After my loving mother took me to the airport in Detroit, Michigan, it
started to feel real that I was on my way to Chile and Brazil. My flights went
by smoothly from DTW to ATL and ATL to SCL. My second flight was the long one,
and luckily there was no one sitting next to me, so since I am so small I was
able to curl up and lay down across two seats. The girl on the other side of the
empty seat was on her way to South America for the first time and was going to
do a mission Chile, as she is part of the Mormon Church. There was a big group of
them in their early 20s. I wonder how successful it will be since the grand
majority of Chileans are Catholic, and it doesn’t seem that some of the
conservative traditions of the Mormon Church would fit with Chilean culture.
By some stroke of luck, my sister from my first host family
of my high school exchange, Su, was arriving at the airport in Santiago, Chile
just an hour after me at about 11am. Because of this my host mum, Susana,
father, Manuel, and sister, Naty all came to the airport to pick us up.
They took us into the city where Naty has an apartment and
we had lunch together and caught up. Susana and Manuel left and I spent the day
with Naty and Su. It was really great to catch up and hear all about what they
had been up to over the past 2.5 years since I was last here!
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| Naty, Su and me |
That night there was a futbol (soccer) game of Chile vs. USA so we watched that with a few friends. At halftime I was sent off to the metro to make it to the central bus station that was across the city where I would take a bus to Pucón to meet with my other host family who was on vacation there.
The bus to Pucón was an overnight bus that was to leave at
10pm. I arrived in Pucón at about 8am. Normally this would be a really long bus
ride, but thanks to the great blanket they gave out, sleeping mask I got on the
plane and the lack of sleep I got the previous night I spent traveling, I slept
the majority of the ride.
Pucón is a neat city situated in the lake region of
Chile. It is known for the volcano that
is nearby and the beautiful lake and is bordered by mountains/hills on one
side. The sand is black and course as it
is made from volcanic rock. My family had rented a house there, the same one
they rent every year and it was right on the lake.
I stayed for a few days and we spent the days outside on the beach. I caught up with my family who was all there except one of my sisters, Xime, who was working in Santiago and took her vacation days the week before. I got to see my host father, Adriano, mother, Ximena, sisters, Cami and Nachi, and brother, Adriano. Adriano’s friend Lucho was also there as he came on vacations with the family.
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| Adriano, me and Nachi |
One evening we went to downtown Pucón for tea. It is traditional in Chile to eat a large almuerzo (lunch) in the afternoon around 1pm-3pm and then have once (tea/ coffee and light snakcs) late in the evening. We ate on the patio of a café and were waited on by the four and five year old daughters of the owner. As they took our order, they drew pictures of what we ordered- it was very cute!
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| Nachi, Cami and me with coffee shop owner's daughter in downtown Pucón |
The second night Ximena and Adriano went out to the casino
in town, and we (the kids) had an asado (a traditional Chilean barbecue) and drank ponche
(a traditional Chilean “punch” of wine fruit and sugar). Cami was very
thoughtful and made sure we grilled some veggies that I could eat since I am
vegetarian. Cami was especially sweet to me the whole time I was with the
family picked me up from the bus stop, made sure there were things for me to
eat and talked to me a lot :].
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| Nachi, me, Lucho, Adriano and Cami having an asado |
After a few days we headed back to Curicó, the city my family lives in and where I studied on my Rotary Youth Exchange in 2009-2010 during my senior year of high school. I went with Ximena and Nachi in the car and since I had never been, we stopped at Villarica, the other city situated on the lake. From the boardwalk there you can see the volcano and it is very pretty!
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