Long time no write + Pucon

I apologize for not having written in so long. Things have been crraaazzzyyy.

I have had three projects these last two weeks. Chilean professors have this horrible habit of not giving you your paper topic until two weeks before the paper is due, and not giving you your study guide until the class before the test. While I do have procrastinating tendencies, even this was a little much for me. The good news is that all three papers (two of which were group projects) are done and the test has been taken. I also got a grade back from a paper a few weeks ago and pulled off a 6.1 - a solid A-.

Brief vent about group projects in Chile:
Chileans are all procrastinators. My group for my Education paper decided that the Friday before the paper was due was the day to write the whole thing - 5 pages + bibliography. As if that wasn´t bad enough, all the information (a summary of the educational sociological theory of a British sociologist) was in English...which none of them speak well. Hence, I spent the five hours of our paper writing scanning articles and translating what I hoped were the most important parts of them. Hopefully I should be hearing more about this paper in the next couple of weeks. My other group project was a poetry paper. My partner also decided that the Sunday before the paper was due (aka two days after spending five hours translating British sociological theory) was the perfect time to write this paper, especially since she failed to show up to our get together on Thursday. Unfortunately, this plan also had serious flaws as we spent four hours going back and forth between each others houses (separtely, not together) due to misunderstandings as to whose house we were meeting at. Loooooong day. I do not have really high hopes for that paper, but ya never know.

Ok, enough school stuff.

This weekend, I had the amazing opportunity to go with my program to Pucon, a resort town in the south of Chile. For those of you familiar with California, it is a lot like Three Rivers. We drove down all night Thursday and got in early Friday morning. After a shower (yay) and breakfast (double yay) we took a tour of the area, seeing volcanic lakes, rivers, and waterfalls. Everything was absolutely gorgeous. Pictures will be coming in the next couple of days, but warning: they are not anywhere close to what these things looked like in person.

The place where we´re staying is a resort composed of different cabins. But these are not your run of the mill camping cabins...these are like cabins on steroids! Kitchens, TV, radio, whirlpool, etc., it´s really luxurious (now that´s one way to go camping!).

Saturday, I got together with some girls in the program and we did a canopi tour. Basically, we climbed a tree and zip-lined through the forest for an hour and a half. For someone who has never really like heights, it was definitely a step out of my comfort zone, but totally worth it. The forest was beautiful, and we got to zip over a big river, which was really cool! Following lunch, this same group of girls and I decided to go on cabalgatas, which is a horse-back riding tour. While at first it was kinda nerve wracking (they didn´t give us any instructions for riding...thank goodness I´ve done this before at Camp St. George), the trip was beautiful. Our guides took us up the mountain where we dismounted and hiked to a fantasticly out of this world waterfall (took a video of this one). It was so surreal, I didn´t want to leave. But, we had to, so we hiked back up to the horses (a lot harder since it had rained and the trail up the hill was completely muddy and slippery) and then rode back down the mountain. One of the girls´ horses slipped, which was really scary, but she held her own and everything turned out all right...no injuries to either horse or person.

Today, we learned that Daylight Savings has started in Chile. I am now two hours a head of Central Time Zone time (instead of one), so that´s good to know. I took a little trip to town and had fun taking nature pictures (Dad, can´t wait to show you). Also did a little shopping (Mom, I have a surprise for you :)) and bought some chocolate, which is REALLY good. Right now, I´m just kinda bumming around until our bus gets here to take us back to Santiago. We should be getting in early tomorrow morning, then I will go to class and then coffee/tea/lunch with Lorena, before studying for a test this Thursday.

That´s kind of it for now. Definitely going to be looking in to different nature-lover things to do for when I get back to Iowa, because it is really so much fun. I hope all is well with everyone, and please shoot me an email if you get a chance, or if too much time has gone by and my pictures still aren´t up (I have a tendency to put them on my computer, but forget to upload them).

Love you all!