December 3, 2002
Hi Everyone!!!!
I figured it was about time I sent out another big HELLO from Chile! I’ve been really living it up this last month here. Three weeks ago I went on my class trip to the south of Chile, not really super super south but south enough. We visited a bunch of small towns that are famous in the south but honestly they weren’t that exciting to me. The Chileans were pretty excited cuz all the houses were made out of wood...to me it was sorta like visiting Maine. What was truly impressive was the landscape. Lakes everywhere you turned, rivers, and looming volcanoes. We visited one national park centered around a river that was absolutely amazing. It was the clearest water I have ever seen, and there were amazing rapids and waterfalls. I will definitely be returning to Chile if only to visit Los Saltos de Petrohue again. Also impressive was El Lago de Todos Los Santos, a huge lake with the backdrop of a volcano. It rained almost continuously for most of the trip but it was still a great time. We also visited a little German village called Frutillar and went river rafting in Pucon!
It was great to finally have some good bonding time with my classmates. I made some really good friends and now I feel a little more at home in school. I have been named the Gringa Loca...everyone says before the trip I was so nice and sweet and quiet...
Then I was home for a pretty boring week before heading off again with my classmates on our weeklong mission trip in the country. I was located in a little pueblo on the highway called La Dormida. Three other girls from my class and I were all housed by a family there for the week. We lived with an older woman and man, the Señora could barely hear a thing but she was so sweet and loving with us and the husband was always joking around. Their daughter’s family lived next door with four children (4, 9, 13 and 16). We made quite a big happy family. It was certainly a different experience seeing how the people in the country live. Luckily, my family had running and heated water but the kids in the next house over only had an outhouse. Life was simple, chickens ran around the yard, hills rose up around us, and homemade bread was plentiful. You can imagine how content I was! But for some kids in my class not having a tv for the week and being told they couldn’t bring their cell phones were major sacrifices. Each morning we got up early and walked along the highway uphill for twenty minutes to the little chapel...well, we actually only had to walk the whole way once, usually we made it to the top hitch-hiking. There is something so exhilarating about riding in the back of a pickup while the sun is still coming up and the air is still cool. All the people in the country seem to know each other and there is a general trust that permeates their every interaction that made hitchhiking safe and even approved by our teachers.
We had mass every morning, lunch with our families, an afternoon activity such as going to the grade school and playing with the kids, and a sort of bible study time with the community in the evenings. I was not all about spreading Catholicism but I kept that to myself, said some Our Fathers and mostly played with the kids. I gained a small following in that department since a gringo is not real common in the country. Our days were full and we definitely all gained some leg muscles. One night the girls and I walked 4 miles (there and then back again) to play pool farther down the highway. Another night we all got together for a bonfire on the river. And the last day a bunch of us went swimming in a little swimming hole made by the river. The water was freezing but we all laid out on huge boulders to get toasty first and then plunged in. Before I decided to go on the mission trip people told me I shouldn’t because I wouldn’t have any of the comforts of life that I’m used to. But that ended up being the exact reason I had such a great time.
I actually left the missions one day early to go to a rotary weekend orientation and I got back from that on Sunday afternoon. It was great to see Josh again and make friends with a bunch of other exchange students staying farther north. We all did little presentations about ourselves to demonstrate that we can speak Spanish. We also had to create on a little play in Spanish to further prove our abilities in which we all had to play characters opposite to our true personalities. Let me just say that Josh and I and Grace (another chick staying in my town) ended up dancing on a table wearing very little clothing mimicking Axe Bahia, a popular dance group here. We had a good time.
So, Life is good. I’ve managed to keep from getting sick although my entire class has been sneezing and coughing since our first trip. School ends for the summer on Friday. My Chilean family is doing well too, enjoying all the time without me. Shoot, this email got really long somewhere in there, sorry! But if you made it this far...thanks for caring, I miss you all! And love you all! And I hope you’ll all drop me a line and let me know how you’re doing. Much love and enjoy the snow for me (the weather here just keeps getting warmer-I’m not sure this is really December!),
Heather