Al final

Ok, this is it ... the last big update!

Tonight I leave for my 20 day trip, yikes!! I am so excited and will have lots to share but for now I'm going to review this last week that I've had in Viña.

On Thanksgiving day I had my last exam in Econ, thank goodness ... and I just found out that my grade is high enough to not have to take another : ) I got an A on the second exam! It is very possible that gringo points were factored in but hey, I'm not complaining.


That evening COPA put together a going away dinner for our entire program and our host mothers. The dinner wasn't so great but it was amazing to have everyone together and to be able to celebrate what an amazing semester we have had. I had sent out an email two weeks before and asked if people had ideas for gifts for our directors .... well a lack of response meant that I decided to take over and just figured it out myself. Everyone was really great about pitching in a few luka (chilean slang for 1000 pesos = 2 dollars) and getting the gifts was fun. It did mean that the day of I was more or less running around like a crazy person. I was in Valpo by 9am to teach my english class about Thanksgiving but it turned out that they were on strike! So instead I made Thanksgiving day gift bags and passed them out around the office, procrastinating the inevitable studying for my econ exam : ) After the exam I had about an hour and a half to call everyone back home and get myself ready, well I was happy to talk to everyone back home even if it meant a bad hair night for the dinner.

The group picture is with my spanish class, there are only 5 of us which basically means that I have been able to speak twice as much as the other classes with 10 and 12 students and have also done twice as many presentations. I absolutely loved my spanish teacher, she was a little crazy but very sweet and always helped us as much as was needed.
















Of course I had to get a picture of Patty and I together! It was kind of strange realizing that Patty and I never leave the house together but it was nice to get out and celebrate with her. She of course bragged about me and I was glad to hear her say that her last student had left big shoes to fill but that I had been a great daughter.

On black friday, instead of going shopping ... I cooked!! my friend Sarah decided to have a bunch of us over for a thanksgiving potluck! It was sooo great and I made stuffing from scratch!! Grandma, you should be very proud. We are talking I cut loaves of bread into little cubes, did a bit of estimating on the measurements and came out with enough stuffing to feed 15 people! IT was a hit! And, I was sure to save enough for myself to have leftovers : ) : ) eeeh!! I love Thanksgiving food, it could seriously be my favorite meal of the whole year. It was so great to be in the kitchen and making something after having spent very very little time cooking for myself the whole semester. I hope in Copenhagen my family will be open to the idea of me maybe cooking once a week... I hope they like stuffing!!










































Saturday Rodrigo and I spent the day wondering around Valparaíso. It's amazing how much there is to see and I had felt as if I hadn't really explored much further than where I go to school.

I got some neat pictures and it helps to give a bit of a dialogue as to what Valpo is like.

A person could walk around the hills for days, luckily I convinced Rodrigo to just get on a micro to get closer into the city center.



















70% of the people who live in Valparaíso live in the lower class and a large percentage of those people live in poverty.

Walking around the hills makes me question how these houses would survive any sort of earthquake. They are all made by their owners with out any sort of organization or safety standards.



I was also a little disheartened to see a sign that said no dumping of trash alongside a hill littered in garbage. Of course two minutes after I took the picture someone came down from their residence and threw two big bags of trash right onto the mound that I took a picture of.





















































The view towards Viña and up the coast was absolutely beautiful from the hills we were walking. It really turned into a beautiful day and I was really fortunate to have the types of exams that I had ... the kind that require not so much studying : )

Until the next time -- chauu from Chile.