Debates, Bikes, and Birthdays

Last week I went on and on about how I had been expecting a normal week and ended up with a completely different one. Well, my dear blog readers, I am proud to report that this week was filled with all sorts of new adventures as well! This week, some students in my school were selected to take place in an English debating competition in Santiago on Thursday. Because of this competition, I was pulled out of class Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday to help out. Initially I imagined that they wanted me to help them look up information and think and actually do difficult things, but it turned out the professors just wanted me to speak in English to the other kids to get them more accustomed to speaking in English naturally. At first I was a little worried that speaking in English would damage my progress in Spanish, but it turned out that speaking so much English made me want to say more things in Spanish, so it helped me too! The night before the debate, the professors invited me to go to Santiago and watch the debate with them instead of going to school and of course I accepted! I spent all day in Santiago watching debates, eating sushi, and having a nice time with very nice people. 

On Friday, all the juniors from my school and I went on a field trip to a zoo in Santiago. Everyone told me it was going to be really boring, but it ended up being quite entertaining! We walked around and looked at animals and even got to watch a seal and penguin show! A lot of the animals in this zoo had been rescued, but seeing them in such small spaces still made me sad. I really do think zoos are very useful for education, but at the same time it just seems so wrong to me to see two absolutely beautiful cheetahs kept in a space smaller than my house. Since the other animals made me sad, I decided to focus on the monkeys because they were super swingy and playful and silly. I couldn't look at them without breaking into a huge goofy smile! After the zoo, we went to a natural history museum for about an hour and then took the bus home to Rancagua. It was a good day!

On Saturday my dad and I got up early to run before it got too warm outside. It's finally getting warmer here and reaches the 80s before 2:00pm most days! After working out my family took off to Doñihue for the day to have lunch with my moms side of the family. I recently discovered that a friend of mine from school, Pancho, lives like two houses away from my grandma, so after lunch I headed over to his house to hang out with him. It was such a beautiful day that we decided to go on a bike ride instead of hanging out inside. He lives out in the country and sometimes I feel like I am in Ukiah when I visit because of all the fresh air and vegetation. We rode on this little bike trail that led us two towns away because he insisted that there was a really cool bridge that we needed to visit. We arrived at the bridge and it was just a normal bridge, but there is something about the combination of laughter and sunshine that gives even the most ordinary things a little sparkle. I don't know how far we ended up riding, but we returned to my grandmas house three hours later, sunburnt, hungry, and very ready for tea time!

Pancho ate dinner with my family and then took off to celebrate some other thing at another dinner party. 

After tea, my family drove back to Rancagua and dropped me off at another friends house to celebrate her birthday party. I arrived at her house at around 10:00pm and had a pretty great time! Everyone still wanted to talk to me and introduced me to their friends as "Sally, la gringa..." My dad came and picked me up a little after 2:00am (early for the typical Chilean teenager). 

This morning my dad and I ran again and now we are back in Doñihue to celebrate my moms birthday. Entonces, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE GREATEST HOST MOM IN THE WORLD! That is all I am going to write for now because I would like to go interact with my family. Chao!

Ps: sorry this blog is a little bit brief because I spent an hour writing it in full detail and then accidentally deleted it. It took so much effort to let go of my annoyance and rewrite all of this hahahah. I am soooo glad to be done. 

PPS: I'm learning how to play Ukelele.