Indepence. Good or Bad?

Tuesday and Wednesday of this week I toured a lot. On Tuesday my group from API and I walked around the middle of Vina del Mar and got to see little stores, cute coffee shops and spend some time together. I really like my advisor. She is very knowledgeable and very charismatic. In addition to walking around we visited a mini museum where you can see free documentaries on Thursdays.

Pablo Neruda's House

On Wed I toured twice. Once with my class in the morning and then again in the afternoon with my university. I got to ride an ascensura up to a viewpoint where you can see the majority of Valpo. Then we continued down into the original part of Valpo and were able to see some of the architecture of the European immigrants that moved to Chile. We saw one of the first churches to be built here, the first bank, first newspaper, and first stock market building to be built and brought over to Valpo. These all originated from the English when they came over during the 1800's. This happened because a lot of people were are able to move here when ships were sailing around South America on its way up to the west coast of the United States. After my class, I went to have lunch with my friends and then we went on the tour. On this one we got to see Pablo Neruda's house. It is gorgeous and super interesting to learn about his work and who he was as a person. We continued to walk down the 'cerros' (hills) of Valpo and see some of the nicer areas. We continued down to the water after spending about an hour walking around. We then were able to take a boat ride out in the port. It was gorgeous to see the city from the water and we even were able to see some seals! After this we went to the same place I had gone earlier with my class.

Due to all of the touring I have done in the past few days I feel like there is so much for me to see with so little time. However, this makes no sense because I have another 5 and a half months here. I think it is just so hard to even comprehend what my life will be like. Today I went back to the center of Vina with my friend Amelia and we studied at a cute Swedish coffee shop called Marzipan or something close to that. We then went to a free documentary that was called "Las Salvavidas" (The lifeguards). It was interesting to experience this because I was unsure how much I would understand. There is so much more I need to learn and I didn't understand the majority of the jokes, which is always slightly awkward and hilarious, but I know that will come with time.

Now, being back home I wonder if spending so much time with girls in my group from the USA is a good idea. I really like them and want to get to know them better but, it means that I am sacrificing time with my familia chileana and practicing my Spanish. Sometimes things in life are a trade off, but I don't want to be wasting my experience here.

Tomorrow is a new day, and I am going to try to talk in Spanish just a little bit more tomorrow than I did today. It definitely wont hurt anything if I do that.

Tomorrow is a new day, and I am going to try to talk in Spanish just a little bit more tomorrow than I did today. It definitely wont hurt anything if I do that.