10

Well folks... 10. I can now count how many days I have left here in Chile on TWO hands! eek! It's pretty paralyzing that I'm actually going home. My stomach feels empty and I couldn't get it off my mind in the morning! I'll be hugging my family in 11 days. What?!

Anyways. Today Sofía took a picture of me with every single one of my classmates. She's sweet and know she has something planned. ;)

A while ago I bought a little blue book for people to write in. I've been pretending I'm not leaving and haven't touched it. But today I brought it to class and started passing it around. I'm totally in the denial stage! I need to start packing too... How much time do I need for that anyway??

The good news is that with the semester ending and the fact that I won't be here for the second means that I don't do anything in classes anymore. Not like we're accomplishing much anyways.

In gym today we played matanzas. It's a game like dodge ball but with only one ball. I have such terrible aim. hahaha. 

 Pausing for a picture with Seba :)

During our lunch break, I went with Paula, Natalia, Romina, and Rodrigo to buy decorations for my party. We bought balloons and streamers (white and purple).

As of right now, 37 people (including me) are going to it. So that's exciting. A pretty good percentage out of 43 people. I'm excited for Thursday to come!

It was a really good day in school. Nothing special happened but I just was with my friends and enjoyed everything. I'm thankful for what I have.

T-11 Days and Party Planning!

I know I have a lot to catch up on, but I just wanted to write how I'm feeling until I leave. Then when I get home I'll get the rest of the posts and pictures up. Les parece?? (Sounds good??)

Ok. As you can see by the title, 11 days left of my Chile adventures. That's nothing!

I'm feeling pretty sad! I'm definitely not ready to return to my 'other life'. I miss my family tons and friends of course, but I'm not ready to leave everything behind here for what could be forever.

The semester ends for school on the 9th of July. And so I have two and a half days left of school at San Ramon Nonato. I am actually really going to miss it. The uniforms, the recesses, going to buy snacks at the kiosk in the patio, going to Top Dog a gillion times a week, my wonderful classmates, walking into the classroom, setting my backpack down, and going to greet my friends with a hug and a kiss, the awkward daily prayers that I still stand silently through, having teachers tell me to put up my hair only to take it down two seconds later, the closeness of my classmates, my rambunctious classmates, the few teachers that still think I don't understand what they're saying, the impossible tests I randomly fill in and sleep through, and so much more. It's a lot of little things...

I am (and have been) planning a good bye party (a despedida!) It's actually helped a lot with the anxiety of leaving. That way, my friends and I don't sit around talking about that I'm leaving, but we just plan the party! I've been planning it mainly with Carolina (Kako), but my whole class has been part of it. I want to have a party with all my classmates. Because honestly, they've been my friends this year. I have some friends from church, but I don't really hang out with them. And so my friends are my life here! So I've invited just my 42 classmates. At the end of senior year (cuarto) here, there is a dance that is like prom. It's called 'La Gala'. We were talking one day about that I wouldn't be there for it and someone said oohhh we should do a Gala for Christy! I knew it wouldn't happen but... So when we started planning this party, I pitched in that we should do it semi-formal. Not anything suuuper fancy. But everyone dressed up a bit. I'm super excited and I bought a black dress that I'm pumped to wear! We started looking for a place to rent to have the dance and things. And we finally settled on a place next to my house in Romeral (15 minutes from Curicó). Also, since my family are residents of the town, they get a cheaper deal. So we'll rent out a place for 20 bucks. Yay! What's amazing about parties here is that people are actually willing to pitch in money! They aren't always like that, but it's pretty normal that everyone who goes brings something or pitches in a few dollars. I'm asking everyone to pay about five and a half dollars (3,000 Chilean pesos). It sounds like a lot... but everyone is fine with it, because we're renting out a place, buying food, decorations, etc.. so if 35 out of my 43 classmates come, then we'll have about 190 dollars to spend on everything. We also are going to find a photography. Which is really going to be a kid from our school who has a fancy camera. We'll pay him 10 or 15 bucks for the night. If it doesn't work in our budget, I'm totally fine paying that out of pocket, because I want to remember this night! And it'll be nice not having us taking our own pictures.

I'm having my good bye party on the 10th of July. It's a Thursday because the place wasn't available on Saturday. It'll start at 7:30 and everyone will get there at 9 since Chileans are ever so punctual. I'm in the process of making a slideshow of pictures to show. Then I'll talk for a minute and thank them for the year (some tissues will be needed...). We'll have empanadas and choripanes along with chips, cookies, peanuts and pop. Then we'll get on to the dancing! We'll dance and play some games in between. Parties here have alcohol. All of them! So... seeing as I don't drink (pero Christy! es super suave. no te va a pasar nada!--but Christy! It's super weak. Nothings going to happen to you!), I'll try to keep the alcohol out of the party... Well at least try to keep them from getting completely wasted. We will be doing a toast (brindis!) with champagne. Some good alcohol free stuff for me ;) And then we'll get dancing!

The complications at the moment: There are two major complications as of right now. One is the time. The place we are in says we have to turn off the music at 3:30 or 4. That is totally find because we'll have 8 or 9 hours anyways. BUT, a classmate Felipe is borrowing the music machines from a school nearby. And he's responsible for them. And he doesn't want to leave them in the place or at my house and get them the next day... Plus, it's complicated for the parents picking up their kids early in the morning when they have work the next day. So... that'll get resolved quickly I hope. It kinda has to because the party is in 4 days. The other one is the dress. I didn't think people would have a problem using a dress that they already have or pants and a blouse. But as it turns out some people have a problem. In reality, like 2 kids have a problem. A parent of a classmate said that their daughter couldn't go in a dress or something more formal because it didn't make sense for me to ask for a semi-formal event because I should remember my friends as normal people. Wait, what? But... we're still doing it semi-formal and that's the way it is.

Tomorrow after school, Carolina, Romina, and I are going to buy the decorations.

I lot of random ramblings... I need to go and work on my slideshow and get to bed! My last Monday in school tomorrow! :(