to school!

I live a half of a kilometer from my school, Colegio Ingles Saint John, and walk there every morning. I took some pictures on my way there recently so you can see what my walk to school looks like!

It's different in a lot of ways--in Wisconsin, it takes me about 25 minutes to walk to school (walking very, very slowly) and is about a mile away. Here, I leave some days at 7:57 to get to school by 8 (I have to walk SUPER fast but I usually make it in time). I really enjoy living so close!

So without further ado, here's the tour!

NOTE: It's not actually this light in the mornings anymore--daylight savings doesn't start until May 7th or something like that, so it's pretty dark in the mornings. I took these pictures on a Saturday when I had to go to school for an extracurricular activity (look at me, getting involved!).

Here's the house across the street that you see as you leave the front gate. The pink is a recent addition.

You turn to the left and walk down Los Coligues (my street), until you reach the far intersection.

Here's that intersection I was talking about. You turn to the left here.

Here's the view facing left:

If you look in the previous picture, you can see a sports court in the distance. You walk to the sports court and turn right before it into an alleyway sort of thing. 

Here's the alleyway. You walk down to the end....

Halfway there! 

We've made it to the intersection! You're looking to the left in this picture. See the white building in the center of the picture? That's the church next to my school (no affilation).

The white building on the left side of this picture is that church I was talking about. And the building next to it is my school! You just walk down this sidewalk 100 feet and the entrance is right there. We made it!

And here are some bonus pictures of my life!

My favorite local office supply store, which is convienently across the street from my school.

 My casita :) It's really starting to feel like home, which is a crazy feeling. Every house has that gate in front.

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One day recently, the sky was clear for the first time in awhile and all of a sudden I looked up and saw the mountains and they were covered in SNOW! It was breathtaking. I tried to take a picture, but it didn't turn out very well, but here it is anyways. If you look closely you can see the mountains in the distance! I hear it very rarely snows in Rancagua but an hour or so into the mountains there's snow. I love being near the mountains. It's gorgous. I can't begin to describe it.

What else is new? Everything is starting to feel normal. I can communicate relatively well (with horrible grammar but people understand). I've improved tons and tons and tons. School is going fine, I use the exchange student excuse to get out of history and psychology tests occasionally but I fully participate in the rest of the classes and even get better grades on the tests than the Chileans sometimes! It's starting to get chilly here, I weighed myself recently and gained 3 kilos in seven weeks, I recieved two letters on Wednesday, which absolutely made my day.... (I think I'll do a post about the mail sometime in the near future). The Calefont (hot water heater) broke on Thursday so I showered with a pot of hot water we heated on the stove, which made me feel very rustic, but they fixed it yesterday. I'm really enjoying myself. It's ridiculously hard, but ridiculously rewarding as well.

That's all for now. I have to go do some math homework and study for biology. But I mentioned letters and I'd love to recieve one from any of you! Email me if you need to know my address. (Plus, if I recieve a letter, you're probably going to get one back!).

Nikki