What you've all missed out on...the short version.

Since I last posted I have had many adventures. Here I will summarize the a few highlights from the past month.

March 13: I visited Cerro San Cristobal for the first time with Berta (my Chilean ambassador) and our little group. Berta is a great friend and she plans events for us to all do together. At all our events Berta brings her pololo (boyfriend) Carlos. Often only Jennifer, Kate, and I attend the events but the five of us always have so much fun! It’s so nice to have Berta and feel close to a Chilean girl. Its also so much fun to see Berta and Carlos at school sometimes. They are the nicest friends!
Cerro San Cristobal is a big hill in the middle of Santiago that has a statue of the Virgin on top. To get there you can take a funicular or a teleferico (aerial tramway)…or walk, but we decided to enter on the teleferico and leave on the funicular. It is very beautiful and the mountain is huge (it has a little church, a zoo, and a pool).

March 20
On this weekend Facundo (my host cousin from Argentina- when I studied there in high school) came to visit me. We had a very packed, fun-filled weekend. We went to San Cerro Cristobal again, we saw La Moneda (presidential palace), all of the senate buildings, Viña del mar and a palace there, and Cerro Santa Lucia. Cerro Santa Lucia is a hill that was transformed into a park. It is very beautiful (architecture and landscaping) and has a magnificent view from the top. I prefer Cerro Santa Lucia to Cerro San Cristobal. Cerro Santa Lucia also has a Mapuche fair where you can buy Mapuche made jewelry and instruments, medicines and food. Facu had a great time and he was able to meet all of my friends too!

Unfortunately the next two weekends I mainly studied a lot, with of course breaks to see my friends and a few movies. I had a very difficult test in my ir class, which I worked very hard for.

April 09
By the time Semana Santa rolled around (Easter week) I was ready for some fun. I went to Cajon del Maipo (a rural area about 2 hours outside of Santiago) with Peter, Leif, Kate, Naomi (Lief’s friend from school who is studying in Argentina). We went to San Alfonso which is one of the towns in Cajon Del Maipo. We got there early Friday morning and we set out to find a hostel. We walked around the whole town and went to about 7 hostels but all were full. One man though told us there was a house we could rent. He took us to this man’s house and he rented us the house next to his for 30 mil (30,000 pesos). Pretty cheap for 5 people. It was really nice and had four bedrooms and a living room, a kitchen and fancy bathrooms. We got all situated and then we went for a hike in Cascada de las Animas (supposedly has great waterfalls).

It was a bit of a rip of because we had to pay about 8 dollars to enter the park and take a 5-hour hike, but it was really beautiful! It is a desert-type landscape (there were cacti) but with amazing mountains and some interesting plant life. We hiked past a horse, goat, and boar ranch to a lookout on top of the mountain. We thought about hiking to the “fall” but we saw it from higher up and it wasn’t a very notable waterfall, more like a trickle. The hike was really fun, but I did fall on a cactus (which proved to be a little problematic). After out hike we decided to make dinner. Kate and I grabbed a colectivo (type of taxi that only goes to certain places) to head to the next town to a grocery store. We bought food for dinner and breakfast and headed back to start cooking. We made guacamole to start with, and then we made pasta with fresh made vegetable sauce and chicken. We also made a tasty salad for everyone. Peter bought the worst tasting wine I have ever had called Gato, which tasted like grape juice. It was a great time and then we had ice cream cake for dessert.

We encountered a bit of a problem when I was washing the dishes. I was talking with Leif and washing the dishes when Leif yelled “The Calefont is out, the Calefont is out!!!” He then ran into the living room and sat on the floor hiding in the corner. The calefont is what most Chileans use to heat their water. The calefont pilot light must always be on, otherwise if the calefont is on and the pilot light is off then toxic gases are released. While Leif was hiding, I opened the window, but was doubtful that it was a problem. Leif called Elsa (one of the CIEE administrators) and she told us how to turn it off so that it wouldn’t release toxic gases. We then had to explain why we were in Cajon del Maipo for the night, because we forgot to tell CIEE that we were going. At the same time (same weekend) two of our other friends got robbed and others didn’t tell CIEE that they were going on vacation. So now all of us have to attend a safety meeting at CIEE next week. Opps!

After the calefont drama we all played cards. We were a little tired after that so we decided to go to bed. Leif read Black Beauty to us (we found it in English in the house) as we fell asleep, haha. The next morning, as always I woke up two hours before everyone else so I woke everyone up with breakfast: eggs in a basket.

After breakfast we packed up and went walking in the direction of Santiago. We found a “sala de te” (tea house) along the road that was really cute and was run by a really nice woman who spoke Spanish, French, and some English. She used to live in France. It was also a campground. We had real coffee (made from beans not Nescafe) and homemade crepes with manjar (it’s the Chilean version of Dulce de Leche but its made a little differently so its not quite as good). We also had really tasty bread with two kinds of homemade jam. The jam was the best ive ever had!

After that we caught the bus back to Santiago and headed home. On Easter Sunday I went to church with Eliana. It was a very nice service and it was at a church very close to our house.