Which brings me to my annoyance and frustration of the day, which this blog post has a lot of frustrations in it in case you wanted a warning. Today after my internship, Mary and I went to talk with Gene about whether we could count our outside reading hours as preparation hours for our internship. She said we weren't supposed to have any outside/preparation hours at all, everything was supposed to be done at our internship, which is ridiculous because we have to prepare for some things such as book club. We already have barely any free time and she's making us count less hours than we put in. I'm super frustrated with the fact that we barely have any free time and they are preventing us from doing a lot of things that we want to do because in the afternoons all we get to do is our volunteering or internships. We don't get to have classes with other students either, so when exactly are we supposed to be making friends, when we rarely have a chance to speak with people our age, and practicing our Spanish? It's ridiculous and I'm just getting exhausted with the schedule that we have.
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| Photo Cred: Google Images But seriously... how are we supposed to do that? |
Anyhoo! This week was interesting to say the least. At my volunteer I'm pretty sure the person was talking in Spanish instead of Gallego, when they normally speak Gallego, because I was actually understanding what she was saying when she as going over the newspaper. I lost her a few times when she did switch to Gallego to talk to another worker but other than that I was following. She was also teaching people how to say "My name is" in English and ended up writing it out on the board to say "mai naim is" for pronunciation to make it easier for people to say. I got to pass the balloon around to get people moving for my volunteer and some of the adults were being ornery. I just patiently waited for them instead of arguing with them to pass the balloon though. I'm pretty sure they were making fun of me but they were speaking Gallego so I only got the fact that they were talking about me and laughing really hard. Plus they were trying to not let me get the balloon too. It was nice to have them in good moods even if they were feeling ornery. It was a good ornery at least.
On Wednesday, I went to make up my internship hours that I skipped last week, plus this last Monday when I was feeling too motion sick to move so I hadn't gone. Wednesdays are the day that they clean a cemetery I found out. It wasn't really a cemetery but a path outside the cemetery. The cemetery was a lot nicer looking than one in the USA, it was all about the green life and looked more like a personalized family cemetery than anything. I mean it could have been just a family cemetery, I have no clue. Anyhoo, we were cleaning a path outside the cemetery up. So everyone got put into teams with different jobs, and I got put on the rock moving team. Well the rocks were huge and too big for anyone to carry so we had to roll them.
Okay so maybe the rocks were smaller than this boulder, but it sure felt like they were that big. It took a lot of time to roll the rock from the start point to the stairs where they then had to be rolled CAREFULLY down into a building and then out the building to the rock pile on the other side. The start point to the stairs was pretty long too. I didn't have any gloves because cleaning the cemetery was a surprise and I forgot my weeding gloves in the USA that I don't even own. Also in case you don't know, it rains a lot in Santiago so we were working in "mud". It was pretty solid mud for the most part but the rocks were covered in mud from being dug up and then we were rolling them into mud. Needless to say, my hands got a little bit on the muddy side and then my jacket did as well because I gave up rolling rocks after I rolled two to the stairs since it was bothering my wrists. I started carrying rocks though that were small enough to carry so that got my jacket pretty dirty.
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| Photo Cred: Google Images |
It was an experience to say the least, and pretty funny when you think about my group struggling to roll rocks down a path and getting them down the stairs. I wouldn't say it was the funnest thing I've ever done, but it wasn't terrible. It was entertaining for sure. One of my friends after I told them I was rolling rocks around made a "Rolling Stones" joke about it, which I mean I guess I was rolling some stones around too. Because rocks and stones are the same to me. After that we were supposed to go to a self defense class for our internship, but we needed to get cleaned up before our required tapas night that the school randomly has sometimes so we had to skip that.
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| Photo Cred: Google Images I'm the true expert of Rolling Stones now |
Tapas was okay. I found an alcoholic beverage (#cider) that wasn't terrible. That I'd be willing to drink. In fact, I almost ordered it without realizing it had alcohol in it because one of my other friends had ordered it and I was like "GIVE ME CIDER," but then someone pointed out there was alcohol in it so I decided not to. Someone made a huge deal about how I was going to drink alcohol which made me feel like I was doing something wrong which pissed me off. I can drink alcohol if I want, I don't see why it has to be a big deal, but I digress. Mostly because I wanted to say digress.
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| Photo Cred: Google Images CIDER.. GIVE... NOW... |
On Thursday in my first class of the day, we were put in groups to write a story based off a song we listened to. Now for those of you who can't tell by my blog posts, I'm a story writer. I write stories, its my life. So I was put in a group to write a story and I was ready to go until I heard who I was in a group with. We had to come up with a group name and I was all for "Elefantes intelligentes" because Elephants have amazing memories so they would be great story tellers. Instead we ended up being "Lana" because we were both wearing things made from yarn. Lamest name ever I must say, but my group member didn't give a shit what I thought. Then we get to the story making part and I would say things just to have my ideas shot down or ignored, which is never good for me. If I get shot down or ignored I'm just going to shut down because why should I even bother? What's the point in me trying if what I say isn't even taken into account. I was pissed and frustrated and feeling extremely hurt from it. It was a wonderful moment where my depression just popped its head in and was like "okay we will take over from here" since I had shut down. I love when I just give up and shut down and it seems like there is no stopping it... After class though I had a lovely chat with my host mom, I think Obama was discussed and my rock rolling abilities were for sure discussed. And after lunch, I spent the rest of the day in my room recuperating from my social interactions of the day that had not been successful. My recuperation took me 4 tv episodes and 2 movies before I was ready to do anything and by that time it was dark and I didn't really feel like going out since it was dark out so I watched another 2 movies. I'm a loser, I know, but I watched some great movies that I've been wanting to see forever.
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| Photo Cred: Google Images One of the movies I watched |
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| Photo Cred: Google Images Another movie I watched |
On Friday, I had my internship where I couldn't think of the words "your, his, hers, their, our" in English but I could think of them in Spanish. Too bad it was an English learning class right? Not that I have perfect English grammar or anything close to it, but I probably should have been able to think of your instead of tuyo. We ended up getting out of our internship early so Mary and I went to get chocolate con churros (okay I wanted froyo but the place was closed so we had to improvise) and we checked out a few shops as well. Then we went to chat with Gene and as you read above, it was a very frustrating conversation.
Anyhoo, that was my halfway point week, where I rolled rocks like a champion and now my body is super sore and not happy with me.
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