I've been through the desert on a bus with no name...

 Hola! Although Abby's impressive frequency of blogging might lead you to believe otherwise, I (Madeline) am actually still in Chile, too. Since the Chile Cheese Bloggers have been going our separate ways a little lately, let me just give a quick update on what's been happening to this gringa:

1. Last weekend, when Abby was in Iquique with the first half of the alphabet, I had a pretty low key weekend, thanks to the homework they're making us do these days. But I did go a mini-expedition on Friday afternoon to explore Parque O'Higgins, a big ole area of the city complete with an amusement park called Fantasilandia, some fountains reminiscent of the ones at Centennial Olympic Park in Hotlanta, and best of all, a super swanky horse racing place (is there a technical name for that?). Every Friday afternoon, they have horse races from 2-8pm. And fo' free!

 2. Also last weekend, I got to have lots of sweet quality time with the host fam. For example, I was sitting working on my history paper, and la Fernanda (12 years old) popped her head in to invite me to watch Camp Rock 2 with everyone. I hesitated a little, and she looked shocked and explained "it's the WORLD PREMIERE!". How could I think a silly paper was more important than the WORLD PREMIERE of Camp Rock 2?? So we spent a few hours singing along and swooning over the Jonas Brothers, dubbed in Spanish, of course.

3. The last news from last weekend (how am I writing so much about such an uneventful three days?) was that I got to go to a party at a real Chilean's house! Long story short, we met a girl from Florida on the metro one day, and she invited us to hang out with all of her Chilean friends. So we did, and it was so much fun to be one of the only gringas with a whole lot of Chileans.

4. Now, about this past weekend, I too got to go experience the very top of Chile in Iquique and Pica. As you can tell from Abby's post, it was the bomb.com. I don't know why exactly, but I really loved the desert. Even though it was mostly just brown expanses of sand and rocks, I thought it was really beautiful. I guess it was just my first time being in a desert, and it's pretty unbelievable. Not to mention that it was SO warm! We wore shorts and swimsuits and got sunburned and ate amazing fruit. And the sky was so big and so blue (wayyy too many pictures below...).

5. So now, after exactly 48 hours of being in Santiago, we'll head out again tomorrow night around 11pm, on a southbound bus, to frolic around the beauuuutiful Lake District of this incredible country for a whole week. Do we have a week off of school? Nope. 

Lots of updates to come...

6. It's our two month anniversary of our Chilean lives! Woohoo!

 

Driving along the coast from the airport to the city of Iquique

Erica and me in the major market in Iquique. Chile is so pumped to turn 200.

My turn to take a picture with the Vanderbilt "V." Those indigenous people loooved the Dores.

On a walk near our hotel. You can see the desert, part of the oasis, and even some mountains way back there.

One of the handful of street corners in the tiny desert oasis of Metilla.

On our drive back to the airport, we stopped in the tiny town of La Tirana to find a craaazy celebration going down. We're learning that no Latin American celebration is quite complete without dancing.

Back in the market in Iquique... sorry these are a little out of order...

That's me in the big beautiful expanse of DESERT.

Fake-snuggling with this seemingly adorable sea lion, right after he lunged at our friend...