Climbing Mountains (sorta) and other such adventures

This has been a very eventful week! Mostly all good, some terrifying and a little bit frustrating.

Friday we went on our first excursion. We road a bus out to Rabuco, a flower farm. There we each got to do different workshops, one was cooking food, another was plant lore, and I chose the Mandales (art). I really wanted to learn how to make the sopapillas but as they are made with wheat flour, I think it would have ended up being more tortuous than fun. In my workshop we were given string and two sticks and taught how to make various designs. Mine... is not the ugliest that has ever been made. But neither is it the most beautiful. And you know what? I'm okay with that. We went on a tour of the farm but the small area we visited didn't have that many flowers actually, which was weird. I think a whole bunch had already been har
vested for the Dia de los Mujers (Women's Day).


Saturday was a free day, which I spent... not doing homework? It's been hard to get back into the swing of doing school stuff, not going to lie. But don't worry family, it did get done. Eventually.

Sunday, we went hiking. Which was not I was expecting. The night before we left my family was telling me all these tales of caution, like it's easy to get lost on there, a gringa girl died there a few years ago, ya know, the usual. Which may have not been a good idea. But regardless, I left my house with tons of water and sunblock around 7:45 am to meet up with 30 other students from my group. We got on a bus and arrived at Campa Campana about an hour later. At 9:30 we began the arduous 8k journey. I did pretty well at first. We were walking through vegetation, so although I was super aware we were going up, I felt like the trees could save me if I fell. Then we got a point where literally it was just rocks, and you were going up  and some of them were kinda loose. And I just froze. I literally could not move. Luckily I was with the 2 group so the third group came up behind us and the guide (who works with CIEE) was wayyy better equipped to handle my issues. So I got moving again at a very slow pace, with lots of encouragement from the other 10 in my group. The third group caught up with the second group again because a rock fell on a girl and she ended up needing to get the cut  cleaned. Which may have freaked me out a bit. But we continued on at our nice slow pace.
 Every step was sheer terror for me, but I did not know how to stop. I kept thinking about how I was going to have to do this all over again, but coming down. Finally, we ran into another girl from our group who slid/fell about 3 feet with about 30 minutes to go until the top. She was so freaked out that she had no desire to continue so I decided to stop and wait with her.  We were sitting in a spot that made me feel uncomfortable and like I had to hold onto a rock the whole time to feel secure. Which is silly, because I was perfectly fine. But we moved to a ledge that had more room for the both us and we sat and ate lunch. We also saw a fox(?) which came super close to us. The view was gorgeous, so really, what did I need to go to the top for anyway? Finally, the rest of groups started to come down and I got begin another hour of terror for the first part of the descent until we were in the trees again. Our guide Cesar sent the others ahead and there was about 5 of us in the super super slow group. Parts of it I literally sat down and scooted down the mountain on my butt. I have the nice scratches to prove it. We finally got back into the trees and I could breath again. We finally finished around 7:45 pm and then had to ride the bus back home and then walk back another 15 minutes up some hills to my house. I arrived back around 9:30 pm. All in all an extremely long day. But I'm glad I went (I think). It was really cool and there was a great view even if I didn't make it all the way up. I was super soar for days though!

This week I had two new classes, which both changed times on me. This means I walked an hour to the location of the class (cause I wanted to experience the area). I got to the first class 20 minutes late because I got a little bit lost, meaning I walked about 30 minutes extra before I figured out where the turn was. But I got there and finally found the classroom... but my class wasn't there. I wondered around and found a class in which the profe had a guitar and went in and was like is this my class? (Spoiler alert: it wasn't.) Finally I went and found the building secretaries and tried to figure out if my classroom had been moved, which it hadn't. So finally, I just had to turn around and go home. At the end, I found out that the class was actually an hour earlier than I had thought. Which sucked. Same thing happened to me on Wednesday, the class was moved to be an hour earlier, which means I can't take that class anymore either since I have another class 30 mins away that ends at the same time as this new start time. Come on Chile! Get it together! Or maybe... Maybe I should just not take classes. I think that would probably be for the best.

In other news: This week I'm feeling a little bit under the weather. I have a small cold that is more of annoyance than anything else. I hope it goes away before my birthday!

There has been a lot of drama in my family this week, mostly health related. It's been tough on us, but I am hoping it all ends out for the best. This morning we had to take the family cat, Guaton, to the vet. He's not doing well but we will find out tomorrow. I hope he gets better! I'll miss my cuddle buddy.