TRAVEL LIFE
I took two great trips during October. On one weekend, I took a bus 10 hours south, and, guess what? The follow weekend I took a bus 10 hours north!
The trip south was with a group of guy friends to stay at the house of one of my friend's brother. The first day that we were there, we went to a town called Entre Lagos (meaning "between lakes," and you would be correct to assume that the town was next to a bunch of lakes!) and stayed in a cabana. While we were there we went hiking in a national forest, and let's just say that I need to start working out more consistently if I am going to going hiking with that crew again! The next two days were spent driving around to different cities in the southern part of Chile, including Puerto Montt, Puerto Arenas, and Valdivia. There is some amazing history to be told about those areas, but I will not bore you! I will note though, that Valdivia is the location of the largest earthquake to be recorded in history--the town was completely destroyed and a huge tsunami decimated the region. We had an absolutely awesome time. Check out the pictures to the right!
The trip to the north was a totally last minute thing (which took its tool on my check book) but was also a great time. The intention of the trip was the see a phenomena called 'flowering desert,' in which seeds in this desert region grow when there is enough rain that year; however, the information we had was wrong and there was only limited flowering desert! Nonetheless, we still had a great time and made a lot of the weekend. Some of the highlights include taking a four hour stroll on the beach (where my feet got so sunburned that they did not even start peeling until recently--gross!), seeing total desert back up to the pacific ocean (an amazing juxtaposition), and staying overnight in a cabana in a tiny village with only like 50 inhabitants that live there to fish. Again... pictures to the right.
SCHOOL LIFE
I am so happy to say that I have only two weeks of school left! I am so thrilled to be done with classes. Here is the thing, I enjoy my courses, but I am getting bored with the topics. I dunno, maybe it is because I am not being challenged enough in the classes, or maybe it is because I am used to only taking one class at a time and getting down with it after a month. Whatever the reason, I am counting down the days until I am done. Being the good student that I all of the sudden became while I was here, I have done a really nice job of working on final projects ahead of time, so while everyone else is stressed right now, I only have two more projects to finish in the next two weeks. One realization I had a while back is that I am working way too hard for the credit I will get from the classes... I only need to "pass" my classes to have the credit transfer to Cornell, and I have A equivalents in all three classes. I guess we will just say I am doing to work so I can have the personal satisfaction of learning as much as I have.
SOCIAL LIFE
It is sad for me that I only have a little bit of time left before I leave the friends that I have made here. I suppose I am ready for it, as I have done it a million times before, but it always stinks. The nice thing is that it is so easy to stay in touch with people now-a-days so I know that the relationships that are most important will maintain. We have had a few great get-togethers recently that I have really enjoyed.
GRADUATE SCHOOL LIFE
As of now, I have completed 6 of my 14 graduate school applications. Once I put my mind to it, I will finish the other ones very quickly as well: all I need to do is modify my personal statement for the remaining schools and submit it with the application and I am set. From there it is a waiting game where I will need to start practicing getting rejected, because there is a lot of that to come! Remember, these schools are accepting like 4-6 students out of 100 or more. Yikes!
SPANISH SPEAKING LIFE
I chose the wrong country to feel good about speaking Spanish! I still feel incredibly defeated regarding my skills and it is so frustrating! Of course my Spanish gets better every day, but I am positive that I would feel so much more confident if I were to be speaking in a different country.
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