ALSO YOU GUYS: Ignore tenses in this thing. I don't know what land I'm in, but this land's Laws decree that normal tense situations do not apply here.
Today is the first day of our (Gretchie has joined my trip) adventures! After an entire day of packing, we have decided that we have EVERYTHING we could possibly need
Chile!
But first things first. We need a picture of Gretchie since she's coming along as well.
After quite some time of fiddling with paint the camera once again, here is a picture of Gretch (to the right). (A/N: This picture did not exist prior to this post; however, due to unfortunate media leakage, this picture is now old news and therefore lacks the "wow" factor it was supposed to bring.)
Great, now we can begin!
So, since we're in the middle of nowhere not anywhere near Chile, I ordered tickets from TravelWithUsJerk.com (see bottom of page). They came in the mail yesterday, while we were still packing, and boy, were we excited! I literally jumped up and down until I got tired and had to stop.
Gretchie added a water filter, cards, a Spanish-English dictionary, a Swiss army knife, eating utensils, and walkie-talkies to her bag. I've also last-minutely added a small, hand-held mirror, just in case we're plane-wrecked in the middle of the ocean and we need to flash Morse code signals at planes to make them notice us.
Anyway, at 9:30AM, we decided that we had everything. With a few final checks (making sure we locked the doors and windows and said a teary farewell to our friends for thehour day week possibly eternity), we were ready to depart!
The closest international airport is JFK, and it's a very, very far distance away (anything that can't be tackled reasonably by foot is a very far distance for me), so naturally we rode a taxi! I love yellow taxis—they make me feel happy on the inside, especially if it's raining outside and the water puddles make the road all reflection-y when the yellow taxis drive by.
The ride to the airport was pretty fun, and when we got to the airport, we still had plenty of time left (the plane was scheduled to leave at 2PM—haha, 2PM—and we arrived at 11AM). So we did what normal people do when they're about to embark on a round-the-world voyage.
We jumped up and down (figuratively for Gretchie and literally for me) and ooh'd and ahh'd over everything we saw. Well, of course, we had to get our boarding pass first, go through numerous layers of customs (tricky—I never did like customs), and find our waiting room. Once we got there, however, the realization that the trip was finally happening made both of us giddy. I pulled out my laptop and we went over the itinerary for the next few days, which I will outline below in order topacify you because the actual trip writing may take a long time to solidify give you an idea of what is to come:
So, there you have it! Almost two weeks of fun in Chile, or at least we hope it will be. Alas, time flies when you're rechecking over itineraries (or maybe just when you're having fun in general), and by the time we finished going over the details and planning what we will do after we get off the plane, it was about time to board our plane.
Here's a picture of the plane we're going to board:
Isn't it pretty?
This is a plane owned by Lan Chile Airlines, the major airline company in Chile. It's also the only plane that travels to Easter Island, which is where we're going to go later. (How this hasn't directly attributed to grossly unreasonable fares, I have no idea, but I assume I'll know next year with a year of econ under my figurative belt.)
I found some random picture online took a picture of the landscape as we were about to depart. Can you believe it? We're going to leave the country soon, and then our continent!
South America, here we come!
Of course, for the entire flight, Gretchie and I watched this strange documentary about glaciers in Greenland. I don't really remember much of it, because I was more focused on the beautiful background music they played while showing the films of the glaciers.
It takes around nine hours to go by plane from NYC to Chile, and so by the time we arrived, it was a staggeringly late 11PM by our watches. However, by the Chilean time zone (UTC-04), it was already midnight. Gretchie and I were both pretty tired by now, so our first priority was to find a hotel and rest for the night.
(I think we'll have to push back our schedule for a day, because rest is very, very important and visiting Santiago is also very, very important, and we have plenty of time to spare anyway.)
Gretchie took some pictures of the night-time Santiago as we rode in our taxi and headed toward our hotel. Here's one that we both really liked:
After much sight-seeing through the streets of Santiago, we arrived at our hotelwhich is not named because I have been too lazy to actually find one, duh. Tired as we were, we did not forget to take a picture of our room. So, here it is, and we'll update infinitely later tomorrow on how our first actual day in Santiago goes!
OOH (see earlier posts):
We (both of Mr. Coffee's AP chem classes) got back our acid/base equilibrium test today—or, at least, the multiple choice part. The "bell curve" for test score distributions were one 95+ (Bryant, most likely, as this spot is usually reserved for him), a small cluster of 90+, a huge cluster of 80+ (including 85+), pitifully few in the 70+ (including 75+), and another huge cluster at or below 65+.
On the bright side, this unit is so dubbed, "If you can survive this, you can do anything." So, seeing as I survived the test (with lots of freebie points from Mr. Coffee because he messed up on several questions to help), I must be able to do anything!
(Well, anything except my research paper, it seems, because I almost failed that, and the only reason I didn't fail was because I had clear sentences and good language usage, so the next two weeks will be frantic as I basically rewrite my entire paper.)
I am also awaiting my free response for this unit, which I have my doubts in because I didn't (unlike Bryant and Nyx and basically everyone else who was sane) do any of the AP problems on College Board. Well. On the even brighter side, the next unit is relatively easier (although it also seems that easier units are the ones I perform worse on in tests), so everything should be fine until I start panicking about the calc finals.
Which, if the introduction paragraph haven't warned you yet, CALC FINALS!MAY 5TH IS APPROACHING! APRIL 12TH IS APPROACHING! Ahem. Right.
Our class has yet to panic, it appears, because we spent today discussing what the "รง" was called ("A cedilla." "Oh, Ginny, can you teach me French?") and whether the cardioid looked like a "butt." Dino also spent considerable time persuading Mrs. James to hit the "print" button on the Smartboard so he could go grab a copy of the calc notes he forgot to print out ("We were supposed to bring 10.6? No one told me that!") while Jay used "going to the bathroom" as an excuse to print out a copy of the notes himself but forgot to print out an extra set for Dino.
Not that I did anything in any of my other classes. We had a sub for physics, and Camel, lamenting that the $10 he spent on buying Monty Python was wasted because he couldn't open the file, used his laptop to go on Youtube to watch more Monty Python. I took this time to use an extremely long yard-stick (meter-stick, actually, and they can't be extremely long because they're supposed to be one meter long, but that's not the point) to draw scatterplots for stat. Nevertheless, it wasn't necessary, it seemed, because Mrs. MacDonald wasn't here either, and we had another sub (who suspiciously looked like the sub we had for physics, but I'm bad at recognizing people so I'm not sure). Matt and I worked on another sudoku puzzle, and then later on we (mostly me) worked on some math packets. I can say now with 70% confidence that I can tackle most of the round 1 questions, half of the round 2 questions, and maybe half of the round 3 questions.
Oh, I'm doomed.
But wait, there's more!If you call NOW AIME is coming up, Wednesday. I still have to ask Tybalt what room I'm supposed to be in, and I still have to go over at least some of the problems to see what they're like and what my probability of failing is (very high, although I shall try a Nate Silver-esque approach and conduct some research based on past problem performance).
So. Anyway. Homework.
DISCLAIMER (read the small font): Any hyper-link not "linked" is not true and is merely a figment of the authoress' imagination. There may, however, be a slight chance that such a link exists in real life and therefore accessible. We [Gretchie and I] do not wish to infringe upon the rights of those organizations, and we are not associated with them in any way. We are not liable for any loss, whether financial, physical, laptopial, or any thing else, incurred due to the searching and/or subsequent visiting of said websites. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please contact us at ginnyofnephria(at)gmail.com or comment below. Please note that we reserve the right to ignore you (within reasonable boundaries of law) or delete your comment as we see fit. For further questions, read the sentence before the sentence before this sentence.
Gretchie added a water filter, cards, a Spanish-English dictionary, a Swiss army knife, eating utensils, and walkie-talkies to her bag. I've also last-minutely added a small, hand-held mirror, just in case we're plane-wrecked in the middle of the ocean and we need to flash Morse code signals at planes to make them notice us.
Anyway, at 9:30AM, we decided that we had everything. With a few final checks (making sure we locked the doors and windows and said a teary farewell to our friends for the
The ride to the airport was pretty fun, and when we got to the airport, we still had plenty of time left (the plane was scheduled to leave at 2PM—haha, 2PM—and we arrived at 11AM). So we did what normal people do when they're about to embark on a round-the-world voyage.
We jumped up and down (figuratively for Gretchie and literally for me) and ooh'd and ahh'd over everything we saw. Well, of course, we had to get our boarding pass first, go through numerous layers of customs (tricky—I never did like customs), and find our waiting room. Once we got there, however, the realization that the trip was finally happening made both of us giddy. I pulled out my laptop and we went over the itinerary for the next few days, which I will outline below in order to
- Day 1: Arrive at Santiago (the capital of Chile and where the major International airport is located), look around, check into a hotel, scream, "WE'RE IN CHILE!!!" (Preferably in Spanish, although that is a feat only Gretchie can accomplish right now.)
- Day 2: Continue tour of Santiago (I've heard that they have amazing food there), in the afternoon take a plane to Atacama Desert and stay the night there.
- Day 3-6: Explore Atacama. Highlights: museums, geysers, beautiful views, adobe hotels! On the last day, take a plane to Easter Island.
- Day 7-11: Explore Easter Island. (More) highlights: Moai (those stone faces Easter Island is famous for), volcanic craters, scuba diving/snorkeling. On the last day/afternoon, take a plane back to Santiago.
- Day 12: Rest a bit, check any really good tourist attractions (or restaurants), then depart for our next destination (undecided as of yet).
So, there you have it! Almost two weeks of fun in Chile, or at least we hope it will be. Alas, time flies when you're rechecking over itineraries (or maybe just when you're having fun in general), and by the time we finished going over the details and planning what we will do after we get off the plane, it was about time to board our plane.
Here's a picture of the plane we're going to board:
Isn't it pretty?
This is a plane owned by Lan Chile Airlines, the major airline company in Chile. It's also the only plane that travels to Easter Island, which is where we're going to go later. (How this hasn't directly attributed to grossly unreasonable fares, I have no idea, but I assume I'll know next year with a year of econ under my figurative belt.)
South America, here we come!
Of course, for the entire flight, Gretchie and I watched this strange documentary about glaciers in Greenland. I don't really remember much of it, because I was more focused on the beautiful background music they played while showing the films of the glaciers.
It takes around nine hours to go by plane from NYC to Chile, and so by the time we arrived, it was a staggeringly late 11PM by our watches. However, by the Chilean time zone (UTC-04), it was already midnight. Gretchie and I were both pretty tired by now, so our first priority was to find a hotel and rest for the night.
(I think we'll have to push back our schedule for a day, because rest is very, very important and visiting Santiago is also very, very important, and we have plenty of time to spare anyway.)
Gretchie took some pictures of the night-time Santiago as we rode in our taxi and headed toward our hotel. Here's one that we both really liked:
After much sight-seeing through the streets of Santiago, we arrived at our hotel
OOH (see earlier posts):
We (both of Mr. Coffee's AP chem classes) got back our acid/base equilibrium test today—or, at least, the multiple choice part. The "bell curve" for test score distributions were one 95+ (Bryant, most likely, as this spot is usually reserved for him), a small cluster of 90+, a huge cluster of 80+ (including 85+), pitifully few in the 70+ (including 75+), and another huge cluster at or below 65+.
On the bright side, this unit is so dubbed, "If you can survive this, you can do anything." So, seeing as I survived the test (with lots of freebie points from Mr. Coffee because he messed up on several questions to help), I must be able to do anything!
(Well, anything except my research paper, it seems, because I almost failed that, and the only reason I didn't fail was because I had clear sentences and good language usage, so the next two weeks will be frantic as I basically rewrite my entire paper.)
I am also awaiting my free response for this unit, which I have my doubts in because I didn't (unlike Bryant and Nyx and basically everyone else who was sane) do any of the AP problems on College Board. Well. On the even brighter side, the next unit is relatively easier (although it also seems that easier units are the ones I perform worse on in tests), so everything should be fine until I start panicking about the calc finals.
Which, if the introduction paragraph haven't warned you yet, CALC FINALS!
Our class has yet to panic, it appears, because we spent today discussing what the "รง" was called ("A cedilla." "Oh, Ginny, can you teach me French?") and whether the cardioid looked like a "butt." Dino also spent considerable time persuading Mrs. James to hit the "print" button on the Smartboard so he could go grab a copy of the calc notes he forgot to print out ("We were supposed to bring 10.6? No one told me that!") while Jay used "going to the bathroom" as an excuse to print out a copy of the notes himself but forgot to print out an extra set for Dino.
Not that I did anything in any of my other classes. We had a sub for physics, and Camel, lamenting that the $10 he spent on buying Monty Python was wasted because he couldn't open the file, used his laptop to go on Youtube to watch more Monty Python. I took this time to use an extremely long yard-stick (meter-stick, actually, and they can't be extremely long because they're supposed to be one meter long, but that's not the point) to draw scatterplots for stat. Nevertheless, it wasn't necessary, it seemed, because Mrs. MacDonald wasn't here either, and we had another sub (who suspiciously looked like the sub we had for physics, but I'm bad at recognizing people so I'm not sure). Matt and I worked on another sudoku puzzle, and then later on we (mostly me) worked on some math packets. I can say now with 70% confidence that I can tackle most of the round 1 questions, half of the round 2 questions, and maybe half of the round 3 questions.
Oh, I'm doomed.
But wait, there's more!
So. Anyway. Homework.
DISCLAIMER (read the small font): Any hyper-link not "linked" is not true and is merely a figment of the authoress' imagination. There may, however, be a slight chance that such a link exists in real life and therefore accessible. We [Gretchie and I] do not wish to infringe upon the rights of those organizations, and we are not associated with them in any way. We are not liable for any loss, whether financial, physical, laptopial, or any thing else, incurred due to the searching and/or subsequent visiting of said websites. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please contact us at ginnyofnephria(at)gmail.com or comment below. Please note that we reserve the right to ignore you (within reasonable boundaries of law) or delete your comment as we see fit. For further questions, read the sentence before the sentence before this sentence.
2 rants:
aaahhh, the trip has started!!! i'm so excited :)
and ugh, i can't do round 1 at all...
gasp, bryant only gets a 95 in chem? that class intimidates me so much it's not even funny anymore.
i shall be working on an update for atacama. read: i shall do it when i've exhausted the usual procrastination techniques.
Yay! We (our virtual selves) are in Santiago right now! I'll probably be busy doing other stuff and/or writing nonsense to procrastinate, so the next day might take a while to "happen."
Bryant probably got higher than 95. I'm not sure if he got 100 or not, as there wasn't such an option, but I do know that he doesn't get perfects all the time (if ever, but he probably does at times). It's really fun, though, and it's not that hard. The concepts are easy, it's just knowing when to apply them.
Round 1=weird. You have to be snazzy with numbers, which, in our calculator-befuddled world, is very rare (barring the likes of Micro).
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