Birthday Number Eighteen

Yesterday was my 18th birthday, and I'm finally an adult!
On Saturday night I went to some friends from school's new apartment to hang out and swim. When we came back from the pool they surprised me with a cake! I loved it.  It's so nice knowing I already have people who care about me here.

My host brother left yesterday for exchange in the Czech Republic, so the whole family went to the airport to drop him off, and I finally got a picture with my whole family. He arrived around 5pm today, and is loving it. He lost his luggage too (I'm not the only one!) but his family is great and he's having a good time.

 After the airport we went out to lunch with my host mom's brother's family.  They have two daughters, Paulina, 5, and Mariana , 10 (she's actually 9, but her birthday is November 3rd and she considers herself 10 so I do too.) They are two of the best kids I've met, it's so much fun playing and talking with them, they teach me so much Spanish!

Paulina drew me a picture of the two of us at a water park, eating lunch, and I believe doing something in a tree together but I'm not entirely sure as I can't tell by looking and I couldn't understand what she was telling me.  She thinks I am the cat's pajamas, I'm flattered.

Paulina took about 30 pictures during the car ride, this is one of my favorites.

At home I had a quick chat with my family through Skype but couldn't stay because there were about 20 relatives in the next room.  They had pastries from the Patisserie with candles, it was very sweet, thank you family!

Everyone came back to our house and a few other families of relatives came by, as well as some exchange friends of mine.  I didn't know I could invite people until the day before so only three of the six could come, but we had a good time.  After the family left we went to the theater and saw Insidious. I spent at least 75% of the time with my ears plugged and my face hidden in the popcorn bucket, which did double duty of hiding me from the demons on screen and giving me easy access to tasty popcorn.

Jacky- Austria, Kornelia- Slovakia, Me- US, and Simon- Denmark

Host family minus Esteban

A good portion of my extended host family, but not all!

All in all it was a really good birthday, thank you to everyone who helped make my day.

Month One

In theory I wasn't supposed to use my computer for the first month, but I tried that and it didn't really agree with me, so we'll go with I wasn't supposed to blog for the first month. I am proud to report success on that front.

I'm staying in an apartment in the south of the city, with my host parents, two host brothers (18 and 20), one host sister (22), and host grandma. Every Sunday we go to the dad's relatives' house for family time and twice I've brought another exchange student, my friend Kornelia from Slovakia, which is very nice because we can look bewildered at each other when everyone is talking really fast.  My Spanish has improved impressively since I've gotten here, it's still hard to participate in a conversation when everyone is chattering away, but if people are talking to me I'm usually fine.  I took Spanish up until AP before I came, which is more than the majority of the other exchange students, but it has still been difficult adjusting from classroom gringo-spanish to native spanish.  I don't know how the others are doing it, some came with almost no Spanish at all.

With my host brother (middle, black shirt) and friends

We played a lot of poker, I won

September 9th and 10th all the exchange students in district 4280 (Cali, Medellin, Pasto, Ipiales, and Pereira) met in Pasto for inbound orientation.  It was a really fun weekend, it was great to finally meet everyone after having been talking to them for so long (we have a group on facebook.) There are 24 of us in all, from all over the world.  There is one other girl from the US, a Morgan from California who's also living in Cali.  We stayed with families for two nights, one or two per family.  I was placed in a family with a boy from Germany, and we had a great time with our host sister in the limited amount of time we got to spend together. All of us can't wait to get back together, which probably won't be until November when we have a trip to the Amazon with the other districts.  There are seven of us in Cali, and we've gotten together a few times since the orientation, and we have plans for everyone to get together at Morgan's house for a camp out next weekend.

 Denmark, US, and Brasil

 At Laguna de la Cocha in Pasto

 Unfortunately we don't all live close enough to be able to see each other regularly

RYE D4280 2011-2012 

On a boat ride on the laguna 

Team USA 

At the airport flying home from Ipiales

School is going really well, I'm in 11th grade (the oldest, there are only 11) at Colegio Berchmans, and I have a uniform. It's not too bad considering, but having never had a uniform before it's still a pain, especially the shoes (penny loafers.) I started a week after I arrived, and it was nice to have a week to adjust and spend with my brother and his friends before having to get up at 5 every day and get home at 4, I'm usually really tired and don't do much week days.  All my classmates are really friendly and patient and helpful, which is good because I hardly understand anything the teachers say in my classes, let alone understand the material they're trying to teach.  I usually end up falling asleep at some point during the day, which seems to be really common among exchange students.  There are two other exchange students at my school, a boy from Mexico that's in my grade and also through Rotary, and a girl from France in 10th grade.  Both of them already spoke Spanish fluently before coming, which I view as completely cheating on the exchange part.

The school owns a farm and last Wednesday my class went for a kind of team-building/self-reflection day 

There are about 30 kids in my class and 120 in my grade 

These girls took me in from the start, I'm so grateful to be surrounded by such kind people

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I'm not entirely sure how this blog thing works but if anyone has any questions post or comment them or if that doesn't exist e-mail me at gracehpetrie@gmail.com