Holidays and Summertime

I'm starting to get a little disoriented with the change of seasons, what with Chileans on the verge of summer break and me about to go on winter break, and commercials advertising beach vacations and Christmas sales simultaneously kind of throw me off.  It's a little weird.  But the fact remains that the semester is winding down; this week is my last week of classes and finals are dispersed between the next couple weeks.

That said, the past couple weeks have been pretty uneventful; just schoolwork and the occasional outing.  The other day we went to Reñaca, where Marie's host sisters' school was having a big fair-like party. We hung out for a bit, got some snacks (including tres leches cake...shoot, so long since I'd had it. Good stuff.), listened to some student performances, and followed Vaihere (Marie's 11-year-old host sister) on a tour of the school grounds.  They go to a French school, so it was funny hearing a lot of French going around.  

Also in Reñaca, I had an asado (cookout) with one of my classes.  The class is a gen ed course for the Adolfo Ibáñez students, Literary Criticism; we're criticizing The Godfather.  Definitely one of my favorite classes.  We went to a student's house and hung out with some good food; it was fun to be with the prof in such a casual context, too.  Unfortunately, by going to this asado I missed out on my church's Thanksgiving dinner that they put on for the exchange students (obviously, it's not a holiday here).  Kinda bummed that I missed my chance for Thanksgiving food, but I'd say it was worth it for some choripan and carne asado.  

Over the past week we've also crashed Vicky's house a couple times to watch movies, order some Papa John's (real pizza!), and make some reese's no-bake dessert that Marie got in a package.  Partying like Americans :)