Elder Oaks

So Elder Oaks was in town and decided to do a fireside for the young adults in Vina Del Mar. Guess who got to go! I did! Did you know that his current wife did not get married until she was in her mid 50's? I thought that was interesting. They spoke a lot about being single and getting married. Elder Oaks said that we need to date and we don't get dates by just sitting at home and praying for them. So that is what I have been doing wrong for all these years :). Here in Chile I have been getting out. The night life scene here is huge. Every day of the week you can go out dancing and to the clubs. This is the last week that the other USU students are in Chile so we have been going out a lot these last two weeks. I even found a pretend boyfriend on Friday. I will back up a little from that though.

The school here has an intercambio program where students studying spanish get together with english speaking students. Pretty much the chilean students get assigned gringos to look after and we all get to practice speaking in our desired language. My group got Farrah and Carlos. they are both really nice and completely fluent in english. They just mostly speak in english to us but we try to respond with our spanglish. The two of them have been taking us USU students around and showing us the fun youthful things to do in Chile, like which clubs are cool and which places are boring. It is nice to have somebody have your back that speaks the language. Well, last Friday Laura, Carl, and I went out with Carlos and later met up with Farrah. We were dancing off and on but I am a horrible dancer so I was a little hesitant to really get out there and dance. I had sat down and that's when Farrah came in with his friend that was having a birthday. His friend was very very drunk. That is pretty common here for young people to do on the weekends. Because he was so drunk he was being pretty silly. He asked me to dance and I accepted cause I wanted to dance and this way I figured he wouldn't notice how bad of a dancer I was because he could barely walk. We got on the dance floor and he still couldn't walk, but he could dance. It was pretty amazing. He was complementing me and telling me that I have beautiful eyes. It was very flatting. Anytime I need a little pick me up I just have to find a drunk guy, I guess. So that is my pretend pololo story.

I am getting used to being in Chile and things are getting a little more routine. I don't have to search around for bus stops as much and I know where I need to turn and what people expect of me in public. I don't have to pay attention to every road as much as I used to because I recognize where I am at. Also, the lock at the gate to the house is a little tricky and for the first three weeks I couldn't get it open without a fight but now I can usually get it with only two or three tries. I am loving life here. I am starting to understand a little more and if I search far enough back into my mind I can usually find the word that I am looking for. I still sound like a gringa but I think that might be permanent. We shall see.