Flashback

We're back in Santiago and everything is starting to be normal again. You could say "Oh! You must be happy to see your family and friends again! You were outside for a long time!" and yes, I am happy to see everyone again, but I had such a great time in Maine and in the rest of the trip, that's kind of difficult to be extremely happy.
I would like to write about my first day in Waynflete, because it can resume my whole experience in that amazing school.
I had an excellent relation with Necal, my host sister; the things she liked were very similar than the ones I do like. So the first school day we went walking to Renata's house, Julio's host sister, so Necal could show both of us the whole school. I can remember clearly how confusing was that day. The campus is formed by six buildings, three really big and three of the size of a big house. Classes are all in different buildings and with different people. The students are the ones that change classrooms, not the teachers, so the teachers decorated and put the desks of their classrooms as they wanted.
When my sister tried to show Julio and me where were our classrooms, I thought that my head was going to explode. I had Algebra II and Spanish III in the third floor of Emery Building (the biggest), less Tuesday's when I had Algebra in the second floor of the same building. Chemistry was in the first floor, English 10 in the second floor of Morril's House, Drawing and Painting in the second floor of the Art Building, and Lower School 2nd and 3rd grade in the underground of the Lower School Building. Sounds easy to find but it's not like that, each building is like a maze, or at least they were mazes for the poor and confused chileans.
Before the meeting/breakfast that we had with the headmaster, Necal and me went to a teacher's classroom that was going to lend us clothes for Mainer Day, because we were in the Spirit Week. Everyday of the week you had to dress following a topic. Tuesday was Mainer day, Wednesday was Twin day, Thursday was Preppy or Granola day and Friday was Neon day.
Then all the chileans (Cristóbal, Julia, Julio, Miss Marcela, and me) and their host sisters or brothers (Jack Cutler, Katy Nelligan, Renata Levine, Peter Stein and Necal Phillips) had the meeting with the headmaster, that was pretty short. After that I had Lower School class, where we helped the spanish teacher with his class. I promise I forgot how to speak spanish for a second, I had to read the numbers the teacher showed to me so the kids could repeat them after me. I forgot how to say "diecinueve" so after thinking a lot, I managed to say "decinueve". Near at least!
Then I had Spanish III, and I knew in which Building was the class, but I forgot how to arrive in the classroom. I was lucky because a guy after looking at my extremely worried face probably thought that I was kind of lost, so he offered me to guide me to my class. Thanks God! The Spanish class was like and English class here. Breda, the teacher, was really nice and all the students were like that too.
Spanish class finished, and we had to go to an Assembly on the Art Building. I met with the other chileans there, because the head master was going to present us to the school. He just said our names so it was short, not enough time to be nervous. After some time, the lunch time arrived, so we went to a place called the atrium to have lunch. Then I had English 10 with Julia, and Katy (Julia's sister) took us to the class. We said hi to Jim, the teacher, we told him our names and a little about us and then we sitted down in two free sits and just waited. Everyone that entered to the room just say "Hi Jim!" and went to take a sit. The relation between teacher-student in Waynflete was really informal, we liked it because you feel nearer to the teacher, there was more confidence. But the students were very respectful, they never started complaining when the techer gave them homework, and they have way more homework than we have, but their classes are more relaxed. So going back to the main topic, the teacher presented us to the rest of the students, said us to talk a little about ourselves and then the class continued. All the homeworks he gave the class were about talking about ourselves. English class finished, Algebra II was coming! Julia and me waited for Katy, so she could guide us to our next classes. She arrived and we went to Emery Building. She was a little confused because the number of the classroom where I was supposed to have Algebra II, was a History classroom, but then we discovered that only Tuesday's I had Algebra there, and the other days I had it in other classroom. Fortunately it was Tuesday, so I arrived in the correct classroom. The teacher, Jerry, was very nice with me, and the students too. He didn't present me the first day, he just started his class. He was very motivating and the class was always paying attention because the way he taught made things funnier. Algebra II finished and time for Performing Arts or Sports came, but that week only some people had things to do, so everyone was having fun on the schoolyard with activities for Spirit Week.
That was my first day, that could resume all the month I was in there, but only the school part, because I could continue talking about the amazing people I met, my relation with everyone and more stuff, but I think that what I wrote is long enough. Only one more thing to say: I loved Waynflete.
Javiera Bao

Boston, MA Third Day

Today was Julio's birthday and Julita organized a surprise party yesterday night, it was so much fun! Today Julio chose where we were going, we had lunch at McDonald's, then we went to China Town and a lady of a store was so mad at us because she thought we were going to rob all the store. Then we went to a park and each one had until six pm to go and see the streets around the park, eat or drink something, buy clothes, etc.

It's the thirds day without the family and I'm always wondering how will be the day I just lived with them, the faces and phrases Michele would do about a cloth, a person, a word or situation.
Then I start remembering about the funny things we lived together, for example: one night we where in the highway in Mrs. Girard's Prius and we ran out of gas taking an exit to go to the gas station, it was rainig so hard but Michele's car was "near" this exit, so we went to the car and to the gas station. We bought the gas and we return to Prius, Mrs. Girard put the gas in the car but this didn't start! We called the mechanic and Michele's dad to come and help. When the mechanic arrived we ask him if he had brought the gas but he didn't, we were in shock. So he took the car out of the highway to fix it at the next day and we went home. The Prius at the next day started without problems, it only needed a "rest" and it was almost new!
What did I learn about this situation? Don't use a Prius if you don't have enough gas, it can't be good...
I know in the future I will laugh out loud so hard, this kind of situations are the ones you don't forget so easly. Also the people, I know it will be hard to see Michele and her family in the future, but they became one of the most important people in my life in this short time, maybe we won't be so close in a few years but they are a part of my life now and they'll always be... All the things we did together, all the "big thinkers" and bad pronunciations (I wanted to say sheet of paper and I said "shit" of paper, they were looking at with a face I can't describe, I was as red as a tomato.)
This was a great experience and now we have the rest of this trip to continue enjoying and learning. It will be awesome!

Boston, Mass.

After a asd goodbye, we wanted to have fun and be all together, so we were kind of exited for the thing that will come.
We arrived to the hotel and Miss Poly and Miss Marcela started doing the check in but not everyone had rooms, so the pairs that were ready (most of the girls) took their suitcases and went to their rooms.
We were at the hotel for about an hour and then we went to the "center" of Boston.
We took a bus from the hotel. The first thing that we did was looking for the streets so we can know where we were and then to know where we should go to take the bus.
We were kind of hungry, so we went to Wendy's to had lunch.
We went to the mall (a expensive one) but anyone bought anything.
We separated our gruop on two, one went to the nike town and the other one stayed at Marshalls.
We went back to thje place where the bus left us and we had to separated our group again.

McAuley High School:
Claudia, Loreto, Macarena, Consuelo, Florencia and me (Maria Jose) went to McAuley and we had such the most beatiful exeperience ever.
The girls were so nice with us, everyone wanted to know everything about Chile because they though that Chile was like primitive (one of the girls ask us if we had McDonal's! )
We all know that been on another country is difficult, and been on another family and house is difficult too, but after few days, everyone wanted to stay more than a month.
The first week was the SPIRIT WEEK, where the girls dressed for the day. Monday was Twins Day, and you suppost to dressed with one of your friends with the same clothes. Tuesday was the Sport with a Jersey, were you can go with sweatpants and dressed with the team that you like. Wensday was the Gold & Green day because of the St. Patricks Day. Thursdaywas the Police Day, and you can go dressed with different color that don't match together. Friday was the color day, and the colors were asigned for classes.
Second week was pretty normal, Dubi gave us the schedules and we started going to different classes.
Wensday of the third week we tryed to go to Sugarloaf, but it was rainig so we ski for about 20 minutes and we decided that we didn't wantes to stay anymore, so we went to a place were they have trampolins and different things. We had such a good time there.
Easter Weekend everyone did diferent things. Clau went to Sugarloaf at like 4 a.m to see the sunrise at the mountain. We were surpirsed because easter baskets were like Christmas, so they gave to us present instead of chocolate eggs!
For the goodbye everyone was crying, anyone wanted to leave so it was so sad. But then, the best was coming..

READY TO START A NEW ADVENTURE

CPH-CJA is very please to announce that on March 12, a new group will start one of the most important experiences in their lifes. For some of them it's going to be the first time away from home... What motivates them to participate?...On one hand the wonderful opportunity to learn about a different culture, but also because deep inside they want to learn to communicate, to express their feelings, to let the people know a little about this long narrow piece of land almost hanging out of the map...

The group will be led by Miss Marcela Martinez and Miss Paulina Naveas . The students selected this year are : Julia Pacareu, Cristobal Larco, Julio Heyermann, Felipe Valdivieso, Daniel Venegas, Juan Jose Garcia, Pablo Rojas, Javiera Bao, Macarena Rodriguez, Florencia Ventura, Loreto Figueroa, Catalina Kanthak, Gabriela Bofill, Mª Jose Marcos, Consuelo Vizcaya y Claudia De Goyeneche.

God bless you all, be with you along the way and bring you back home healthy and safe...

Miss Cecilia Gambino

Macaluso's Camp

Hi, on Saturday 4 I went to the “Macaluso’s camp” (where they go to the vacations) with my family and Pilar’s family. We have so much fun.
We arrived there like 2 pm. and we went to a restaurant to eat something, and then to “matterhorn” (ski center) because there were friends of my family. We stayed there like an hour, and we went back to the house, where Pilar, Bridget and her mom have just arrived to the house.
We played games (like apples to apples), went to walk and we have had an “adventure” hahahaha, took pictures and videos, etc. Then we watched “Scary Movie” 1 and 2.
Mary, Bridget, Pilar and I went to sleep an other camp (Anne’s brother, my mom)… Mary and Bridget slept in a room and Pilar and I slept in the living room. We talked a lot before to go to sleep.
The next day, our “parents” went to wake up to us (like 10 am… so early haha), so we wake up to take the breakfast and go back to home (Portland).

Sooo much fuuun ! :)

Field visits in Portland....amazing experiences !!

As Pilar said in a post before, people in Cheverus High School is so friendly, and the teachers very kind, they always offers helping you when you need them. This is very important for us and especially to improve our English. 

The first day that we (I mean Cheverus group) were here, Cheverus organized a field trip to the White Mountains. We went with the Spanish group from Cheverus, Miss Terry and Miss Pamela. We went to a beautiful big Hotel, where a woman told us about the history of the Hotel. It was very interesting  because the Hotel was very old and had a long history. Then we did TUBING in the snow, this was amazing and we spent a great time there. When we finished our time in the tubing, we went to a restorant near the Hotel to eat something. There was a toy train that Arturo really hated.... hahaha!!

We went to another two social field trips: one to the Habitat Humanity, this was a place were volunteer people goes to build houses for poor people, but because we weren't adults, and for safety reasons, we couldn't construct so we helped to put all the materials in order. The houses weren't like the houses that we construct for poor people in Chile ( Un techo para Chile), this houses were very big and hd 2 floors!!.... for us this was very impressive.

In the other social field trip we went to the Soup Kitchen, were we helped other volunteers, preparing the lunch for the poor people, and the we had serve it.  Gregorio (the person from Cheverus who organized that) divided us in different kind of work, for example Arturo and Juanjo cut the strawberries while Pilar, Elena and myself put all the yogurt in a big bowl. Miss Pamela and Matias prepared the salads.

Before we went to the Soup Kitchen we went to a public school called Cathedral School to did the presentation of Chile in an 8` grade. There the people was very friendly too and they were very interesting in Chile and our culture. After the presentation we visited the rest of the school. In the kindergarden the kids were very cute and said Hola .... ( in spanish!!)

Here we have known different and beautiful places.... but we have had also the opportunity to help people.... it has been amazing!