Oh god, could this BE any more embarrassing?

Alright, so I had the dance class from hell again yesterday...and it got worse. So, ok, we got there, and the prof. said it was going to be a day where we learn about the traditional games that the Mapuche tribe plays in Chile. Didn't sound too bad at first. Well, the first game starts, and it's just this game where you basically dance around in circles until the music stops playing...still not too horrible. Then came the result of the game...if you were the person standing in the middle of your little group of three, you had to remove one article of clothing. Now, does this sound like a game a person would play in a DANCE class? In the university? I don't think so! So yesterday lets go over what I was wearing...a t-shirt with nothing underneath, and jeans, and sandals. Since it was hot out yesterday, I didn't think to put on layers since I didn't think I would be playing strip dancing games in school...but I was wrong. So I frantically tried not to lose the game...and was relieved when I succeeded. Another gringa friend of mine that's in the class lost her shirt, though, and in order to get it back, she had to tell a joke in Spanish in front of the whole class, still without her shirt on of course. So after she struggled through that, we moved onto the next game...which for me was even worse. It was sort of like musical chairs...only I wanted to slit my wrists at the end of this one. It had the same stripping concept as the last game, and this time I lost on the first round. I only took off my watch, though, and again frantically tried not to lose for the rest of the game. I had some luck and didn't lose again, but then came the time to get our stuff back...and what I had to do was the most embarrassing thing that's happened to me down here so far. One of the guys took me outside so I couldn't hear what was going on inside the building, and then I was brought back in and had to stand in the middle of the circle of about 40 chileans and two other americans. Then I was told to pick a number 1-4. There were four secret people in the group, each assigned a number. Each number stood for something I had to do to each person. Here were my options: one number meant that I would have to kiss the person, another number meant that I would have to kiss the person and nibble on their ear, another number meant that I would have to bite the person's neck, and the last number meant that I would have to kick the person. Imagine my face as the professor is explaining these instructions. So I picked number one first, and I had to kiss this random guy in the class, in front of a group full of chilean guys going "ooooooh". Then, for the kiss and ear nibbling, it turned out to be my friend Emily. So, this time it was even worse, because I had to kiss a girl in front of the same group of guys, and they were all going "oooooh" and whistling...god, it was embarrassing! And then I had to bite this guys neck, again with the ooooh noises, and I had to kick some girl, and finally I got my watch back. I thought I was going to die....I kind of wish I would have, so I wouldn't have had to go through that. It was like the day of torture. Some other guy in the class had to do a striptease in front of everyone in order to get his clothes back. I'm telling you, does this sound like a class to you? I really haven't done too much dancing...it's pretty much just been the torturing.
Aside from all of that, though, everything is going well down here. The weather is back to being hot again...everyone thinks there's going to be a huge earthquake due to the dramatic change in weather, so we'll see. This weekend I get to travel again...I'm going to Pucón, which I think I mentioned before. It's a place where we get to climb up to the top of a volcano, and then there are also hot springs at the base of the volcano, so we're going to chill there for a while. It's a 15 hour bus ride, which sucks, but at least I get to travel :) I was supposed to have my first huge test this morning, but I got to class and we found out that our prof. was sick and wasn't coming to class. Gotta love the chilean system...you never find stuff out until you've already woken up at 6 am and studied the night before...I think I'm going to end up passing my classes here, but I don't know, I should probably be writing a paper for one of them right now. And I may never go to dance class ever again, hahaha, but anyways, I'll try to keep you updated! Chau!

Día de Pascua and other randoms

So this past Sunday was Easter here. It's pretty much the same here as it is at home. Felipe and Raimundo (my little brothers) woke me up at 6:30 in the morning so I could watch them look for chocolate eggs. And then my host dad made me an "American" lunch, which consisted of french fries and salad, with cooked plums for dessert. Hmmm...don't think I would normally eat that at home, but it was sweet anyways. OH---I finally saw Ice Age II and it was fabulous! Of course it was in Spanish, so the voices weren't as cool, but it was still really funny. Thankfully it was translated with Mexican Spanish, which is a lot easier for me to understand because it's a little slower and it doesn't use as many weird words that the Chileans use. It's my host mom's birthday today, and I walked all around the city for two hours trying to find a place that sells flowers. That doesn't sound too hard, right? Well, I checked about three grocery stores and walked around six markets, and still no flowers. So I ended up getting her a card and a box of chocolates instead. Friday night she's taking me out with all of her friends to celebrate her birthday, so that should be fun. I had to sing in dance class again today...I think I'm getting used to it now, though. Everyone in that class is pretty funny, so it's not really a problem anymore. The other day my little brothers had to collect snails to bring to one of their classes at school, and they had them in a box in their bedroom, and when they woke up they had like six snails crawling all over their walls...I thought it was hilarious. Mainly because Felipe, he's 10, is completely disgusted with the snails, and he just kept making this face and saying, "Eww, they have spit all over them!" and he was almost crying. I was trying not to laugh, but it was hilarious. And then the other day, Raimundo, he's 7, came home from school crying, and when we asked him what was wrong, he told us that he got into an argument with a bunch of people at school, including his teacher, because he told everyone about his "older sister" and no one believed that he had one. The teacher kept asking why he had a sister from the US when he and his parents live here, and all the other students told him he was making it up. So he came home crying, and then he hugged me and was like, "No one believes that you're my sister!" Hahaha, so I guess I was the talk of the elementary school that day...Anyways, I've been delaying writing the five papers that I have due tomorrow, and I decided to take a break by writing in English for a while, but now I really have to get back to them. Chau!

Trip to La Serena

So right after I got back from Argentina, I had to take off the next morning for La Serena in northern Chile. It's supposedly a desert, but some parts of it were a little chilly, and other parts were really hot, and it didn't really look like a desert to me...Anyways, it took us seven hours by bus to get there, and we ended up staying in these adorable little cabins that looked like grass huts. In the morning they delivered our breakfast to us, and we were right next to the ocean, which we all thought was a thunderstorm before we realized that it was the waves making the noise and not thunder. The second day we went to a space observatory and I got to look through a telescope and see Saturn and the moon. And our tour guide had this awesome lasor pointer thing that could shoot light for 4 kilometers...I really have no idea how far that is in miles, but he was able to point at the stars with this thing...sadly we were all more fascinated with the lasor pointy thing than the actual stars, but...The third day we went to a plant where they make pisco, which is the alcohol they drink the most down here. We got to taste all the different flavors and see where they made all the pisco. And that same day we got to go to a restaurant where they cook everything using solar power, and we ate chicken and rice. It didn't really taste any different to me, but it was cool to see how they made it all. And the last day we all went to another national park that was like an oasis in the middle of the desert. Even though it was really hot and dry, we were up literally in the clouds, and it was like a rainforest on top of the mountains, which was pretty cool. No one really wanted to go there, though, because the night before was one of the guys 21st birthday, and there was a party that lasted until about 5 in the morning, and we all had to leave at 9. It was an ABC (Anything But Clothes) party, and let's just say it was very interesting to see everyone's "outfits"...When I finally got back home, it was really late on Sunday night, and I had to walk through the streets with my huge travel backpack that literally held all of my stuff, and I was so scared of getting robbed that I've never walked so fast in my entire life. But now I'm back in Viña, and my vacations are over for now, and I really have to start studying, because midterms are coming up soon and I haven't exactly been staying on track. Speaking of which, I have a class that just started, so I should probably go to it. Chau!

Pictures from Mendoza

Here are some of the pics from Mendoza...I'm not quite sure what order they'll come out in, so I'll just explain what's here:
There's a picture of my sister and our jump instructor right before our jump, and there's another of the cliff that we had to jump off of with some guy running in front of it, and there's another one of the view from up in the air, and you can see the city in the background, and then there's one of me and my parachute while I was up in the air. And since I clearly can't work with computers, they're probably all out of order...oh well:)

I Heart Mendoza!

Alright, so my sister Wendy and her boyfriend Nate got here last week. Amazingly, they didn't have any problems with the Spanish part because they were lucky enough to find people that spoke enough English to get them by. So they got here on Tuesday afternoon, and, of course, it was the coldest day of the year here when they arrived, and it was the first day since I've been here where there wasn't any sun. Oh well...Anyways, on Wednesday, Wendy and Nate ate dinner with my host family and I, and I was amazed at how much English my host parents actually knew. I'd never heard them speak English before, so it was really different. There were a few places where I had to translate for them, but overall it was really good. Then on Friday we all left for Mendoza, Argentina, which is my new favorite place in South America. It was gorgeous there! We had a 7 hour bus ride there, and a majority of it was through the mountains. Beautiful! I took a TON of pictures while we were there, I'll get them on here soon I swear. When we first got to Mendoza, my friend Heather and I had made reservations to stay at this hostel called Campo Base, and when we got to the bus station, the owner of the hostel met our bus there and told us he would drive us to the hostel. So we were thinking that this was really nice, and that the hostel would be really nice, and blah blah...Then me, Heather, and three German students were brought to our "taxi" that would take us to the hostel, and suddenly we changed our minds. The taxi was a beat up old van, and in place of seats there were cardboard boxes, and a side of the inside wall was missing. Fancy, I know. So Heather and I got into the hostel and we were told that were rooming with a sketchy/weird girl and some other guy, and the room was so small I could barely get my bag in the door. Sweet. So, needless to say, we began looking for a new place to stay as soon as we could. Luckily, we were able to find this place called Winca's that was right across the street from my sister's hotel, and it was this adorable, affordable, nice place. Our first night we roomed with the most adorable Australian couple, Nick and Alicia. They were hilarious, and we talked to them for like two hours about how they're travelling around the world together. They were such a cute couple :) Then on Saturday, me, Heather, Wendy and Nate all went paragliding off of a huge mountain. It was the most amazing thing ever! First, Heather, Wendy, and I watched as Nate and the first group went, and then it was our turn to go. Heather was scared out of her mind and looked like she was going to cry, I was shaking like crazy, and Wendy was silent, so I knew she was nervous too. The instructors made Heather go first, and then Wendy, and I went last. It was really awesome. We were strapped onto the instructor, and then we had to run to the edge of the cliff and jump when they told us to. I expected to just sort of float downward, but instead we sort of flew up into the air and slowly floated up and down until we landed. I have a couple videos of that one, too. The next day, we went to the biggest zoo in South America, and then Wendy and Nate had to leave to fly back to the US, so Heather and I were left on our own. Our last day there, we decided to be adventerous once again, and we went white water rafting down the Argentine River. Difficulty level: Moderate. My experience: None. Result: I FELL INTO THE ICE COLD RIVER. Yep, it was pretty sweet. We were on a class III rapid, and we hit a huge wave, and next thing I know I'm in ice cold water with three other Argentinian guys that went with us. Heather and the instructor stayed in the raft, and luckily I was the first to get pulled back in, but I definitely freaked out and tried swimming in the river even though they told us not to do that. Plus I lost a shoe, so that helped. I still have a few bruises from the rocks I hit, but overall it was a rush and pretty awesome. After we went rafting, we also went horseback riding in the mountains. That was pretty freaky, too. I've done a ton of horseback riding in my life, but never up a mountain, and never with a guide that is younger than I am...It was gorgeous though, I loved it! And then we came back to Viña del Mar today, and our whole study abroad group leaves again tomorrow morning for La Serena. So, that was the Mendoza trip in a small little nutshell...a lot of other stuff happened too, but I'll leave that for later...got to go now. Bye!