Empanadas and Mayonaise: Crazy few weeks!

Well.... it has been a while since I wrote and I am sorry about that but it has been a CRAZY few weeks. In the past three weeks, I have been up to the north of Chile in San Pedro de Atacama, one of the worlds most famous deserts for stargazing, traveled to the Salar de Uyuni (Salt flats in Bolivia) and also had two huge group research papers and two midterms, and ANDREW LUU GRADUATED AND IS IN BUENOS AIRES!!! HUGE SHOUT OUT OF CONGRATS TO THAT ALL STAR!

The school work was a pain in the butt because Chilean's work very, very differently than I do. What I mean by that is that both of the 10-15 page single spaced research papers were started about 3 days before they were due. You can only imagine how stressed out that made me..... I HATE procrastinating but it was impossible to start because my groups refused to start. Believe me I tried to get them too. Lets just say that I am incredibly incredibly thankful for the education that I have been able to have in the States and that Berkeley is truly one of the most incredible places I have ever been and I appreciate every second of every engaging class i've had the pleasure to take there.

As for my trip up north, it was..... interesting. I went with Axel (from my program and also from Berkeley) and Nerea (housemate from Spain). It was really really great spending time with them and they are awesome and amazing but we happened to be up there for the ONE snow storm every how every many years that occurs in the desert. It was so. cold. I cannot even explain to you all. It was the coldest I've ever been in my life. That being said we took the tour into Bolivia which was really cool and we saw a lot of really beautiful things, it was just honestly too cold to be able to appreciate it all. We traveled in jeeps and drove from tourist picture spot to tourist picture spot and I couldn't be out of the car for more than about 8 minutes without dying. We traveled through snow flurries and wind storm that caused sand flurries. Also, due to the weather we never got a chance to go star gazing which was such a bummer because that was the main reason I took the trip but hey, thats life right?

The pictures below will explain it all better! (They're all from our Bolivia tour)

Laguna Colorada. The different colors are created by different alga and also the interaction of various minerals with the wind and sun.

Me making my flamingo face with some wild flamingos in the background. It was pretty cool seeing them in real life!

The group on the tour: a mixture of English, Dutch and Australian's who were all on various trips through Latin America.

The famous rock tree

Just jumpin in the desert

Another Lagoon... i can't remember its name

Nerea and I with an active volcano in the background. You can see how cold it is...

Axel Nerea and I with the Volcano

the clouds were beautiful

We stopped in the middle of the salar where there was an abandoned town and train tracks that ran through it and were just in the middle of no where but apparently trains still pass. Thats me sitting in the middle of them :)

Nerea and I in the Salt hotel. The walls are all made out of salt.....

On the famous Salar de Uyuni! You can take pictures that distort the perspective because it just goes on forever. This was by far my favorite part just because it was soooo expansive and its all salt!!!

Nerea giving me a kiss

Some of the group and I jumping (I'm far right)

Evolution of man

And here are some picture from a while ago when Fran and I visited her grandpa and family again in San Antonio. We took her super super duper cool old VW bug to visit her aunt and.... you'll see what happened

The gas pedal broke when we were about 3 blocks from her aunts house as we were leaving and then luckily her uncle happened to drive by right then in his HUGE MONSTER truck and was able to tow us back to the house.... you can see the comparison of the bug to the truck and also me! It was a pretty funny situation.