From Thanksgiving to the end of the year party

Thanksgiving dinner ended up being quite fun, even though it was a decent amount of work, especially for a group of us who had never prepared a full Thanksgiving before. Mimi, Ruth, Bridget, Caryn, and I invited some of the Chileans that we're closest with over for the event. The funniest part of the whole meal was probably the horrified looks on the faces of our guests when we explained that this meal would be self-served in a buffet style. Completely unheard of in their parties, we really had to convince them that it was okay to take as much or as little as they wanted. Below is a picture of the whole group:

The Friday following Thanksgiving Mimi, Ruth, Caryn, and I attended a retreat in El Quisco, a beach town about seven hours north of Chillan. We travelled by bus to Santiago (and man, I must say, we watched some really lovely movies on the bus ride there. . .all containing extreme amounts of violence), ate lunch, and then got on another bus to El Quisco. It's a beautiful town, and the retreat center that we stayed at was less than a fifteen minute walk from the beach. The retreat was hosted by the Chile Maryknollers, and was definitely the most, um, interesting retreat I've ever been on, with very alternative ideas of spirituality. In any case, it was nice to get out of Chillan for a week and hang out at the beach a little, even though it was waaaaaaaaaaaay too cold to even consider going in the water. Meanwhile, back in Chillan, summer has truly arrived.

Here's a picture from the beach at El Quisco:

And here are the really large, creepy looking spiders that I called tarantulas (but really are not at all harmful) that were hanging out around the retreat center:

This is Caryn, Sarah (a Maryknoller), and I hanging out at Isla Negra, the home of famous Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. It was easily one of the strangest places I've ever been based on the odd things this man collected, but the view was gorgeous.

This week we had our end of the year party at the house, which of course involved lots of eating and then each class performed a skit. It really was a lot of fun, especially after all the hard work that went into it.

Today we put up a Christmas tree, which just feels super strange considering it's quite hot outside. We're trying though--we watched Love Actually last night and keep listening to Christmas music whenever we can.