Uniting My Two Families

Sorry for the belated blog post - I've been a bit preoccupied with the recent visit of mi familia real!

Before the Buterbaugh's landed in Santiago, I had to take care of a couple things to round out the year. I went to a second wine gala with my host family in Vitacura, which is very "high end" Santiago. This gala was about 5 times larger than the first one I went to and was set up in the most beautiful private park.

José Tomás, Sergio, Javiera, Me, and Juan Pablo - all of my host brothers (+ Sergio's girlfriend)

There were rows and rows of stands like the ones behind me

The next morning, I had a bit of a dog pile-up in the room...

Love these three

Then I went to my first despedida (going away party) for one of the people in my program - Hilary. It was quite weird to see her off. It makes the end of this so real since she is now back in the US along with a couple others.

Megan, Hilary, Emily, me, and Joey at Hilary's despedida (This is Hilary's Picture)

The next morning, I finally made it to my first soccer game here in Chile - a classic game between Universidad de Chile and Universidad Católica.
My family warned me that it would be dangerous, so I wasn't allowed to go without a Chilean escort. Unfortunately, Sergio couldn't go. He's been trying to take me to a game all semester. Instead, I went with my host cousin, Katy. On our way there, we passed by so many carabineros (policemen) and they were there for a good reason. The crowd outside the stadium was pretty rowdy. People were fighting in the street and we saw the carabineros set their scary German shepherds on one guy and run after him with clubs. Whoa.
They really take their rivalries seriously here in Chile.

While we were waiting to get in, Abby also had her ticket stolen. They are pretty sly here. This kid just walked by, snatched it out of her hand, and took off running. No one could catch him. Luckily, we could another ticket close to the gates, then went through 3 layers of security, and finally made it to ours seats. Phew.

Sergio loaned me his jersey

The La U section

Rolling out the T-shirt

The view was absolutely beautiful

La U (i.e. Universidad de Chile) lost 2-4, which was pretty sad for Katy, she (and Sergio) are huge fans.
But we loved sitting in the section with all of the crazy fans! They were literally shouting different cheers during the whole game. They even had a drummer who kept the beat - for 45 minutes each half. So cool.

Chileans take "Chi - Chi - Chi - Le - Le - Le" and use it for everything.

The night before my family arrived, I went out to one last girl's dinner with Madeline, Abby, Erica, and Mary. It was our last dinner together before we all split up, which was really sad.

We decided to have a formal dinner

On Wednesday morning, the Buterbaugh's arrived in Santiago!!

I dropped in to see them in the morning and then went to take my history final. I snuck up to the 8th floor, without my mom knowing - I had called Katie's room. So when I walked into my mom's room she had to do a double take because she thought that I was Katie. Haha. Love you mom.

Our 5 days together were wonderful.

We toured the historic parts of the city, explored the coast towns of Valparaíso and Viña, and went to a couple wineries.

(Most of these pictures are Ryan's)

The Beatles?

Posing like the Mapuche statues on Santa Lucia

At the top of San Cristobal

Ryan got artsy

Matetic Vineyard

Looking over Viña and Valpo

Concha y Toro Vineyard

In the cellar of Castillera Del Diablo - a label of Concha y Toro

The view from the hotel window - "San"hattan

One of the benches from the exhibit outside of our hotel. It was covered in their weird foam.

The "El Golf" area of Santiago

Instead of a tradition Thanksgiving meal, we spent Thursday night with my host family and celebrated my host dad's birthday.

The whole dinner was quite funny. I had to go back and forth from Spanish to English the whole time and occasionally, I accidently explained things in Spanish to my real family and in English to my host family.

I guess that's a good sign? That sometimes I don't even realize that I'm speaking Spanish?

We ate so much that night - sopaipillas, empanadas, paella with Chilean shellfish, dessert chestnuts, wine, pisco... anything Chilean that you can imagine - we ate/drank it.

My two sets of parents

My real family in the "living" of my Chilean house

The visit was amazing. Being able to show off Santiago - and my Spanish skills - was a ton of fun. Everyone relied on me, which I loved. Hehe - Kristin you were so right. And the fact that I will see my family in two more weeks made it a bit easier to let go this time.

So here's to my last two weeks in Santiago! They're going to be the fastest 2 of my life.