Carahue and the countryside

I have the day off today! Woo! So in celebration I'm sitting in my kitchen figuring out how to cook dried chickpeas (hint: it's different than canned chickpeas). I don't have any restaurants close to me but there's a pretty big supermarket right down the block from my house, so I'm cooking more (plus, I'm told it saves money). Hopefully by the time I get back to the U.S. I'll be fully domesticated (or at least know how to cook chickpeas. Baby steps.).

Yesterday, as you could tell from my last post involving what Cori informed me was indeed a goose, we were outside! In nature! And as such, I have pretty pictures for you.

A few people from the foundation and I went to visit one of the artisans we work with out at her home in the country. To get there, we had to take a bus about an hour and a half outside Temuco to a smaller town named Carahue, and then another bus about 45 minutes to a small farming community. We had some time to kill between catching the bus in Carahue and I got to take pictures!

The Río Imperial

The whole area is really hilly, so when we ventured down side streets, we got to see a great view of the surrounding farms. 

View from Carahue

Carahue also has a pretty cute little town square featuring churches and trains!

Me doing a really uninspired pose

Old timey train! Oddly, have not yet seen evidence of new timey trains.

So after some time drinking coffee and walking around, we caught the next bus and walked a good 15-20 minutes to the farm we were visiting.

We had lunch and sat around talking for a while and got to walk around the farm a bit, where I made some new friends:

Actually, none of these animals were particularly friendly. Except for the cat, who was pretty cool. And then the goose hissed at me so I decided to walk away from the animals.

So I climbed a hill.

And overall had a pretty nice time enjoying the scenery. 

It was a nice change of pace and I got to see a lot of the area, which is really tranquil and picturesque. Other than that, I've been spending my time at the foundation trying to keep myself busy or in my room. I've been feeling pretty lonely here, since I haven't really met a lot of people and my Spanish is better than nothing but still not enough. I miss everyone a lot! <3