Time for some Chilean wine....

The other weekend we went on our first wine tour in Chile. Chile is apparently quite famous for wine (something I did not really know until I got here) and they have some incredible vineyards right outside of Santiago. My friend Elisabeth had a friend in town and they rented a car and took a day for tours and were generous enough to ask a few of us to come along.

The first place we went to was Undirraga Vineyard. It was gorgeous! A very old vineyard that was HUGE and backed right up to the Andes. The grounds were amazing as was the wine.

Jess, Allison, Elizabeth and I

After the tasting we just had to take cheesey pictures in thier old carriages.

Our next stop was to Cavas de Maipu and it was by far my favorite. It was this tiny little vineyard that produced about 6 types of wine, but it was run by the nicest old man who just loved wine. He also gave the tour in spanish..... and we understand almost all of it! It was an exciting moment.

This vineyard was in the Andes and just tiny and cute. He literally put on the labels by placing the bottle in a wooden holding thing and putting the sticker on himself. It was just great!

All of us tasting some amazing wine with cheese and nuts that his wife roasted.

All of his awesome wines.

Our final vineyard was Concha y Tora. We actually did not do a tour of this one... because we took too long at the others.... but it was for the best because this one is the closest to Santiago and is one of the most touristy ones because it is the easiest to get to. None the less, it was still gorgeous and so nice to get out of the big city.

All in all in was a really wonderful day! Lots of wine, spanish and fun with friends. Also, I was sadly very excited that we got to ride in a car! It's amazing the things that you end up missing, but since we really only get around by the metro or the bus it was very exciting to be in a car! Weird... I know.

Spanish Jokes

Learning a new language is just hard. I've been getting better at spanish, but it has honestly been a very slow process. Everyone said "Oh, you'll just pick it up when you get here" and to some degree yes, it's easy to pick up key phrases or key words, but fully understanding and being able to respond to things is a whole other story.

I've been taking lessons at a local language school and meeting with my intercambio buddy, Daniel. He wants to learn english so we speak in each language for about 45 minutes. (I did take about a 2 week break from both of these things, but know I'm back on track!) And here's my story from last night's intercambio meeting....

Here is a little background on this topic first. So everyday at the hogar Brianna and I eat lunch with all of the other tias (the staff at the hogar) and they all sit and talk in VERY fast spanish. I catch a few words here and there or try to respond when they say something to me, but a lot of the time if I'm lost I just watch the news that is on the TV in the background, because they actually speak at a normal speed on the news! So one of the tias, Tia Carmen, is just a really funny woman and always tells jokes to the girls, to any guests that come to lunch, she has so many jokes..... and the new joke of her jokes is to say it, everyone laughs and then everyone looks at me to see if I understood it. I NEVER get her jokes.... ever. So then everyone always laughs even harder! I mean I think it's funny now too, and understanding jokes in another language is just hard. You're focusing on the words so much and trying to understand it that it losing the humor.

So I was telling all of this to my intercambio buddy and he decided to test it out. So he told me a joke that his father tells at every family get together...... I did not get it. So we then spent the next 10 minutes explaining the joke word by word, as slow as possible. We were in the park and I'm sure if any other Chileans heard us they probably thought I was insane. However, I finally got it!!! And I laughed!! Then he made me memorize it so I could tell the tias.... I'm not sure about it, I will have to practice it some today, but I think I'm going to give it a try. Here is the joke in English so you can see how SIMPLE it really is....

A man ran to the doctor and said "Doctor, help me! My wife has gone crazy and thinks that she is a lawn mower!"

The doctor said "I can help you, but where is your wife?"

The man said "Oh, I let my neighbor borrow her."

**Small disclaimer: My intercambio buddy is very Chilean meaning he mumbles and speaks certain words very fast. So some days it's hard, but it's good for me because he really is helping me to be able to listen better when talking with someone in Spanish.

I then proceeded to tell him knock, knock jokes in english because I didn't know any other jokes. He didn't find them very funny.....

Jornada

So last weekend marked my 2 month anniversary in Chile! I really can't believe I have been here for over two months or that's it's almost Thanksgiving. It really feels like I just got here.

So to celebrate and to give us a little bit of reflection time on what we've been doing here and where we had hoped we would be versus where we are, we went for a retreat, Jornada, in to the Andes in Cajon de Maipo for the weekend. It was amazing! We stayed at this gorgeous retreat center right on the edge of the mountains. It was really so great to get out of the city and to be so close to nature and to have some fresh air again!! I like Santiago, but the smog and the hustle and bustle of a big city is just not my favorite thing.

We had a lot of free time to just relax and do nothing, which was amazing. I feel like I'm always trying to not waste time here and make sure I'm doing everything so it was great to just sit back for a bit. We also had some team building activities and reflection time which was amazing as well for many reasons.

The first being that a lot of time we get so caught up in the day to day stuff at the hogar that I forget what these girls have actually been through and that when they freak out on me over very small things, it's often because of something a lot larger that they are dealing with. We've also been going through a lot of frustration at the hogar because the new director (who was wonderful and wanted to improve the hogar and change things for the better) was just "asked to leave" because some of the older staff are so set in their ways that they were threatened by the changes. It's just so annoying because we work hard to try and make changes and do things there and then you remember how broken this system in Chile actually is. So we talked at Jornada about staying positive and focusing on what you can change and what you can do while you're here.

The second amazing part was getting to spend more time with all of the volunteers here, who have now become such great friends of mine. We were of course able to share experiences about our hogars and relate to each other about all of it because no one else really gets it. However, we were also able to leave everything behind and just laugh and enjoy each others company in such a gorgeous place. We even made s'mores!!! It was hilarious because the Germans and the Brits had never heard of them and were honestly not that impressed with them, but I was loving it!

Here are a few pictures from the trip......

Our retreat center for the weekend.

Hiking in Cajon de Maipo

Gorgeous views everywhere!

Jess, Nola and I on our Sunday hike.

The whole group at the end of Jornada.

It was amazing, but with that 2 month mark also brings the decision I need to make on if I'm going to stay longer than my 4 months. Oh life decisions! Never easy to make!!