Last night. Fue....divertido. I was told 10:30 pm, but that was Chilean speak for 11:25. Oh well. Freja's cousin, María Lucia drove us to the Movistar party. Movistar is a phone company here, like Verizon. We got there...a little bit before midnight, but there wasn't a whole lot of people there. The party started at 10...and we were early, jaja. Chileans are always late....
We wandered around for a bit, until we met up with some classmates. I got to talk to some girls in my class that I didn't really talk to before, it was nice. I spoke Spanish the entire night, even to Freja. I'm not entirely sure why...but I figured once you start, why stop? We danced too. I danced with...four or five guys. I don't remember. All but one we ran away from. The party was 16 and up, but there was a lot of older people there. Freja and I look older than we are, apparently(so say our classmates), and some older guys tried to dance with us. So I said we didn't speak Spanish, permiso, and we ran off to our friends. Some other guys danced with us, but it was kind of weird and they were poquito drunk, so we once again said permiso, and ran off. We talked with some 23 year olds, one of whom spoke English(but we spoke Spanish to him) outside for a little. But mostly we were with our classmates. I was supposed to go home with Freja, but no one was coming until 4, and my curfew is 3:30, so I had to go home with another girl, Fran. This boy helped me figure out how to give directions, he used to live in Maryland, so he spoke English, but I still spoke spanish to him.
I woke up this morning....thinking in Spanish. Thinking words that I don't even know the meaning of. I'm not entirely sure, but I think that close to 90% of my dream last night was in Spanish. yay! I've started dreaming in Spanish!
Today I went with a woman, Lucia, around Coquimbo. I got to see a fort, and, among other things, the cross, por fin! I've been somewhat fascinated by it, so it was exciting to finally get to see it. It was huuuuge, and you can see *everything* from it. And it was beautiful....there were clouds near the mountains and over the ocean....beautiful. I had my picture taken with Lucia in front of the cross, and the people there made it into little keychains for us. Yay souveniers! It was a good time. I met her son, and her granddaughter, who was adorable. She reminded me of Sylvia *so much*. We had lunch at her apartment, right on the beach in Coquimbo. Empanadas, and afterwards, a dessert called Mil Ojos or something like that. It was pretty good, with manjar, which is like Nutella. Quite good indeed.
Oh! and yesterday, I got my monthly allowance from Rotary and finally actually met my counselor. It was cool....he said something about me being on the radio to talk about my experience in Chile....which....is slightly nervewracking...!!! Oh well.
anyhoo.
Love and miss you all!
kelsey