One Month in Chile

232 days ago, I published a post also titled "One Month in Chile." I'm really coming down to the wire here. Every week that goes by is a quarter of my time left here. I'm not going to write a "conclusion post" yet, though. It's my plan to write this and one more post in the month that I have left here.

Here's something else to celebrate: this is the first post in exactly four months that doesn't cover recent natural disasters. It's not that I've gotten bored with writing about them, it's that natural disasters seem to have left Chile alone lately and gone elsewhere (like Nepal). We did, however, have a very small earthquake last night.

Santiago earthquake 5/11/15
#WeWillRebuild

I've been back at school for a little over two months now, and I'm definitely enjoying it more than I did last year. Being able to speak and understand Spanish definitely helps. Two weeks ago, our school celebrated its anniversary with what they call "las alianzas." Every school here does their own alianzas. It's just a few days of school that are filled with games and activities instead of classes. In my school there were two teams of students: Future and Past.These teams competed against each other in the activities. Team members decorated the school and themselves with appropriate future/past accessories. I helped out by playing piano for the Future Band and by dressing up as Fry, a character from the popular future-based TV show Futurama.

Fry

See the similarities?

Another fun activity we did was called "Hombre Musical," or Musical Man, as you probably guessed. This is a lot like musical chairs, except with people instead of chairs. Ten guys, 25 or 30 girls, and some reggaeton music. When the music stopped, the girls needed to jump onto the nearest guy, and cling to him with their feet off the ground for five, ten, or fifteen seconds. If a girl touched the ground, she was out. If a guy stumbled too much, he was out. I ended up being the last man standing.

I count three. There are some very entertaining videos out there. 

I think doing activities like this is a great way to celebrate as a school. It really promotes cooperation between the classes and is a good way to relax a little during a stressful senior year.

In honor of Mother's Day two days ago, I'll take this opportunity to (once again) publicly thank my mother, Judy. Thanks for everything, Mom! We appreciate you. My parents read everything I post and my mom always has some suggestions- thanks for that, too.

And a thank you to my Chilean mothers, Macarena and Marisela. They have both been a great source of help and comfort this year. It wouldn't be possible without them.

In what's becoming pretty common for this blog, I'm going to include one of my friends who wants to be mentioned.

Jakobus, also known as Coby. Or Kobi. I think.

I've done some cool things with Coby, my friend from Germany. Each time I update my blog he reminds me in a friendly, patient way that I have once again left him out. Here you go, man. Coby's a cool guy.

On that note, I've got lots of things to do in Chile, and not much time to do them! The next time I write on this blog will probably be the day I fly out of Santiago.