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.