North Trip! (Day 6)

Sorry that last post was so long... I just really want to be DONE writing about my North trip. It was such a long time ago and I have other things to write about! haha.

On to day 5 out of 8. We're almost there folks, bear with me.

After the late night, (when isn't it a late night here in Chile??) we woke up at 5. We were on the bus leaving at 6:15. And we were out of San Pedro de Atacama. It was by far my favorite city.

We drove for five hours and got to a small town named Pica. We stopped there and went to a church. Yay churches!

I liked these big white doors.

This display in the church kinda gave me the heebie-jeebies. A life size manequin replica of the Last Supper. With lightning bolts coming out of Jesus' head. I don't know... 

Alex, Jessica, Gloria the Rotary counselor, Jodie, and I:

After the church, we went to a school! Remember when I went to the mall in search of presents for kids? And I bought Spiderman markers and Aristocat crayons? We split into groups and went into different classrooms.

Here's some pictures from the first one:

They were eating lunch and I think some of them wanted to just eat. haha.

We hadn't known beforehand what we had to do, but as we walked into the room, Rotary told us sing some kid's songs for them! Uhhh in english right??! So there was a little group of us trying to remember songs from our childhoods. haha. And apparently some songs are taught differently in Canada and the US. I knew the most because of the little kiddos back home. :) I even had hand motions to go along.

I have a pictures somewhere of me with the little boy from this class whom I gave the markers to, but I don't know where it is. He was a cutie. :)

After a while, we went to another class to find kids who had't gotten a present.

Then we went to the nursurey. I miss babies! So luckily I'll have that cute little Thornock baby to snuggle in September.

This girl is Josefina. Her mom asked for a picture.

All of the Rotary group:

Then it was lunch time!

They had some fancy food. This one was ham with bacon and other things inside. It was really salty though.

This is a typical Chilean dessert. We eat a lot of flan and creamy things.

Then, we were off to another church!

They had another Last Supper display.

And a really pretty stained glass window:

Jessica:

A starry ceiling:

Then we walked a bit and found some cute benches:

And some giant fruit. Jodie and I were walking towards the back of the group and no one had stopped to take pictures and we both said, "what?! are you real exchange students? How are you not taking pictures of this giant fruit randomly placed here?!"

Our destination was these hot springs:

But they were actually cold springs. We could swim if we wanted to pay 4 dollars for 30 minutes. I passed. And a few of us went to walk around town and to buy ice cream.

We got into Iquique, the capital of Chile's first region. As I'm sure you have seen on the news, they have recently suffered a string of very big earthquakes. The largest being a 8.2 on the Richter scale... A string of "smaller" ones which led to the "big" one, started just two days after I left. Several have been killed, nearly one million people were evacuated, and most coast cities were put on tsunami watch. Prayers go out to the people that have lost their homes, loved ones, or have been affected in any way.

The drive into that city is amazing. The road is a switchback on the mountain and as you round the last bend, you start seeing the vast city underneath you. And you come right beside a ginormous sand dune. Pictures honestly don't do it justice.

We found the hotel and they assigned us rooms so we'd make other friends. I was with Madeleine and Annabel. So that was fun. I had talked (wow. I actually wrote  talken instead of talked before I realized it was wrong. What's that you say? I have ACT prep a week after I get home??) to Annabel but hadn't gotten to know Madeleine.

We got changed right away on went to the pool to swim!

Annabel, Madeleine, and I:

We swam and then showered and went to dinner. Then we went on a 10 o'clock walk to the beach. It was so nice.

When we got back, we had a "talk" with the Rotary counselors about respect and talking in Spanish...

When we got back to the room, it was late but we stayed up talking and getting to know each other.

The night-time view from the hotel:

The thirty-something story hotel:

One more post (maybe two... ughh.) of adventures!