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.