9/4 class trip to Rabuco!

i am sorry i have been such a slacker lately and not blogged in 2.5 weeks! i have just gotten into a groove of everyday life here, so nothing really feels too exciting/worth blogging about. but lots has happened since my last post.

1) i came down with a cold on aug 27 or in spanish "resfriado" and i am just now (sept 10) getting better. so that was annoying, but thankfully i had a round of antibiotics with me so that i didn't have to see a doctor for a sinus infection!

2) my program had a class trip to Rabuco, a teeny tiny town an hour and half outside of Vina. it was very fun! we left at 10am on friday sept 4 and when we arrived we went to a vineyard that grows grapes for both wine and grapes, in spanish "uvas de vino o uvas de la mesa". so don't be surprised if i call them table grapes when i get back! haha. i took lots of pictures and i will post the link next!

there was a moo cow there too! and we also got a tour of the packing plant (reminded me of Lanes Packing) but it is not the "estacion de las uvas" right now, so no packing was going on.

if you look at the pictures, you will see that all of the branches of the grape trees are tied to wires above. this is super importante because the grapes have to be perfect (ie not fall to the ground or be bruised by touching other grape bunches) in order to be shipped to . . . drum roll.... the US of A! the chileans complain that we always get the best of chile's produce! the sell the 2nd rate grapes to the townspeople. :( so maybe it is true. there were women out there tying each branch up to these wires...and they get paid so many pesos per branch they tie.

we then went in at lunch in an outdoor/covered building place...there is a picture of it (a long table in a big room haha) and we had, take a guess, EMPANADAS! all of the gringos adore empanadas and these empanadas were SUPER RICO because there were made from scratch by the lady serving us in an adobe oven. (i took a pic of me standing be the oven!) um yes and i ate 3 empanadas de pino. (meat, onion, hardboiled egg, olive inside yummy bread and then cooked in the oven).

we then watched a couple dance the cueca which is the nation dance of chile. and then they taught us...but i already knew it because it is the main dance we are learning in my clase de danzas tradicionales! pretty sweet. then we toured the area behind where our little picnic was. and this place is where the grow flowers! so all the flower pictures are from little business in the middle of nowhere Rabuco! the ladies were carefully putting one teeny tiny seed in each little inch by inch square of dirt...what a tedious job! but the flowers were really pretty :)

then we played games/relay races. sack race, 3 legged race, tug of war, and hold an egg on a spoon in your mouth race....but my team won the egg race! good story: my friend colleen from vandy and i have this amazingly sarcastic/sisterly love hate relationship and we were on different teams....but we happened to sack race at the same time. she looked over at me while we were going to see if she were beating me and as she did so she tripped and fell on the ground! oh colleens! we then beat her team at the egg race but she beat mine in tug of war. good times.

overall, my rabuco experience = A+!