Long time, no write!

Hola todos!! Como estan?

I'm doing pretty great myself. I've got a final tomorrow to finish up the second part of my composition class here and I'm so ready to be done!! Sara and I just studied for a few hours so I'm hoping to do well. I got an A on the midterm (finally!!), so I'm hoping to pull an A for this part of the class. Then, its on to Advanced Spanish I . . . so not ready for that yet!

Other than that I've just been hanging out with friends and having a good time! The weather is finally starting to get nice here so we are having 75-80 degree days with lots of sunshine and nice breezes, too. Also, it means that everyone can stop being SICK and start having fun. I swear at least 5 people in my group are sick at any given time since we got here. I'm hoping the warm weather will be the end of all that! I ended up having to go to the doctor a few weeks ago because I had a bacterial infection. A week of antibiotics knocked that out and I've been feeling good ever since (knock on wood).

Since I last wrote I've gone to visit el Cementario General, which is Santiago's (possibly even the whole of Chile's) biggest and most well-known cemetary. It seems to go on for days and its always filled with people (and flowers too for that matter). They also have a wall there that stands to remember all the people who "disappeared" during the dictatorship of Pinochet. While looking at the wall the girls and I did some math and figured out that somewhere around 2,500 people were on there. And thats only the ones they know about. That doesn't even include the hundreds of thousands of people who were tortured and exiled under his regime. Needless to say, it was a sad and somber visit. Even more sad to think that the US government provided support for his regime.

I also went to a birthday part last saturday night with my friend Diego and his family. It was a very big and fun celebration. I got to practice my Spanish a lot and even tried my first Pisco Sour since arriving here, which was pretty good! Then, on Sunday, my host mom woke me up with an invitation to join her and her daughters for an afternoon asado. So we went to eat, drink and talk with the family for a few hours. Then, I came back home and got ready to meet my Chilean friend, Sintia for ice cream. Which ended up turning into an afternoon walk around the city. It was lots of fun!

Thats really all for now I guess. I've got my test tomorrow, I'm giving a speech in my Lit class on Mon (absolutely terrifying) and then I'm pretty much just sailing along until Thursday, when my vacation starts!!! I'm so excited :)

Love you guys! Hope you all are well!