Mi primer dia en Curauma (my first day in Curauma)

This first week in Curauma has been an amazing blur. Although I've been less than attentive with my blog, I've been writing diligently every day in my journal so I won't forget anything!

Last time I wrote, I finished with that I had arrived in Curauma. So I'll first expand on that.

When I first got to my house, I first sent a much longer email to my parents. I asked Gaby when they could call, and she said whenever. So that's what I told them. After I put my suitcases in my room, I went to the supermarket with Gaby and mi Papa. They were really sweet, telling me to get whatever foods I like. But I'm trying to eat everything and be open-minded. So I told them whatever. When it came time to get cereal, they asked me what I would like and again, I said whatever you like. So Gaby chose chocolate crispies. Ha, and I pointed out nutella, because I thought it was funny to see it here(not sure why its funny, but whatever). And then they bought it. Woops...

When we got back to the house, I met Fox for the first time. He is absolutely crazy. But also adorable. I'll put up a picture of him soon. Then I attempted to take a nap. But for the first couple days after the earthquake I kept feeling like there was a tremor whenever I laid down to go to sleep. It was really wierd.

When I woke up, it was time for dinner, which is called "once" and is really more like a snack. On the table for my first once was bread, cheese, ham, tomatoes, nutella, manjar (this realllly delicious condiment), yoghurt and juices. Pretty normal for dinner here. In the middle of dinner my parents called. I finally allowed myself to cry when I heard their voices. I honestly wasn't that scared or homesick after the earthquake. But I was worried that my family was worried. Ha I don't know. It was really nice hearing them all, Tim was there, too. They told me they'd received tons of emails and calls, thanks for your support everyone! But when I cried, Gaby brought me some tissues. She really is a good sister!

The next day I slept pretty lat. I had three nights with not much sound sleep before that. After breakfast I decided to unpack. When I finished it was time for lunch. Mi mama had prepared garlic mashed potatos and another thing. I honestly don't know what to call it. It kinda looked like the shape of an omelette, but it was made out of carrots, onions, spinach and yummy spices. I thought it looked gross, but tried it to be polite, and loved it.

After lunch Gaby and I walked to the video store around the corner. I probably looked like an idiot, getting so excited about looking at movie titles. But all the popular US movies were there, with different titles in Spanish. I thought it was cool that some were literal translations of the original titles (example: Marley And Me=Marley Y Yo) and some were totally different (example: Waitress was Recetas de Amor, or Love Recipes). We took a while, but finally chose those two in addition to Gaby's choice, Just My Luck.

Pretty soon, mi papa came home from work. He commutes to Santiago and comes home on Wednesday nights and the weekends. Anyway, he wasn't able to do anything that day because his office building was so damaged. So they took me to see the lake. We all got in the car and went about 10 minutes away to the lake, which is about 2,000 meters long. We walked down to a dock and mi papa took out the bread that he had brought. He dropped a crumb and about 100 carp started freaking out. There were soooooooo many of them. And they were all gobbling up the peices we dropped for them while we watched and laughed. Then we walked around the edge of the lake. There were people doing crew (which is apparently really popular on that lake), running, and just hanging out. It was a really nice day so and it looked beautiful.

We headed home and stopped by the larger supermarket on the way home. There I met some of Camilo's (my host brother who is on AFS is Norway) friends. They were collecting money and items for the relief effort for Chile and they were all really sweet. Then we went home and had some dinner. And after that, we watched Just My Luck. It had such terrible reviews that I think I was surprised by how much I didn't hate it, since the critics thought it was that bad. Then I went to bed, and was pretty wiped out by all the Spanish speaking.

Well I will finish all this at some point, but for now, that's it.

Love always, Sally