After waking up this morning and eating breakfast, my exchange student and I arrived at Santiago College, where I spent the day shadowing her classes and doing activities with our group. First, we headed down to the school’s kitchen and met Chef Alejandro. Here, he taught us how to make “pina” empanadas with meat, olives, and onions. After we all made our own empanadas and stuck them in the oven, we went outside and took some nice pictures of Santiago’s mountain views by the school’s athletic fields. While we waited for our empanadas to cook, we watched a Spanish movie about a historical political uprising in Chile. When the empanadas were ready, we went back to the cafeteria to try them, and they turned out pretty good! Then, we walked to the art room, where we painted mandala squares for the “Cary Academy Exchange” wall mural in the school’s hallway. When we finished our art, we met up with our exchange students and attended their remaining classes. Even though the classes were sometimes hard to understand because they are all taught in Spanish, it was interesting to see our students participate in the same classes we take at CA, but in a different learning environment. After school, a group of us ate dinner and went to see the movie “La Momia” or “The Mummy” at the movie theater across from school. Luckily, it was in english (but with Spanish subtitles) , so we could understand it much better than the movie we watched earlier in the day!
The subtitles also gave us all a few new Spanish vocabulary words to add to our list. After dinner and the movie, we all went back home and spent time with our host families before going to bed.