Pichilemu, Santiago, and The Final Countdown :(

12/09/09
We met at the bus station for our bus to San Fernando at 10:40am.  We get dropped off on the side of a highway and had to walk about a kilometer to the bus station of San Fernando.  There we found a bus to Pichilemu... IT WAS SO HOT! We all had to get ice cream and water at the station.  The buses always make me think a lot and most of the time I write in my personal journal during rides.
(más tarde)
After we made it to Pichilemu and walked along the beach to find our hostel, as seen on the right pictures. IT IS LITERALLY RIGHT ON THE BEACH! It looks like a boat and its soooo cool. We dropped off our stuff and walked on the beach for a long time, eventually finding a restaurant to get some good seafood at for dinner. It was late so they were out of a lot of things that weren't seafood.  On the beach, we ran around in the freezing cold water, collected shells, and jumped around the rocks.  Saw some surfers out on the waters too!  It looks like a good place to catch some waves.  Watched the sunset a while before dinner.

12/10/09
Woke up and headed straight over to the supermarket to stock up on food. After that and eating we headed to Surf School Manzana 54.  They got us wetsuits, laughed as we tried to wiggle into them, and then walked us down to the beach for a jog and stretching.  Then our teacher taught us how to sufr, on the sand.  We drew surfboards in the sand and practiced pretend paddling... then, lifting up our chest, then getting up to standing position with our feet perpendicular to the board, weight to the front, and hands out for balance.  He made us pretend and jump on on the sand so many times that half of us started to get tired, haha.  Eventually we picked up our boards and walked over to a good place to enter the water.  It had been since Maui since I fought the ocea and I forgot how incredible it is!  I don't know how I"ve been living in the midwest all my life without it.  Chile was the first time my friend Christina even touched or saw the ocean!  Anyway we paddled out quie  a ways and immediately caught some good waves.  I stood up about 4 or 5 times in the beginning! I think in the end I was getting so tired and I ended up only managing to kneel, but nonetheless, I rode so many waves today! It was so damn fun!  They told us that when we fell we'd have to cover our heads to avoid being knocked out by the board.  I fell a buncha times but one time I resurfaced after a fall and popped up thinking "Whered my board go???" And right when I thought that it punched me right in the side of the head, right on my new piercing! I got tunnel vision and was so afraid I was going to pass out but eventually the feeling passed. IT WAS SO PAINFUL.  We stopped at about 2 unfortunately, but everyone was pretty tired anyway.  On my way out of the water, I was about 10 feet from a sealion, surfing along beside me.  I also saw a bunch of crabs running around the shore.  The guides laughed at us yet again as we all peeled off the shoes and wetsuits.  Now we're al showered and just chilling.  I'm the only one with much energy left and I'm considering taking a walk on the beach.
(más tarde)
While everyone was napping, Brad, Hayley and I went for a walk on the beach. We watched some risky chilenos jumping around on some huge rocks and untintentionally get soaked. Walking along the beach to the hostel I was running away from the water and my iPod feel out of my pocket... and into the ocean :(
For something to do and to figure out dinner, the boys and I went to the supermercado and I really only went to buy rice to try and save my iPod (Cheryl told me putting wet electronics into rice or kitty litter sometimes draws out the water and it could work again). Cheryl and Christina called us to say they wanted to eat out so we just went back to the hostel and looked at pictures and watched hilarious videos Brad and Evin took throughout the vacation.  After we met up with the girls again in downtown Pichilemu for dinner, we went back to the hostel and shared some drinks with the owners (who were from Spain) and also some people from England, Germany, Australia, and California. We were going to find a discoteca but we just stayed in the hostel instead, teaching each other dances of the world that we knew. One guy I met, who was from the states but living in Chile, looked EXACTLY like Will Ferrel and even had his same laugh and attitude. His name was Anton and the only thing he had that didn't look like Will Ferrel was his huge head of blonde curly surfer hair.
12/11/09
Today we woke up and headed over to the terminal to find tickets to Santiago.
We found some, and took off.
The only reason we were going to Santiago was to meet up with a lot of our friends we met who were studying there and to participate in the Santiago Pub Crawl, just like we did with Buenos Aires (the same people set it up in BA and then some moved to Santiago, started it up here.)
It was so great to see people and I met a lot of new great people from the states!
Erica and I want to road trip to the Grand Canyon next summer and some guys I met from AZ said I'm welcome to crash at their place during our journey.
I'm going to miss this country sooo much!
You can see the group shot of the pub crawl above, I don't know why my blog isn't working properly and I can't move them down here :(

12/14/09
Yesterday was my first whole day back from Pichilemu/Santiago and I was SO SICK! It was awful! I couldn't eat anything all day since my throat was so swollen, I had chills and a bad fever too. I don't know what was wrong with me! My parents were convinced it was the climate change from Pichilemu to Santiago to Concepción.  My mom gave me this miracle remedy for my throat though: honey with lemon. It worked like a charm, after that I was capable of eating dinner.
Also yesterday were the Chilean elections. My host family is NOT happy with the two with the most votes: Frei and Piñera. They were rooting for Marco Enrique Ominami, who is kinda an Obama equivilent in Chile, being young and making a lot of promises of change. A lot of people came over to watch the polls and Cata, my host cousin, got to hang out with me while everyone else obsessed over the politicians.  She and I made some bracelets and listened to music (she's 15) so of course we gossiped as well. Her and I made a date to go shopping this Tuesday at 11am. I'm excited to spend time with her, shes sooo adorable!
She also told me my Spanish had improved ten-fold since she met me in September. WOOP WOOP!


This is all for now. At 5pm some of us still in the area are getting together at Triana's apartment to celebrate December birthdays so I'm sure I'll be going to that. Before that maybe I'll try and go shopping, or pack, or both.
Yesterday I officially dragged out my smaller of the two suitcases and started organizing souveneirs in it. Almost cried!
I for sure did cry at dinner yesterday when I was talking to my mom and we were conversing about me going back, things changing, how we've changed each other, et cetera.

Time to get my butt moving! Its 10:30am!