Orientation in Concepción

Last weekend was the AFS orientation for all the exchangers in my region!

I left home on friday morning (i got to miss school!) at about 10 to catch my train. All of us kids from Curicó met up at the train station (us in concepción). Those guys are awesome! Anyways, we took a two hour train ride and then a two hour bus ride to Concepción. The city is really beautiful and apparently it is on the ocean but we didnt have a bus to take us around during the week and so i never did see it, bummer. The ride was really fun and we al got to know each each other a little bit. In curicó we have exchangers from The US (obvio), Australia, Italy, Germany and Japan.

After arriving we walked to the hostal, we stopped to take the picture above, and from there we went and explored concepción while waiting for the other people to show up. On the way we saw the university there, it is so gorgeous! I honestly want to come back from a semester and study there! he´s a picture of the entrance.

In our full orientation there were about 25 kids. Some have been here for 7 months and the rest of us just arrived a month, or a few months ago. During the weekend we went out a little bit but mainly we had talks about our experiences and any questions we had. It was very fun to get to know the other exchangers in Chile, they really are amazing people. I felt so boring there though because it seemed that everyone there was fluent in english and knew other languages too. Most people were at least tri-lingual. Why arent we in the US? good question.

There were three kids from Thailand at the orientation! It was exciting because Panod (an exchange student from Thailand) is living with the family while im gone and I got to learn a little about it. I ended up being roomates with a girl from there.

On saturday we did skits about our experiences which was great because we got to point our the things that are so much different in Chile than in any of our countries.

It was so sad to leave because it felt like I could be best friends with everyone there If we had more time. We had a goodbye party on saturday night and then we all parted ways. Hopefully I´ll see them all before they leave in january. Its weird because as many of you know there isnt an official AFS program in Chile from summer to summer and so there arent that many of us here in that time period, none in my region. Because of this, they all are leaving in January and a new group is coming. It´ll be so weird! Im friends with all of the people in my city, especially the ones in my school (there are five, no idea why we have so many)! I dont want them to leave! But I do have four more months with them which doesnt feel like lots.

This week my class is decorating our room with things for Fiestas Patrias next week. We get three days off school! Im oober excited. The whole weekend and next week is fairs and bar-b-ques and lots of Cueca! Tomorrow i have to wear a Cueca dress and presned the Cueca with the girls in my class. It should be fun. Ill try to get pictures. Love you all! Again, sorry for the mistakes I just cant take more time on the computer.