Marieke Feenstra's blog: SUN!

So to start this post off I just want to show my excitement about it having been hot these last few days!!! My face even got burned yesterday, so so exciting haha! Something I'm not sure I've mentioned is that of course it's winter here, which generally means around 15 degrees each day, sometimes around 20, but it only reaches that around 4pm and then the sun goes down pretty quick. Now this weekend it's between 25 to 28 degrees! So nice to feel the sun burning on my face again! Been a while!
That's the main thing the internationals complain about. How cold the houses are during the winter. The houses are barely insulated and so unless you continuously have the heater on, which no one has as it's expensive, it's very cold, so you sleep with a hot water bottle, many many blankets and jumper, long trousers etc. But luckily it's getting warmer so that's exciting!

Something that is very easy in Chile, which has always been a bit of a hassle in Holland, is the way of greeting. You just kiss everyone on the right cheek, when you meet them for the first time and then afterwards always when you see them and when you leave them, you kiss them. SO EASY. Whereas in Holland it's like only if you haven't seen someone for a couple of weeks you kiss them 3 times and then only if you don't normally just give them a hug and if you don't normally do that either, you might just shake their hand or you just wave... Very confusing.

So these last twee weeks have been good! My birthday was much better than expected. I was surprised by work with a personally made cake and some singing and a decorated desk, so that was lovely! Also my biblestudy at night was fun:) Still expecting quite a few letters and packages which have been sent, so I'm looking forward to them, but it takes a month if not 1.5 months, so that's annoying. Then the following night, the 7th, I got surprised by my biblestudy group and some other friends with a surprise party which Mirva, my Finnish roommate had organised, so that was super lovely!!! Had a great night.

The weekend passed pretty quickly and then I was at work again. Work has been quite boring, doing market research every day just filtering information, but I just mix it up a bit with learning some Spanish and using facebook and whatsapp as I shouldn't be doing it too quick anyway as otherwise there might be issue again of needing to think of a new task haha. So yes the days go quite slow, 9.5 hours is a long time each time, but overall my time here goes pretty quickly I think! Lots of things to look forward to from half September onwards which is exciting, so that keeps me going! We will have the national public holidays for 4 days, which is one big feast like Queensday. The following weekend a friend who is doing her internship in Brazil will visit me and the weekend after, first weekend of October, Philip will come for 2.5 weeks! Can't wait!

Friday we also had a public holiday, so an English girl who is new in Chile and came to the church I go to and I went to Valparaiso again for two days. That was really nice and the second day we just spent on the beach which was great!! Today 28 degrees so will definitely be sunbathing a bit more, before I'm back to work again with which I don't see any sun for 5 days.