Hey everyone. this is it. the final blog of my year in Chile. I have a week and a half left but i have a feeling i will be really busy next week with friends and family and I wont have the time to do another one. so lets see what went on in my second to final week in chile.

Thursday i had the english conference. I decided to talk about what it was like to be an exchange student because it is something that has kind of taken over my life ... in a good way. I think i talked a little quickly though because when i looked out in the crowd after my presentation, there were quite a few blank stares. i felt so comfortable talking in front of everyone though. my public speaking skills have gotten so much better. by the end i had a few teachers tell me that i looked so natural in front of everyone. some other people talked. one girl talked about her exchange to the United States and another talked about a trip to Easter island. there was a magic show and another friend sang a John Denver song. It was a lot of fun to watch and we all got certificates at the end.

Friday was the first of my goodbye parties. i decided to have one with my group of guy friends and then another bigger one later with all my friends. so the first one was the one with the guys. so after tutoring english at school for an hour, i headed back to my quincho for a little fiesta. we had the pool table, a pingpong table and play station in the quincho and a bunch of the guys. it was a solid evening. everyone had a good time i think. it got a little emotional at times when people actually took the time to think of the reason why we were all together. i will never forget my "Gamberros Pro" !

Saturday I went to the movies with Ramiro, Felipe, Pia and Maca. We went to see this one movie, i cant remember the title, the island of something, but oh man, i loved it, it was so good. had me going right til the end. after the movie, ramiro, me and pia headed back to felipe´s place to hang out. we were there talking and watching tv until about 2:30am before coming home.

Sunday was a relaxing day at the house. In the afternoon, i went back to the movie theatre with my host dad and Ramiro to see iron man 2 again, it was better the first time but still an alright movie. That was about all that went on for the rest of the weekend.


Right now at school, everyone is getting pumped for my goodbye party this weekend. It is with a list and with gaurds so there are no problems and only friends show up, but there are still 150 people on the list. It is going to be a fun time. So right now everyone is excited. i think when this weekend is finished, things will start getting a little more sad. because right now everyone is anticipating a party, but after this there are no more. so it will be an emotional week next week with lots of tears i can imagine. this is not the most fun part of the exchange.

So one final goodbye for the blog. I hope all of the people that kept updated with these blogs enjoyed them. I look forward to sharing all of my adventures with everyone when i return to good ol´canada. this year has been so amazing. I have learned so much in such little time. I have experienced the good and the bad and taken advantage of all the opportunities that i could get my hands on. I have no regrets at all from this year and i feel that everything that I did helped to make my year perfect. It is going to be extremely difficult to say goodbye to all the people i have met here. over the last year, i have gotten so attached with some of the people, that i cant imagine waking up and not seeing them all the time. it is going to be a very emotional last week at school especially with the goodbye video that i have prepared for my class. I will never forget this chapter of my life but now it is time to begin a new one. But, i will always have the memories, pictures and videos to look back on with the hopes of returning one day. Thank you all again for taking the time to read my blog and i will see you very shortly.

PS- thank my wonderful parents for all they have done for me, not only on this exchange but for everything. they have really helped me out alot and gave me the opportunities to do all of these great things.

Viva Chile

Daniel Parsons

estudiante intercambio (2009-2010)

time is ticking down

im really in the final stretch now. since i got home from the north, i realized how little time i have left. right now im just trying to get final plans in before i have to get on the plane ride home. so this is what happened this week. not much but it is the preperation for the 2 weeks to come.

Thursday was kinda good because we got to retake the class picture. they originally took it when i was in the north so i missed it but something was wrong with the colour so we got to reatke the photo. So i had to get all spiffied up for that. I got a lot of pictures with my class which works perfect for the video that i am making for them for the end of the year!




Friday we had a get together at my neighbours house for poker. Her dad is the general of the army in my city so now i can say i met him :P. It was a good night together with friends. There was 8 of us there playing games all night. Juan came back to sleep at the house after.

Saturday night there was a party thing in the quincho of the municipality hosted by one of the courses in my school. So there were lots of people that i knew from school there. We went to the party around 11:00pm. Did a lot of dancing with friends. Everyone seems to want to dance with me now that they found out im leaving soon :P. We left that dance at like 2:30am. Still not all partied out, me and 3 other friends made our way to another venue. It was different from most places that i have been to here. I walked in the door with my 3 friends at almost 3 in the morning and there was a lot of adults there dancing. It was like a folklore dance club with a band and everything. But there was a couple people my age there so we danced with them, haha. the one girl had to teach me how to do the dance, but i got it in the end. it was actually a lot of fun. We went to the house around 4:30 or 5ish in the morning.

Sunday was an early 8:00 morning after a good 3 hour sleep to go play a futbol game. There are two main groups of guys in my class and we were having a match against each other. So we got to the field around 9:00am to warm up and the game started at 10:00. It was actually a really good first half but in the second half they kinda took control. I think it was because 4 of our players were running on 3 hours of sleep. So the other guys won but it was still a lot of fun. After the game Ramiro and I came home for lunch and we were at the house for the rest of the afternoon as far as i remember.

Not much going on in school really. I have been passing around a book to everyone to write memories and it is filling up quite quickly. I realised how dangerous handball is in chile. apparently people here cant take a little contact because there were 3 different fights in gym class the other day (because we are in class with another course). haha, i was running with the one kid and just pushed him a bit and he like spazed out for nothing so i just laughed. lacrosse soon... Tommorow I have the "conferencia de inglés". I have to do a presentation in english about being an exchange student. I rehearsed it earlier with the english teacher and she fell in love with it...thats just my gringo vibe. So that is what is going on tommorow as far as i know.

My plan for the next 2 weeks is: friday, im having a bunch of the guys at my house to chill out together one last time. we are playing pool, ping pong and play station and having a barbeque or something. This saturday is still open, i might go to the movies with a couple people. 1313. Sunday i will be climbing a mountain with like 7 other friends to get one last good view of coyhaique, hopefully a different on from the one before. Next friday is my farwell party. im expecting like 140 people maybe, it is with a list and bodygaurds though so we´ll see. and it is also the same night as a festival at my school so there will be a lot of people coming late i would imagine. and next saturday is still open as well. things are starting to fall into place though. I have about 50 people that want to come to see me off at the airport as well so they are thinking about getting a bus so we can all go together. My host dad has something the day i go so he wont be going to the airport with us so my host mom said it would be cool if all my friends came. so we´ll see what happens. My next 2 weeks should be filled with all different kinds of emotions but im looking forward to all the great things that are coming up before i leave. before i know i will be home and only have these times to look back on. but im starting to ramble a little bit and ive got a few other things to do tonight so i will talk to you all next week. next week might possibly be the last blog that i post so stay tuned ;).

thanks for reading!

los quiero mucho, buenas noches :)

Viaje al Norte

Hey everyone! So I just got back from my trip to the north, it was pretty relaxing. I got to see some cool stuff which i will try to explain in this blog!



All of this started on the 12 of may. I went to school in the morning. After lunch, my host dad brought me to the airport to begin my journey. I took my first plane to santiago. I arrived at like 9 at night so instead of going directly to the house of my exchange friend, I went to my older host brothers apartment and spent the night there. He was busy studying so we didnt do anything though. it was kind of an early first night.







On thursday, i woke up at 7:30am so i could leave my bros apartment and go to the bus station to get on an early bus to Chillan. i was staying at the house of an other exchange student from denmark who i met in Torres del Paine. When i got on the metro there was this one realy nasty lady selling me the ticket and like not giving me a break so another nice woman who was walking by helped me get it. So when i got to the bus station, I had to wait like 30 minutes. I met a guy from Quebec who was here on vacation. So when i got on the bus it was like a 5 and a half hour bus ride to his city. My friend Stefan picked me up at the bus station and we went back to his house for lunch. In the afternoon he took my into town. We just spent the night chilling at his house.


on the friday, we woke up around 10:30 in the morning. We walked to town to eat hotdogs at this one restaurant. After that we went to this little market that sells Chillan souvenirs. We walked back to the house from town, about a 20 minute walk. Stefan´s school is close to his house so i went there for a little tour before heading home for lunch. At the school, there was a girl Liz, who is another exchange student i met in the south from United States, so i got to see her aswell. She ended up coming to the house for lunch. After lunch i took a short nap because it was kind of a late night the night before. Stefan´s parents own this like sushi place thats really close to the house so we went there when i woke up. Ive begun to like sushi now. Soon after the sushi bar, we made our way to the bus station to go to Los Angeles (Chile). At the bus station, there were 2 other rotary people that weren´t on the south trip. A girl from Finland and a girl from France. But for some reason they were on another bus to LA, an earlier one. So needless to say, Stefan and I were late. When we got to the bus station in LA, half of the exchange students were there waiting already. From there, we all went to this one lady from Rotarys house. The other half of the exchange students were there and it was so good to see them all again. There was one more new kid from the United States that I hadnt me, so now i know everyone. At the house we kind of went over the plan for the weekend and at like 11:00pm we all went to different rotary peoples houses for the night. Stefan and I stayed in a woman from rotary´s house who was on the trip to the south with us. In the night we watched tv and went to bed kind of early.


It was an early Saturday morning, 7:45. We met everyone at the house we were at the night before. From there we took a bus in the direction of Cañete. The whole day we spent going to the houses of the Mapuche people. Mapuche people are the indigenous people of Chile. They speak a different language and are really devoted to agriculture. We ate at one of the houses for breakfast. The food was very natural, different, but still good. After that we drove around to different places taking pictures and visiting more tribes. I danced with one of the Mapuche ladies. We made our way to Cañete but only ended up staying for like 10 minutes, pretty weird. We had a late lunch at the same place where we had breakfast and then made our way back to Los Angeles. In LA, there was kind of like a farwell dinner bacause it was the last night that everyone was together. We all ate so much because no one really ate that much at the Mapuche place. Then the Rotary gave us gifts. I wasnt expecting to get anything because im not technicallu in their district but i got the same things as everyone else. I got a huge HUGE chilean flag and a plate that has like my name, and chilean and exchange program on it. I was so thankful for the Rotary in the north and all that they did for me. Then we all said speeches about our experience in Chile. When the dinner was done, everyone went back to the same house and we all spent the night together.



We all woke up basically around the same time the next morning. It was breakfast and showers first. After that we didnt have much time before we had to go to the bus station so we just played futbol and basketball in the backyard. The bus left around noon. Everyone on my bus slept the entire way back to Chillan. We got picked up at the bus station by Stefans mom. In the night we went to McDonalds then headed home to watch a movie.





Stefan and I slept pretty late on Monday, his host mom said he didnt have to go to school while i was there, so we woke up around noon. Apparently the night of the big earthquake back in feburary, one of the jail walls caved in killing like 5 people and letting over 200 people free. The police opened fire a got like 5 of the prisoners but all of the others escaped. That night they burnt down a bunch of houses and we sexually harassing people. They ended up catching 40 people (who are no in the jail in Conceptión) but the other ones are still out there. So monday in the afternoon, Stefan decided to take me and show me the jail. It was a mess. Outside the wall that caved in, there used to be like 9 houses, and now all of them are burned down to nothing, and you can only see the pool in one of their backyards. So after seeing that mess, we went home for lunch then back to the center to hang out. In the night i talked to my dad from canada because it was his birthday.




On tuesday, Stefan went to school in the morning so I just walked around the town. In the night, we went to Stefan counsellors house for hotdogs. Her daughter is going on exchange to Denmark next year. We spent a lot of time at her house talking and going through her amazing music collection of like 1000 CDs. It was late when we got home.



On wednesday we went to Conceptión, the town that got hit the hardest by the earthquake. However, it has been almost 3 months since the earthquake and they have done an amazing job of cleaning it up, i would definietly say that they were prepared. There were still a couple building that didint look too good though. In Concé, we went to the mall. We went to see Iron Man 2. After that we did a little bit of shopping and saw the girls from Chillan also. I called my host sister to come visit me but she was busy studying and the mall was kinda far from her university. I picked up a couple CDs in Concé because we dont have CD stores in Coyhaique go figure. We went home in the night and got picked up at the bus station by Stefans host mom.

The next day was the big futbol match for the south american cup. My team ("LaU", Universidad de Chile) is still in the Cup right now so we went to a friend of Stefans to watch the game against Flemengo (team from Brasil) in the quater final game. Of course my team won and is going on to the semi finals, but it kind of sucks because they dont play again until after the world cup and i wont be here to watch. So anyways, the night they won, there were lots of celebrations. Stefan and I went to a disco with his friends!

Friday was a holiday for the "21 de mayo", a day when chile won the war over Peru. The next night there was a birthday party for a friend of Stefan. I got to meet a lot of people there. That is all that happened really on Friday.

I left in the morning on Saturday from Chillan. The last time i will see my good friend Stefan for a long time. I made my way to Temuco, about a 4 hour bus ride south. When i got to the bus station, a host cousin picked me up and brought me back to their house. I spent the day with the samily driving around the city and getting to know Temuco. They have a huge casino there. We went to the mall to eat and then all went back to the house. I was taking a night bus Saturday so i could make it back in time to catch my flight. So my bus left from Temuco to Puerto Mont at 1:00 in the morning.

I slept most of the bus right. When i got to Puerto Mont, I took a cab to the airport. I actually made it in time for my flight and travelled half way through Chile in the process. It was only an hour flight home from there. When i got to the airport, I had to take a 45 minute bus home which is when I got to see my family.

When I got back from my trip I really realized how little time I have left, which actually kind of scares me. I have less then 4 weeks left and only like 3 weekends, so crazy. This weekend I have 2 options. Option one, I go to Chile Chico with my host family and perhaps Argentina which will be really cool. and Option 2, stay in coyhaique to play a futbol game with the 2 groups from my class against each other and then climb another mountain. My family isnt sure if we are going or not but either way it should be a great weekend! Right now Im trying to spend as much time as i can with all of the people I have learned to love and trying not to think of the day when I have to go. Definitely the hardest part of the year right now, but im sure there are still lots of good times to come, thanks for reading and we will be in touch soon. Hope you enjoyed the blog of the north.

Día del alumno / Día de Madreee

Hey, this is actually a blog from last week but i didnt have the chance to finish it before i went north. so here was what happened like 2 and a half weeks ago.

still spending lots of time with my friends from school. i sure am going to miss them.



Friday was the "día del alumno" which is like the students day. We didn´t have to wear our usual uniform. In the morning a few people´s mom´s came and gave us pizza. We took pictures all first period. We actually had to study 2nd and 3rd period though. After lunch we went back to school for the compitions. For the compitions, the school was spilt up into teams based on the course. there are 4 courses per grade (1°A, 1°B, 1°C, 1°D por ejemplo), and there are 6 grades in my school. So each team had one course from every grade. So my team was all of the 7°D, 8°D, 1°D, 2°D, 3°D and 4°Ds from the school. We had to participate together in the compitions. My brother went out for our team first for the strong man compition. The object was to do 20 pushups, walk on your hands across parrell bars, go through 3 rugby player, 10 suicides, and climb a rope to the ceiling. My host bro ended up winging it which kinda makes him the strongest in the school when you think about it. After that they had other compitions like for futbol, guitar, singing and things like that. I went up for the last one. 3 people from each team had to do some really nasty stuff. I was supposed to go second but it got cancelled after 2 of the teams threw up. You had to like eat a sandwhich with banana, mayonese, break and a chili pepper, then drink 1.5 leters of water, then eat a raw egg, then do a puzzle, then spin around 10 times and walk back to the team with an egg. So i was supposed to be the one who got the egg next but the compition got cancelled when 2 teams were unable to finish .. maybe for the best. when the compitions were done we were allowed to go home. In the night a couple frineds from school came over to eat french friends and watch a movie. When they left the people who usually come to my house to play games came over for the night. there was pia, eli, paulita, joo, ramiro and i. It was a good night!




Saturday a couple of girls were at my house to practice guitar with ramiro and a friend. The only stayed for like an hour though. When they left I went to the church to watch a couple friends from school dance cueca. Then after that was the school dance. I wanted to stay at the school dance all night because it was my first and last one but my bro and a bunch of friends left kinda early to go to another get together. I danced with a lot of friends from school. when the dance was done, at 2:00am, i decided to go home instead of going to where all the guys were because i was kind of tired.




Sunday was the "día de madre" (mothers day). We took my mom out for lunch at a place just outside of Aysén, about an hour drive. It was a very fancy hotel/restaurant. The food was amazing and definitely filled me up. Another friend, Schmidt, was eating there with his family too. So after we went for a walk. There was a great view of a lake and mountains and we saw sea lions aswell. In the hotel, we played pool and watched a futbol match until it was time to go home. At the house I talked to my family from Canada and wished my mom a happy mothers day as well.



On monday there was a thing in the school for mothers day. Ramiro was playing guitar and had the girls from saturday singing. I got a haircut too.



Thats about all that happened from that week. I will get my blod up from the north probably on wednesday no need to worry. Talk to you all soon :D