the waterfalls, and rafting. But the big excursion was up Villarica, the active volcano next to the quaint little town. Now, i love a good hike as much as the next person, but i had no idea what i was getting myself into. We were outfitted with boots, helmets, wind proof pants and jackets, ice picks, and crampons (spiky things to put on our boots for the ice part of the journey) for the 8 hour trek. it was incredibly difficult with steep climbs, part of a glacier to get past, and razor sharp volcanic rocks. But the peek, or rather the crater at the top was phenomenal. There was smoke and suferic gasses coming out of the crater that burned our eyes and throats as we relished out accomplishments until we realized we had to climb back down. However, the climb down was made even cooler by the fact that we got to slide down part of the glacier on our butts with our ice picks in our hands. it was spectacular.
After all that adventure, the afternoon of our last day in Pucon i decided to embrace some personal time and wandered around the town by myself. i sat by the lake, ate a huge ice cream from a Swiss sweets shop, and spent a good deal of time talking with an artisan in the town who makes flowers out of wood. He sent me off with far more wooden flowers than anyone could ever need, but i plan on giving them to my host mom for mothers day.

Everyday Adventures

So I have been somewhat lax in my blogging, but this is because I have been having so many adventures. It was hard to decided which one to write about; wine tasting at Santa Carolina, hiking to a glacier in the Andes, eating chorillana (fries with egg, onion, and meat) in Valparaiso, or the numerous futbol games? But when I think of my Chilean adventures the past few weeks it is the tiny everyday challenges that I recall, and the small accomplishments I am most proud of. So without further adue I give a typcal daily adventure in Santiago...

8:00 Wake up and go into the kitchen where most days my breakfast is set up for me on a little tray. This consists of one or two fruits, ceareal with yogurt, or a grilled cheese sandwhich with a steaming cup of instant Nescafe coffee.

9:00 leave the house to catch the micro (city bus) one block from my house. Take the micro to the metro, throw self onto the metro because there are a millon other people on the platform, change lines. Try not to pass out in the sweltering heat of the metro. Read massive amounts of Mapuche history on public transportation.

9:30/9:40/10:00/Arive at the University depending on traffic and mysterious metro forces. Class. My classes are: Arte, Cultura, Estetica Mapuche (Mapuche are the indgenous people of Chile), Spanish, Cultural Urban Lanscape of Santiago, Cultural Diversity of Chile: Reality or Utopia?, Chilean Identity through the Media, Portugese. The fun part of these classes are that they are all in spanish (well, except Portugese), also Chileans LOVE group projects.

1:00-3:00 Go home via micro/metro for lunch, siesta, homework. Eat lunch outside, play with dogs, talk with Violet (the maid/house keeper person) who talks really fast and calls me mi hijta.

4:30 Back for more classes, runnng earands before going to the post office, puttng more money on my Bip (bus pass) figuring out weird University protocol/looking for offices.

6:00/7:00/8:00 Out to a movie, futbol game, shopping, ice cream with friends before the metro/micro ride home

8:00 Dinner with the family ethier outside or in my parents bedroom if its "cold" (70 counts as cold). We talk about our days, the news, cheese, and how Sergio is (my host brother who is in Spain, but coming home soon).

9:00/12:00 Homework, emails, CNN chile, and bed.

I figure everyday I make it out of my house then back home agian is a success. I love it here, I'm confused a lot of the time, but thats fun to! Just being in the hussle and bussle of the city, watching people on the metro, listening to the musicians who play on the buses, debating wether or not to get an empanada as a snack after class, talking with classmates in my broken (but improving) spanish, is an adventure in and of itself.