Say among the nations, "The LORD reigns."

Well two weeks of classes are done, and I've still only attended 2 out of my 4 classes! The first week I only had two, because the others are optativas (electives) and so they start a week later; however, the second week of classes here is called Semana Mechona. It's basically a big welcome week filled with some fun and some not so fun activities for all the first year students. They have concerts and parades, but the major event of the week is when all the second year students torture the first year students who have the same major as them. And it's quite the event to watch, as they throw mixtures of oil, butter, garlic and flour at the students, take their shoes, draw all over them with markers, and then force them to walk into town and beg for money to get their shoes back... Let's just say I'm glad that we don't have the same tradition in the states. If you're interested, there's a few pictures of it all in the Valdivia folder on Picasa, they were taken by a friend of mine here who is teaching english as part of his internship. From what he said, the pictures look gross but don't do it justice because you can't smell it... (yuck!) Anyways, so because of Semana Mechona most of the afternoon classes are cancelled, which mean that once again I only had classes on Tuesday and Wednesday. These two classes are fully underway though, which means that *gasp* I've had to start doing homework! Something I haven't done for almost four months now... It's mostly reading for quizzes that are coming up in the next few weeks but there's a lot of it, and of course it's all in spanish so it takes me a while to decode it. It's definitely been good practice though and it's starting to feel second nature which is pretty cool. For instance, this morning I was reading Teorías del Aprendizaje (Theories of Learning), and realized that I was actually learning things in spanish that I didn't know in english - that was a weird feeling!

I also got to try a new sport this week! Whenever I head into town I have to cross a river and there are almost always people rowing. I asked my host mom about this and said I was interested in trying it so on Monday she took me to the sports club and I signed up to take remo (rowing/crew) lessons. It's really popular here in Chile, especially here in Valdivia because there are so many rivers that are perfect for it. I had my first lesson Thursday and it was actually a lot harder than it looks, but still a lot of fun. There's a lot of technique required, plus all my instructions were in spanish, which complicated things a little further. It also requires use of your whole body, which meant I was a little sore on Friday! I definitely enjoyed it though and I'm looking forward to the rest of my lessons!

That's about it. I'm looking forward to hopefully another week of nice weather (it's about 70° and sunny right now! yay!) and am getting really excited to see my family! My grandparents are currently in the Galapagos Islands and are arriving in Santiago on Friday a few hours before my mom and sister will arrive! We have lots planned and hopefully they'll enjoy seeing a little bit of what my life is like in Chile, along with having fun being a tourist!