Ok, I just wanted to quickly write down some of what has happened in the past 24 hours so that I do not forget any of it by the time I get back to Valdivia in a week! Yesterday was such a fun day...The Chilean peer advisors put on a bbq picnic for us to help celebrate their day of independence on the 18th. We ate fresh empanadas, which reconfirmed the fact that I absolutely LOVE empanadas, basically enjoyed ourselves in the park for a few hours.

Then I went straight from there to a grade school where I will be volunteering in English classes to help the 4th and 5th graders with pronunciation and things like that. We ended up singing the Titanic song by Celine Dion as a class and I was surprised by how many of the lyrics I knew by heart...I´ll be doing that about once a week for a few hours, and I´m really looking forward to it.
Yesterday was my friend Devin´s 22nd bday so me and Sophia went over to his house for tea time and ate sandwhiches and cake with his family from about 8 till 10pm. The cake was made by his host brother and was titled "torta de amor" haha. I made a joke about it tasting like love and it was actually funny!! Yay. During the course of the conversation we talked about philosophy, alternative medicine, the percieved realities...and oh my gosh it felt sooooooo satisfying to be able to talk about something intelligent in Spanish!! It was a thought provoking and entertaining conversation that made me want to get to know Devin´s family better, it was so much fun to spend time with them, and I could tell that they really enjoyed hearing our American perspective on universal themes in humanity too.
From Devin´s house we went straight to the bus terminal to catch our 10:30 10 hour bus to Santiago. We "splurged" ($50 tickets) and bought the reclining seats so that we were able to get some shut eye en route. We got to Santiago about 9 in the morning and basically wandered for a few hours. We gradually found a place to get breakfast, located the subway, and even made it to our hotel without a hitch. Now...we were expecting a really basic room since we are averaging about $30 a night for this place and it´s in the center of town. When we open the door to the room we found something quite different! Our room is essentially a sweet bachelor´s pad. It has 3 beds, 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 2 TVs, a balcony, dining room table, etc. We have free breakfast there every morning and plan on cooking up lunch in our very own kitchen!!! It will actually be a welcome change to prepare our own food for a few days and regain a little of our independence. Then, the plan is to save our money for an extravagant dinner for each of our 4 nights here. There are so many cool neighborhoods to check out for dining and dancing; I´m really looking forward to it : ) Ok well right now the others are getting showered and we are getting ready to do some more exploring. I´ve already taken 90 pictures in about 4 hours...about 15 of them are of our room, haha. Needless to say, there will be a flood of photos the second I get back to my laptop in Valdivia and upload them. I just wanted to write all this down right now because I was afraid I´d forget some of the details later on. Plus, I am getting really used to writing my thoughts down at least once a day; very freeing really. I apologize for the typos. When I get back I´ll organize and refine it a little more...