Return back to Valparaíso

On Monday, we pulled into the port of Puerto Montt at around 7:30am and all of us headed our separate ways. The first thing that I absolutely had to do was do my laundry. I hadn't done laundry in more than 16 days which was absolutely too long. I was fine before Torres del Paine, but then I was 9 days in Torres without doing laundry, and then when I got back to civilization I hopped right on a boat without time to do laundry and went another 4 days without laundry. So my jacket smelled strongly of smoke from the campfires at night and overally, 16 days with intense physical activity most days is a little too long. Surprisingly, it was quite a challenge to find a laundromat. The first one that someone directed me to didn't exist anymore, the second was closed, and then after 2 hours of asking people and be directed to random places where there wasn't a laundromat, I finally found a place to do my laundry (thank god). I can't tell you how happy I was to have clean clothes. In the night, I got on a bus to make the overnight (11 hour) trip from Puerto Montt to Viña del Mar.

Later in the week, from Wednesday to Sunday, my Study Abroad Program, IFSA-Butler, had their orientation in Olmué, Chile which is very near to where I was from my week long AIESEC Conference in January. When I arrived on Wednesday to the orientation, the majority of the group had just flown into Chile from the US that day. It was a fun 4 days, relaxing in this small town of Olmué. We had our program sessions preparing us for studying in the university in Valparaíso and how to avoid getting stolen from. In the Study Abroad Group, there are about 30 people. 13 of those 30 are from UNC Chapel Hill, but I had only met 4 of them before we had gotten there. There were only 4 guys and 26 girls and all 4 of the guys were from UNC-Chapel Hill. I'm not really sure what that means or what the cause of that is. The food was absolutely delicious at the hotel, and they always had more than enough.