The Sea of Sheep

We passed by these sheep recently as we were traveling through some remote towns. I thought it fitting to represent how things have been going over the last couple weeks. By no means negative, all that we´ve done has been very exciting, rich and fun..... but definitely feeling a bit "hearded", thus no blogging.
That being said, allow me to catch up a bit. So over the last 3 days alone we went to a vineyard for a tour, drove to the coast for the day and spent some time touring Pablo Nerudas house (now a museum), toured the largest underground copper mine in the world, toured a farm that trains a breed of horse from Holland for the Chilean rodeo, toured a chincilla farm, and got to spend a few hours in a spa that had a natural hot spring fed pool.....very nice!
All the days have been full since we´ve arrived but all filled with interesting and fun activity. They are all also broken up with a very large 2 hour or longer lunch that usually consists of bread with Pebre (tomato, olive oil, onion, cilantro and lemon....... which i think we are all now addicted to) soup, salad, some kind of meat and rice or potato, then dessert and coffee. No complaints on my part since i love to eat so much, but i think we have all definitely gained a few pounds.
Our nights have been spent either at Rotary meetings eating another very large meal and giving our presentation or with our host families. A couple of the nights we got a the chance to see some of the night life in Chile. They have a pool game here that is very different than anything i´ve seen in the states. I love pool, so learning something new has been a blast, looking forward to bringing it back home! The nights staying with the families have been good too. For the most part i have stayed by myself in the home of one of our hosts, with the exception of last week in Talca where Mike (another one on the team) and i stayed with the same family. All the families have been very different with some to learn from each. They have all been very kind and excited to teach us about Chilean costumes, phrases and history. The language part has been one of the most challenging pieces as well as the most interesting. Chilean Spanish has so many particularities and made up phrases that it has been tough to follow at times, but i am loving the challenge and the education.
As far as the team goes, there is definitely some sadness as we near the end of our experience. One of my favorite aspects of this trip has been seeing how close we have all become. We all have been a huge support to each other and have so much fun together. I think our dynamic has made the trip even more of an amazing experience. I am going to be sad to see them go this coming Friday, and am also excited about the next half of the trip. I think i´ll be traveling to the northern part of Chile. As i dont know how much computer access i´ll have on the second half of the trip i may or may not keep up with the blog. Feel free to email though for an update and i´ll try and post some more within the next couple weeks.