Study Break

Hey everyone! Gosh this has been a super crazy week...and it's only just begun. I worked alllll weekend on three essays that I have to turn in this week. This whole writing essays in Spanish has proven to be a very difficult process for a perfectionist like me. When I write essays in English, it is bad because I write and rewrite and switch and mix and match...you get the idea. So I'm sure you can only imagine that process that I go through to write these "scholarly" essays but in Spanish. Aye...what discipline I am building here. Well this week I might have a lot to turn in, and last week I might have had a crazy "prueba" that was definitely more like an "examen" at which I wrote 8 pages of solid Spanish vocab for bioarchaeology...but my point is that I am going to Argentina this weekend with Meg to meet Dani Ismael for the first time since we've been penpals. And that was FOURTH grade! So it is going to be a sweet reward that I get three/four days to just relax in Argentina with great friends :)

Yesterday we went to the Teniente Copper Mines with the program, and then I came home and got to go to bed at 8:30 pm!! CRAZY! But knowing me...of course I woke up at 6 am to start my EAP essay to make up for not getting much work done the night before. But I felt so rested that as I sat down at the computer with my slippers, bed head, and cup of hot coffee, I was ready to get to work. I actually managed to write like a page and a half straight so that is nice. Now I just have to go back and finish it. Damn...I hate that part. haha I left the house at 10:30 am to go to Puente Alto to meet with Erick--the occupational therapist who I am going my research with for my medical anthropology final research paper. He works with 8 students who have been integrated into the classes with the other children while working with Erick on Mondays and Fridays to perfect certain skills to promote greater selfconfidence and independence in their daily lives. I observed a little girl named Maria Jose who was in kindergarden but was born without muscle function of her lower extremities. Therefore, she is in a wheel chair and is just about the cutest girl I have ever seen! What an angel! I observed the session and took a ton of notes. It is all so interesting to see how Erick's job requires him to interpret the human mind albeit damaged from some act of nature...and then figure out how he can "trick" it to make it do the job it is supposed to do. I look forward to developing my research for this project, and I actually have to turn in my research proposal on Wednesday so I will be working on this right after this entry. Amidst all the school work, I have to remember that I am being exposed to so many amazing opportunities here that I need to be grateful for every day I can spend here working hard.

After my time with Erick and Maria Jose, I headed over to Hermanos Matte to have the long-awaited taller! We hadn't met for three weeks! There was only three kids today but it was actually nice because it was such an intimate setting that we got to really work on some important concepts. I tried out some new games and we all checked in about how our lives have been since we last met. My lovely friend Annette (who I sang literally the entire N'Sync album with on the bus home from the mines yesterday) taught me a game that she plays when she has all of her friends together which is "Best, Worst, or Funniest" in which you relay either the best, worst, or funniest part of your day. So I told my three students about that game and when I heard that their unanimous answers to my question were: "The best part of my day was Miss Rose's games," I smiled from ear to ear! :)

Hermanos Matte has a new volunteer for the next three weeks named Mikey who is a woman who recently retired from the army but must be in her late 20's at the most. Her husband is in the army still and he is over in Iraq so she needed to get out of the states and do something to keep her mind off that fact. I hope we become great friends during her time here because if she loves Hermanos Matte and all the people there as much as I do, it's going to be hard not to like her! Mikey, Mary Cruz, and I all walked to the metro together and then Mary Cruz and I headed off in one direction towards Los Heroes which Mikey headed the other way. I love Mary Cruz...what a lovely woman. And whenever we speak, it is either/or in terms of English or Spanish because we both speak both languages. What a great combination, huh? On my walk back home from the metro, I gave the most genuine smile to these two workers on the street which I just did spontaneously. But the guy like fell in love at first sight I think because he dropped his hammer and was like: Hola! Hola! hahahah I just said: Hola, como estas? and kept on walking. haha Got home. Skyped with my mama. Fell asleep for a couple hours. And now here I am in the wee hours of the morn' trying to get all the school sheyyyyuttttt done! It's worth it. It's worth it. It's worth zzzzzzzzzzzzzz haha

Well, tomorrow it is back to Puente Alto for me to work with the Gastronomy class. Then I have a big break where I used to go to Hermanos Matte but that is now going to happen on Monday. But its gonna be nice to have 2 to 7 pm open until I go to my culture class. Oh gosh and we only have two more weeks of culture class so my time will be a little more open in two weeks time! :) But you know me...I will quickly find SOMETHING to fill it with. Then Wednesday is my "reward" day because I plan on being done with everything and then going to see La Decision Mas Dificil, going to Med. Anth., and then meeting up with Meg, Mollie, Mikey, and some cool Chileans dudes we met at an international party who are super fun! That's the plan...we'll see what despliegue (<--unfolds...pliegue is fold--like a fold in your clothes...cool huh?)

Now I am going to attempt to upload a video file on here. I hope it works because it would be cool to be a part of this technological exploration that all the kids are doing these days. It's just a little video file...how hard could it be, right? Right. Speaking of technology, my computer definitely has something wrong with it. And I don't know where to take it because I don't know that I could explain the problem in Spanish. That's not really an excuse but I am really gonna have to take it somewhere because it keeps freezing and won't acknowledge things in the USB post and then it freezes I have to manually restart which it is never happy about. Actually in the middle of writing this paragraph about the problem, it just did it again. Bad luck. OK I'm gonna stop writing and add that video to see if I can...before it freezes again. I promise I'll fix it (whining voice)...I just don't wannnnna right now. LOVE YOU ALL! Muah, Rosey