leaving

i am in santiago airport right now, waiting to board.
i arrived in santiago last sunday to spend the week here. our last days at the hogar were pretty stressful and hectic. tia Gaby was on her honeymoon and the replacement tia was sort of incompetent. we've been doing a lot of work anyway, basically the work of a real tia, since tia Flor has still not been replaced. with the visiting americans and lack of a tia things were really tough on us, we had sort of been hoping to relax in our last weeks and not take things so seriously, but that didn't really work out. also, school started and we began with the sala de estudios again. also, i took a short weekend trip to the north.
we had several farewell parties. one with our party friends in temuco. then one in the hogar with all the personnel and girls, with a special meal (fish) and a photo slideshow that tia Vivia made for us. and there were several short speeches by various people and some of the girls gave us presents, mainly cards. also, Tia Vivi gave us each scarves and rugs from the Fundacion Chol-Chol, a fair trade organization that works with Mapuche artesans in the region.The next day we had our farewell party with the girls, we made pizza and baked cookies with them, then gave small gifts to everyone. each of the older girls also got a cd of the photos that we had of them. we also gave away several pieces of our clothing that we decided to leave behind for lack of space, those were the most popular and fought-after items. afterwards we watched a movie and everyone stayed up late and we made sure to add all the older girls on facebook so we can stay in touch. steffi and i left the next morning and took a bus to santiago.
we stayed with our friend marcelo, who we met on our trip to futaleufu. he took us to the coast the other day, we went to see pablo neruda's house (one of his houses that we haven't seen yet...he had three) and got to hang out on the beach. we bought some last-minute souvenirs, but are both at the weight limit for our flights, not to mention that nothing else really fits in my backpack....we both bought canvas duffle bags for our backpacks for the flight, since last time steffi's backpack broke. also we went to a canyon, cajon del maipu, outside the city for a short bike ride. yesterday we had planned to go to some museums, but all the ones we wanted to go to are closed for repairs since the earthquake...
oh, i need to go. just realized that the time on my netbook is an hour behind....meaning i don't have all the time i thought, i need to board now!! ack!