Rain, rain.. go away. Flood the roads some other day...

I've been catching some flack lately for not updating. . . but it's only been a week, and honestly, not much has happened.

WHOAH! I just realized that I've been here almost a month! Craziness.

Regardless, it's been a pretty uneventful week. Mostly just getting into a routine (as much as you can here...) and starting classes. But I DID go see Harry Potter y el principe mestizo en español last weekend. It was nice because I'd already seen the movie in English, and reread the book recently, so it was pretty easy to understand what was going on. That's my favorite

[Sidenote to anyone who has seen the movie: You know the part where Aragog dies and Hagrid is throwing him a funeral? And Harry had taken the Felix Felicis and was walking with Slughorn down to Hagrid's and Slughorn gives the eulogy?! Okay, so the translation into Spanish was "HASTA LA VISTA, ARAGOG" which made the entire group of gringas start laughing. Nobody else thought it was funny. I'm laughing now, just typing it...]

On Friday, a bunch of us got together at my friend Emily's house to make banana panqueques. We were craving rich, sweet, American panqueques instead the crepe-like things they have here. And the "panqueques" here are usually filled with vegetables. Which is great, but somtimes you just need the syrup!

Sarah, Emily and me cooking!
They both go to Vanderbilt, too :)

Also, last Sunday was Día de los niños, or Kid's day. So there were funky festivals and packed malls and kids with painted and balloons in the sky. But you know that every time there's a balloon in the sky, it's kid counterpart is crying on the ground :( . Que triste.

Anyways, it was fun to just sit around and watch all the little kids run around the parques and plazas. Sunday made me miss home a little bit... my host siblings were at their dad's house, and I just wanted to be around kids. I don't know. Sundays, I'm used to drinking coffee and reading the newspaper. I guess I'll have to bring that tradition here!!

And as I said, this week was really when my classes rolled into full gear (is that even a saying? I have no idea). My 20th century politics class was cancelled because not enough people enrolled, so that was a huge bummer. And even more frustrating because then I had to go back through the whole course catalog and choose something else that fit in my schedule. It's hard here, because the university buildings are all over the place. So you can't always take two classes back to back unless they're in the same building or really really close to each other. It could easily take you forty-five minutes to get from one city to the other. That doesn't work when you have ten minutes between blocks...

But enough complaining! It all worked out very well, and I'm super happy with my classes so far.

OH! But back to school inevitably means back to school shopping, right? Apparently in Chile, they only make graph paper notebooks.... WHAT?! You only need graph paper when making graphs. All who know me know that I NEVER ever make graphs. Nor do anything math related... so that was bizarre. On a happier note: Color coding is SO normal here!! In my classes, all the girls use two or three different colored pens to make notes. I think Chile might be heaven...

Classes are definitely a lot different here. It's really common for the Chileno students to talk all during class, and it's no big deal to the professor. In the US, any student talking (especially in these smaller classes of 35 or 40) would definitely get called out! Bizarre.


I also made a new friend!!! He's in the picture below

Paco is my favorite stray dog. Seriously, I see this pup EVERYwhere.

I also found out about this sweet non-profit that I'm going to start volunteering with. I'll be working in a public school as an assistant to an English language teacher! I'm really excited; it's a nonprofit with a lot of international recognition (English Opens Doors), and I've heard of it before when I was doing research on Teach for America. I'm so glad I get to donate time here like this. I love doing volunteer work, but I feel like I work a decent amount during the school year, which kind of inhibits my ability to do fun things like this.

Which brings me to... TRIP PLANNING! This is something else that has really consumed my week. We're working on a trip to the Atacama Desert, the driest desert in the world, the second weekend in September. Also to come (hopefully): Puntas Arenas (really really south in Chile); Mendoza, Argentina; more trips to Santiago; La Serena and the Humboldt Penguin Reservation; and MOOORE! Traveling is so easy (and cheap) here. Fantastic. But it's also igniting a desire to see everything in the world that I didn't know existed. I even can't wait to go back to the US and see what can be done there.


Okay. My posts are always so long. But I always have so much to say! And today, I went to a birthday party for my host mother's niece. We were there for about eight hours. SO TIRING. And even though I could understand most of what they were saying, I didn't contribute much. So now I have all these pent up words. That you get to read! Yay for you all!

Feel free to leave comments with questions or whatever; these posts aren't always super informative. Or email me at Colleen.A.Cummings@vanderbilt.edu


Paz y amor,
Colleen