Wednesday, November 7th, 2007

Wednesday, November 7th, 2007

After purposely ignoring my alarm this morning, I woke up late and had to rush through breakfast and my homework before leaving for class. I got there 20 minutes late, but it didn’t matter. After class I went to mass and without realizing it I was in the line to go to Confession. So I just went with it and ended up having a very nice confession with the priest. He listened attentively and when I told him sometimes I say “garabatos” or bad words, he interrupted and questioned, “¿Garabatos Chilenos?” “Chilean bad words?”. This made me chuckle. Afterwards he asked me where I was from and if Chile had been treating me well. It was overall a very nice experience.
After mass I went to my education class where we are learning about the role of family in the education of their children. Basically it’s been, “how to be a good parent, i.e. how to not seriously screw up your kids”. I’ve learned a lot, mostly I’ve realized how wonderful my parents were and are. *tear*.
After class, Nick, Natalie and I reserved our spots on the train from Cusco to Machu Picchu. We are going on December 4th, only for the day. But it should be a wonderful experience and I’m really looking forward to it. One of the coolest parts is that we will be riding on the Orient Express. Except that it is called the Backpackers train, which means no frills (although it still costs $73 round trip!). Afterwards I had lunch with Christian, then headed to the CIEE office to have a meeting about my research paper with our professor/director Hector. After a lot of help from Hector, I think I will be investigating the accessibility of health services for the people at Nuestra Casa (i.e. homeless people in Santiago). Should be interesting, but right now I’m feeling really overwhelmed!
I went to my Biblia class 20 minutes late because my meeting with Hector ran long and they changed class rooms on me so I had to ask a bunch of people before I finally found it. Then of course I had my poverty class, which went as usual. I took the metro home and walked in to the delicious smell of garlic and fresh fish. So my dinner was delicious and afterwards Olga surprised me with a delicious sliver of Black Forest cake she bought from the market. I then spent the rest of the night checking emails and sending out invitations to the soccer game on Friday, the Nuestra Casa Movie Premier fundraiser on next Thursday and Olga and my upcoming Fiesta de las Frutillas that we are having on Saturday. Again, it’s almost midnight and I have yet to start homework…