La Jac Goes to South America.: Autumn in April and a grand entrance.

I do not know how to be bored. Some of my friends from the United States here complain that they have too much free time. I just do not understand how that is possible. Every SINGLE night I go to bed [late] wishing I had more time. There are always shows going on somewhere, walks to take, grocery stores to visit, movies to watch, wash cloths to knit, friends to be with… not to MENTION all the homework I could be doing.

There are so many cool things I´m studying. I could probably even just sit next to the fireplace and read textbooks and Wikipedia all night long and be happy. Some of my classes are proving to be relatively hard, but all of them are interesting. Big test coming up in my linguistics class (the hardest one), hoping to not fail it. French is relatively easy because everyone is starting from square one. And my Spanish is trucking along. Sometimes I really feel like I’ve got it, some days I still want to throw in the towel. Luckily, I’m stuck here so I will just keep on trying. What a nice place to be stuck.

Fall is gorgeous here. The promised surly Valdivian autumn still hasn´t come. The days are sunny and the nights are foggy. Some rain, yes, but still lots of sun. Huge hydrangeas are in bloom all over the place, and there are wild berries EVERYWHERE. Been gathering leaves and making "leaf and fern" arrangements for my family, they´re stoked I’m sure. The hilarious host sister living in Santiago came home last weekend, so there were lots of family things! My family here is doing well and miracle of miracles, Telma has started sitting on my lap voluntarily. Only late at night when she´s too tired to keep up her icy front, but I’ll take it. The enthusiastic host dad has started giving evening college classes, and so he´s always keeping us updated on that and always interested in what I have going on. My host mom just loves to talk, so we do a lot of that. Vale´s really funny, and now she always brings me home stories from school about who said what and what she said back and how hilarious this one friend is and how terrible that teacher is.

We got REALLY crazy and had a pancake party the other night, because Erin´s host family is out of town. In her words, "When the cat's away...the foreign exchange student will probably make pancakes." We had manjar for people to put on their pancakes. I did not bother with the pancakes and just went straight for the manjar. It was a lovely evening full of comfort food, card games, popcorn, and Valdivia friends.

I will conclude this entry with another sort of exciting event that took place a few days again, in the form of the e-mail I sent my sister:

“April 14 So, yeah. I walked through a glass door at a pub and completely shattered it. That will probably be going on my list of "really embarrassing things I´ve done" list. It was about 9:30 last night, and we were all going to Bunker, the pub down the street that Pipe used to work at. Unfortunately none of my friends had arrived yet when I came crashing through the door. So I just stared into the [now extremely silent except for the Black Eyed Peas] crowd. Like a fool. I just FLAT OUT walked through it. I thought it was open, but nope... just really clean. And, of course I 100% sober and yet I´M the one who walks through and SHATTERS the glass door. Mortifying.”

I´m working on the Windex commercial contract right now...