Fiestas Patrias and Ronja!

I had a great last 2 weeks! It started off with a weekend of Fiestas Patrias, in which Chile celebrates its independence. This consists of lots of barbeques everywhere, lots of quality family time and just a lot of food and alcohol. We were allowed to leave work early on Wednesday, at 2pm and each employee got lots of meat from the company to take home to cook up in the following days. I decided to freeze mine in, so Philip can help me eat it when he gets here. Thursday Barbara and I went to a Fonda, which is just a big park event, with music, food and lots of stalls.

This was such a nice day, we had a lot of fun! 

Saturday morning I got up early to join Alejandra, my roommate, and her boyfriend for a day in Viña del Mar where we ended up sightseeing a lot, especially the coast line which was such a nice difference from the city, Santiago, I am used to, and at night her boyfriend invited friends to his and we ended up playing a card game for most of the night. The following day I realised, wow I actually spoke Spanish all night! That is such a great feeling! Still when people ask, Do you speak Spanish? I say: a little bit, but really I can understand most of it now which is exciting! 

On thursday afternoon last week Ronja arrived. For you who don't know, Ronja is a good friend from my university in Arnhem and she is currently doing her placement in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. We both have had some times where we found the placements which are so far away from home, difficult, so now to see each other again, and share our experiences and to just chat with someone again so comfortably who knows your friends and life back home was really really nice! We went to Valparaiso for a day and Viña del Mar for a day, which both lie on the coast near Santiago. We saw a lot of both cities, walked a lot, and just caught up a lot. Saturday night we arrived back in Santiago and Sunday we hiked down Cerro San Cristobal, a high hill/mountain in Santiago, which gave us a nice view of Santiago. We ended our weekend with cooking together and watching a movie and we can now look back on such a good weekend!

As most of you know I got a new ACL (Anterior Cruciate Ligament/Kruisband in Dutch) and I have been doing sports 2/3 times a week. Suddenly Monday last week, after I got back from the gym, I spotted a massive lump on my largest scar on my knee from that surgery. It was about 4cms long and 2cms high. I must say I freaked out! I cried of shock first, because after all the physiotherapy of last year I really just don't want there to be anything wrong. Tuesday I straight away went to a hospital where they took xrays and ultrasounds. I went to a private hospital as basically anyone that can afford to have good healthcare should go to a private one. They weren't too common with what seemed like a complication from my surgery from a year ago, so because they were doubting on also doing an MRI, as the other scans hadn't told them enough, they sent me to a specialist yesterday. In the meanwhile I wasn't allowed to do any sports (let's just not count hiking as one;)). They also didn't have a lot of experience with it, but the doctor with the most experience had seen it once before but much smaller. I was able to choose out of 3 options, one being not doing anything and just wait and see if it goes away or starts to hurt, another one being putting a needle into the membranes of the cyst, so puncture it, and take away the liquid in there, or the last option being operated and taking out the whole cyst and screw and replacing it with something. The last option they recommended me to do back in Holland though so I decided to go for option 2, and with that option afterwards we also have to wait and see. If it comes back I will still need the surgery. This hurt SO MUCH, I had a little cry, but luckily it's pretty much gone now, so hopefully it will stay away!

I have been working hard at work to get my big project finished which I started on months ago for my placement task. I would like to finish it on friday, so before Philip comes THAT NIGHT, YES ONLY A FEW DAYS AWAAAAAY! So haha yes that would be great, although I can easily get distracted on the internet or with whatsapp, so 4 more days of focus and we shall see how far I get! Then I have two weeks of work and I will be doing lots of travelling with Philip and just spending quality time with him for 2.5 weeks. CANNOT WAIT, I will update you all on how amazing it was after he leaves, although I'm sure in the meantime I will upload some pictures on facebook. 

The office: My desk is the laptop's screen you can see, there are 8 desks in our space of the office. All are great people!
Sadly two colleagues are leaving us today. 

September

What I just will never get used to while being in Chile:

- Randomly seeing a person sleeping on the street
- I've seen people using the street as their toilet, and I see (homeless?) people hiding their bags in the street drainage and drunk homeless people and beggars...
- The metro and the buses at rush hour: literally every one of your body part is touching someone else's body parts, and you get pushed into the bus or metro like this:

- People full on making out in these crowded buses and metros, people have explained to me that because many people live with their parents until about 28, these are the places they can have their "privacy" without their parents watching

- How cold the houses are in the winter/spring

- The amount of cars, people, air polution in a city like this 

Haha so yes probably quite a few more things, which of course makes sense with me not having grown up here. It's interesting to see what life is like here and to really experience it for six months, but it's definitely made me realise that I do not ever want to permanently live in a large city. 

The last 2 weeks I have had quite a few down moments, but overall I am staying positive and making the most of my time here. I still haven't found a friend who I would spill all my secrets to yet, (not that I have many seeing as I'm an open book) I think that's been the hardest. My colleagues forgot to invite me when they went out for lunch last week, and although they realised 5 minutes after they left, those kind of moments just make me miss the familiarity of family and friends back home. But not to worry! I make sure I make myself happy again by distracting myself or making great Dutch cheese pancakes or anything like that haha. 

I also have some great moments of course, like last night I went to see a lovely girl Barbara, who I am getting to know better each week, perform in a play. I went with my two roommates and it was a nice evening and we ended just chatting the rest of the evening when we got home, and yes so those times are nice. Just relaxing and chatting. I also still really enjoy going to the biblestudy group on wednesday nights and church on sunday mornings. Also overall my colleagues are just a great laugh and I enjoy their company, so I am very lucky with that as well. 

What has really cheered me up is  receiving post from some of you, first of all thanks for your patience as it takes 5 to 6 weeks to reach me, but most of all thanks so much for the effort, I appreciate it lots! 

11th of September is a protesting day in Chile of something that happened in 1973. see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d'%C3%A9tat It usually involves people getting violent/aggressive, so most people are allowed to leave their work early, around 4pm, and then get recommended to just go home and don't leave the house, because of the violence outside. Leading up to this day, some of you might have read it on the news, also some bombs exploded in Chile, one in Santiago leading up to 14 people being hurt. I got home okay and nothing massively impacting happened during the night either apart from the expected fires or fights. 

The upcoming week are the days which are the Chilean's highlight of the year. They get more excited about this than Christmas or any other festivity. It always start on the 18th of September and then goes until and including the weekend, so this year we have a 4 day weekend which is great! All the national foods will be sold everywhere on the streets, massive barbecues are held in many parks and it's just one big party for these 4 days, so very curious of what it will be like exactly! 

Everyone is very excited about it being September because it means the worst of the winter is gone and, the clocks got changed last weekend so lots more light now! 

Ronja, a good friend from university in Holland who is doing her placement in Rio de Janeiro, is coming over the weekend after, which is very very exciting. And, of course, Philip the weekend after that, so I have lots to look forward to:)

I thought by showing some photos, you can all imagine what it's kind of like here.

Where I live:

What I wake up to every morning:)

Near my house: 

The Metro

My colleagues