Thursday, August 23, 2007
Woke up around 8:15, breakfasted, and headed out to meet Calli and Kristin. While we were waiting to get on the bus, we met a group of girls who went to Wash U in St. Louis! We of course started comparing names and one of the girls knows my friend Ashley Gold from MSA and another girl from Houston knows my friend from Tulane Brooks Fowler. Small world huh? We got on the bus around 10 and unfortunately all the gringas were sitting together. We had a fun time, but agreed that we needed to make friends with some Chileans at the beach. Everyone started drinking around 11:00 and I had flash backs to Mardi Gras!
We got to the beach, which is actually Cartagena, where I’ve been twice before! We got of the bus and accidentally separated from our new friends from the States but it worked out fine. I saw Luna, the super outgoing Chilean and said hello. She hadn’t heard about the fight and Christian and when I started telling her what had happened another guy, Marcelo, overheard and had heard all about it. He ended up being a good friend of Emilio and had heard about me, the extranjera that was caught up in all the fun! Calli, Kristen and I ended up hanging out with Marcelo and his friends all day. They are all engineering students and super friendly.
I paced myself throughout the day and by 3 o’clock we were all dancing Meringue on the beach with 3,000 other La Católica students. It was incredible. A great live band, a beautiful beach, a courageous day, and thousands of drunken college students. I met lots of students and even talked to some kids in my classes that recognized me and said hello. Amazingly, I even had some great conversations about God, religion, relationships etc. At 6 they started herding us back to the buses. I was absolutely exhausted and ready to sleep on the ride home. As soon as the bus started pulling away, a fight broke out between some drunken guys. It wasn’t that big of a deal: you can’t do too much damage on a moving bus full of people, but they pulled the bus over and gave us all a good talking to. I made a comment about how I was sick of fights and all Marcelo told me was, “¡This is Chile!”.
On the ride home I talked with two different engineering students. They both spoke English quite well but we only spoke in Spanish. They told me they were really impressed how well I spoke. Overall, the trip was perfect for me: I relaxed, only spoke Spanish, and gained a lot of confidence. This week has really shown me how much I’ve improved, which definitely makes me feel better.
When we got back to campus I took the metro home. Olga made me dinner and I filled her in on the day. After dinner I crawled in bed, talked to Trevor and caught up on my journal, thankful that the next few days should be a bit more relaxed.
Friday, August 24, 2007
Wednesday, August 22, 2007 Stay awake Kayla, you can do it!
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
I barely woke up around 9:30 and realized 1. I still had no idea how Christian was doing. 2. I only slept about 5.5 hours, which isn’t nearly enough to function in Spanish let alone for my 6 hours of intense lectures for the day 3. I hadn’t done any of the readings for my classes and 4. I hadn’t eaten since 1:30 the day before.
At breakfast, which ended up being a double breakfast when Olga discovered I hadn’t eaten, I explained everything to Olga. She told me that she hadn’t been able to sleep last night and had been very concerned. She told me she knew I was ok but that something else had happened. Of course she had practically fallen in love with Christian on Sunday, so she was very upset.
I headed to campus and called Emilio to finally hear what was going on with Christian. Thank God, Emilio told me that they finally did some kind of a scan on his brain and didn’t find anything serious. Unfortunately I don’t understand exactly what happened because I have yet to learn the medical terms in Spanish, but basically he got hit hard enough to effect his short term memory. There was no really damage, but he has to stay in bed for two days. Much more relaxed with the good news, I went to class.
Between my classes I went to Mass, where I saw Felipe. He hadn’t talked to Emilio so when I told him the news his whole body relaxed. He told me he had been praying all night and that he knew he would see me at mass today. We hadn’t even talked about being Catholic or anything last night, but I wasn’t surprised to see him there either.
Around 4, Christian called my cell phone to tell me he had just woken up, didn’t really remember anything, but that he wanted to see me. I agreed to visit him after I finished class at 8:30. I had Biblia class, then my Pobreza class and at that point I was exhausted. There are only Estadounidenses (United State-eans) in my Pobreza class, so I was a nice break to finally speak English. I’d hadn’t spoken any since Saturday evening, except when I talked on the phone with Trevor a little on Monday.
After class I took the metro and Christian’s dad and brother Emanuel picked me up. At their house, Emanuel, Emilio and I sat around Christian’s bed with him for the next two hours. Christian was doing quite well: still a little groggy, but very animated and happy to see me. We had a great time recounting the fight and the hours leading up to it. Christian doesn’t remember anything from about 7 in the evening on and only bits and pieces of Tuesday. He said things are slowly coming back to him and while we were talking he would very excitedly interject if he remembered some random detail. At about
11:15 their mom asked if we wanted to have an once and I realized that I again hadn’t eaten dinner. We left Christian to rest and we ate our once while speaking Spanglish and teaching each other funny sayings. All the brothers speak some English and Emilio is practically fluent. Their dad also knows a lot of English. It has been a while since I laughed that hard and it was great to relax. Their family reminds me a lot of my own: They tease each other and have petty spats, but are incredibly caring and really enjoy each others company.
Emilio drove me home and I got in at about midnight. Olga insisted on feeding me when I told her I had only had an once, so we sat around and I updated her on Christian’s status. When I told her that I was going to the beach for Paseo a la Playa, she just laughed. I went to bed around 1 am and called my family, hoping for some reason they were still up. I hadn’t talked to them in a few days and after the emotional rollercoaster I’d been on, I was ready for a familiar voice. Unfortunately I’d woken them up and knew that this wasn’t the time to go into the story. I went to sleep looking forward to doing nothing while I hung out on the beach the next day.
I barely woke up around 9:30 and realized 1. I still had no idea how Christian was doing. 2. I only slept about 5.5 hours, which isn’t nearly enough to function in Spanish let alone for my 6 hours of intense lectures for the day 3. I hadn’t done any of the readings for my classes and 4. I hadn’t eaten since 1:30 the day before.
At breakfast, which ended up being a double breakfast when Olga discovered I hadn’t eaten, I explained everything to Olga. She told me that she hadn’t been able to sleep last night and had been very concerned. She told me she knew I was ok but that something else had happened. Of course she had practically fallen in love with Christian on Sunday, so she was very upset.
I headed to campus and called Emilio to finally hear what was going on with Christian. Thank God, Emilio told me that they finally did some kind of a scan on his brain and didn’t find anything serious. Unfortunately I don’t understand exactly what happened because I have yet to learn the medical terms in Spanish, but basically he got hit hard enough to effect his short term memory. There was no really damage, but he has to stay in bed for two days. Much more relaxed with the good news, I went to class.
Between my classes I went to Mass, where I saw Felipe. He hadn’t talked to Emilio so when I told him the news his whole body relaxed. He told me he had been praying all night and that he knew he would see me at mass today. We hadn’t even talked about being Catholic or anything last night, but I wasn’t surprised to see him there either.
Around 4, Christian called my cell phone to tell me he had just woken up, didn’t really remember anything, but that he wanted to see me. I agreed to visit him after I finished class at 8:30. I had Biblia class, then my Pobreza class and at that point I was exhausted. There are only Estadounidenses (United State-eans) in my Pobreza class, so I was a nice break to finally speak English. I’d hadn’t spoken any since Saturday evening, except when I talked on the phone with Trevor a little on Monday.
After class I took the metro and Christian’s dad and brother Emanuel picked me up. At their house, Emanuel, Emilio and I sat around Christian’s bed with him for the next two hours. Christian was doing quite well: still a little groggy, but very animated and happy to see me. We had a great time recounting the fight and the hours leading up to it. Christian doesn’t remember anything from about 7 in the evening on and only bits and pieces of Tuesday. He said things are slowly coming back to him and while we were talking he would very excitedly interject if he remembered some random detail. At about
11:15 their mom asked if we wanted to have an once and I realized that I again hadn’t eaten dinner. We left Christian to rest and we ate our once while speaking Spanglish and teaching each other funny sayings. All the brothers speak some English and Emilio is practically fluent. Their dad also knows a lot of English. It has been a while since I laughed that hard and it was great to relax. Their family reminds me a lot of my own: They tease each other and have petty spats, but are incredibly caring and really enjoy each others company.
Emilio drove me home and I got in at about midnight. Olga insisted on feeding me when I told her I had only had an once, so we sat around and I updated her on Christian’s status. When I told her that I was going to the beach for Paseo a la Playa, she just laughed. I went to bed around 1 am and called my family, hoping for some reason they were still up. I hadn’t talked to them in a few days and after the emotional rollercoaster I’d been on, I was ready for a familiar voice. Unfortunately I’d woken them up and knew that this wasn’t the time to go into the story. I went to sleep looking forward to doing nothing while I hung out on the beach the next day.
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