Pucon and one week!?

Somehow I have less than ONE WEEK left here. WHAT!?!?! thats not acceptable and i dont want to allow it. but on the same token i cant wait to go home, be surrounded by english, see my friends and family and eat food!! so its pretty bittersweet. It has been an incredible time and there is no doubt I will be back.
Since I have last wrote, the fam came to visit! i finished off my classes (mostly...) and went down south to Pucon. its been amazing!!!
My mom, dad and steve came for a whirlwind visit. we got horribly lost in santiago, even after getting multiple sets of directions in both english AND spanish, made it to our hotel and then out of the city again and down to the largest pool in the world! Its GIGANTIC!!! (1 km long and 35 m deep?!?!) we borrowed some kayaks and kayaked around a bit and tried to take it all in. (check it out: http://spluch.blogspot.com/2007/10/worlds-largest-swimming-pool.html ) Then we drove back to vina, stopped and did a little wine tasting in casablanca valley and went to vina and i showed them where i've been for the last 4 and a half months. it was so great to be able to show them what i've been doing and where and have them experience the things i have been telling them about. We had once with my host family which was fun and an experience... hahaha and then spent the rest of the week just trying to cram in as much as possible!
Last week was my sorta final week at school so i had 1 final and 4 papers due. it was a reallly rough week.. hahahaha. but i survived. I still have 1 or 2 classes this week? Just to do a summary of everything because we didnt' do it last week? im not really sure. but oh well. hahahaha and then the rest of this week im just going to relax on the beach, get some last minute shopping in and hang out with the fam.
This past weekend me and my friend Laura went down south a bit to a city called Pucon. Its about a 12 hour bus ride from vina and is part of the lake district. It was incredible!!! Possibly my favorite trip so far. We got in friday morning (overnight bus thursday night) and checked into our hostel that was recommended by some friends. then that afternoon we went and did "hidrospeed" (aka hydrospeed, riverboarding) (think a big kick board and rapids...) which was reallllly neat!!! a little chilly at first, but still sooo cool!!!!! then on saturday we got up at 4:30 AM to meet up to go climb the volcano. but let me backtrack just a second. friday we were pretty tired fromt he overnight bus and a long week of school and papers and everything so we were pretty jazzed about going to bed early (especially having to get up so early for the volcano!) but it was reallly hot so we were not using the sheets and wearing as few clothes as possible. well as i am laying there i feel like i have bugs crawling on me, and then they are biting and even better i feel them biting my neck and face and i can pick them off. It was the grossest thing ever. I couldn't sleep on the floor because i didn't know where these bugs were coming from (i thought the window... but that wasn't it. and bug spray didn't help) andi couldnt use the sheets so i didn't know what to do other then to try not to think about it long enough to fall alseep when i wouldn't feel them anymore. anyway so at 5 in the morning we tell the guy in charge that there are bugs in my bed, he doesn't belive me, comes and looks and sure enough there they are. SICK. so he goes we'll change it all while you're climbing.. okay great. so now back to the volcano. it was so cool! we climbed pretty quickly, and it wasn't suuuuper hard in that you need to use ropes and stuff, but it is all snow and we had ice picks and trecking boots and everything, and we climbed about 1000 meters in about 4 hours- so we cruised. and by the time i got to the top, i was realllllly glad it was the top and getting pretty worried about going down... hahaha. but the top was pretty neat- the volcano is pretty active- although they haven't been able to see any lava in about 2 or 3 weeks now. but it reeeeeks of sulfur to the point where your nose and mouth and lungs burn. but it was worth it. to go down, i was pretty nervous, they had said we slide down on our butts... well its not a very gradual slope down, its fairly steep. and there are volcano rocks everywhere because a. its a volcano and b. is spring so the snow is melting and exposing more... well they lead us over a little bit and there is like a alpine slide/luge type trail in the snow. and you just sit down and go. it was INCREDIBLE!!!! there were about 6 of these little trails and youd basically ride down on your own little mini avalanche of snow. it was like going down a waterslide, but in snow, and you're going to down the side of a volcano- in chile- in springtime- in december. hahahah it was sooooo awesome!! i still cant get over the whole thing. so it took us about 4 hours to get up, and an hour to get down. hahahahaha the rest of the day we just sorta lounged about, walked around town, booked a horseback riding tour for sunday and had sort of a lazy day. back at the hostel nothing had been done about my bed. so i went and told a different guy. he comes and looks and doesn't see any bugs, but sees all the blood stains and the poop and goes oh no, we're going to change all of this. so they take the sheets and stuff and everything (meanwhile they are talking in spanish- which apparently they didn't think i knew because everyone in the hostel was english- european of some sort and a few americans... and one of the ladies working there goes they're fleas (well a specific type of flea, i recognized the word flea....) and look how big they are! ahh!) sooo that was gross. then they change the mattress and the sheets on both my bed and lauras (i was on the top bunk) and then we go to get ready for bed about an hour later (they had sprayed a tooon of bug spray and stuff in there so we couldn't go in for a while) we go in, and there are a TON of these bugs just crawling all over the wood. so i go back and tell him and we pack our stuff and they take us to a different hostel. apparently they are called chinches and they live in the wood and come out at night and now they have to get the whole hostel fumagated and everything... so thats a bummer. but our new hostel was really nice, super clean and the owner was really friendly. so i slept like a rock there!!! hahahaha. sunday we got up, went and explored town and outside of town some more which was realllly neat. i reallllly like pucon a lot and recommend it to everyone. (its suuuper touristy, everyone speaks english) out horseback riding trip was pretty fun, we went to this waterfall that was GORGEOUS!!! it was a great sunday afternoon activity. and we had reallllly lucked out with the weather because friday was REALLLLY hot and we were in the water, satuday was really sunny and nice and we climbed the volcano and then sunday was kinda grey and overcast and chilly, and we went on horseback. so it was clear for the things that we wanted to see for long distances (ie from the top of the volcano, sunday we couldn't even see the volcano) and then sunday we could see everything up cloase and everything. it was all just really great. then sunday night, we got on our bus and made it back to vina this morning!!!
I have uploaded pictures onto my computer and will try to put some of them on flickr in a bit. so look for those!
I cant wait to see you all SOON!!!! have a wonderful week!!!!

CHAU!!!!!!