Yep, my Spanish (castallano here) is not awesome and so that is how I answered my host father when he asked me how my Spanish was...clearly it was a rhetorical device.
So much has happened in like the last few days (including me losing my sense of time), so I'm gonna break it down.
Thursday:
Today, in addition to consuming some bomb salmon and fresh fruit, a few of us started a game of soccer and I played the goalie. One of the men who works at the hotel saw us gringos playing and challenged us to a game to be played Friday night. The game a lot of fun, but intense and dramatic game with fans cheering on their respective countries. After about an hour and a half and a million hand balls, the IFSA students won the game 8-6.
Friday:
We woke up early today to learn the difference between Chilean Spanish and "standard" Spanish. Its ridiculous how different the two are actually, in fact they say Chilean Spanish is the hardest to understand so thank goodness I'm learning something useful jajajajaja. I would compare to learning British English and then learning American English. There are so many slang words and different pronunciations (actually Chileans just stop pronouncing the ends of the words). Later, we watched a Chilean movie and tried to understand what they were saying but to little avail. In the afternoon, after consuming the greatest tomato soup I have ever had, we took a written Spanish test and then had an oral interview....not so much fun. While other students took their oral test, and since it was such a gorgeous day out, a group of us went swimming in the hotel pool were we were persuaded to play water polo with some Chilean chicos. Like the soccer games, it was a lot of fun, but intense because it seems that everyone was pretty competitive. Sadly, I was goalie and let the "punto de oro" go in and we lost. Afterwards, we dried off and went to dance class where we learned the Chilean YMCA (its like UCRA?), its much more of a dance than the YMCA lol.
Sabado:
Last day in Olmue! Today we went on a hike in a national park called "La Campana".
Afterward, we went back to the hotel, had a brief chat, packed up and left for Vina del Mar to meet our host families. Mine is wonderful. They are uber friendly, talk slow enough for me to understand and drink black tea! They live in a lovely townhouse and gave me an adorable blue room.
I guess they actually have had 3 other exchange students (all from Colorado interestingly enough), so they know what they are doing lol.
So yea...more info to come! For now I leave you with the music of a South American heart throb who is singing in Vina tonight
Lovelovelove,
Kat(h)rina (that's how its pronounced here)
