day 3

Monday tends to be the pastor's day off and so I had nothing planned for yesterday in my schedule, but I ended up being out all day - busy busy busy seems to be the way things are going for me here! Ary kindly offered to come into town with me to help me sort out these travellers' cheques. Apparently there's only one place in Viña that accepts them, but got that all sorted ok thank God.

This weekend about 20 of the youth here at La Resurrección are going to Temuco, in the South of Chile, for a national youth congress of the anglican church (or something like that). So we went to the bus terminal to organise my ticket there and the like. It's a 10 hour overnight coach, so we leave Friday night, arrive very early Saturday morning, and then we're returning Monday night, arriving Tuesday morning. Should be a fantastic weekend, I'm really looking forward to spending more time with the youth... They're a bit harder to understand because, like us in London, they speak really quickly and with lots of 'modismos' (idioms), so if I can understand them I reckon I'll be pretty much sorted!

Then had my first trip to the supermarket in town. Huge and a lot of choice... It's in places like that that you really feel out of your depth as a foreigner!

Came back to the house for a very quick lunch before going down to the beach with one of the leaders of the youth group, Seba. We walked down from the hill where we live down to Reñaca which is an area just North of the centre of Viña, and then walked into Viña for a youth group leaders' meeting about this weekend. We walked (slowly) for about 3 hours, which was great actually. Had become so used to walking everywhere in London I forgot that I enjoyed it.

It was really satisfying to spend those hours talking to Seba about mundane stuff, because our conversation wasn't of any great importance to my well being in Viña, or about any plans that I needed to know about, so we could chat in Spanish without quite as much pressure. He was happy for me to explain something to him 3 times so that I could correct myself and he could properly understand what I was getting at.

Have had the morning off today which has been very nice and relaxed... Quite possibly a much needed break!

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