Rotary Youth Exchange Chile 2019-2020: Gira de Estudio: Bariloche, Argentina

So in my school in America, we went on one trip as a course; all 300 of us loaded into big yellow buses and set out on the 30 minute voyage to the one and only Philadelphia. We went the Constitution Center. And when most people go to the Constitution center, they spend maybe 2 hours MAX walking around, reading the little blurbs under the historical objects and listening to presentations. We spend 8 ½ hours, all 300 of us, in the Constitution Center walking in circles. We had one lunch break, and it was a picnic on the lawn outside the center. Oh, and you aren’t allowed to eat in the center, so I couldn’t even gorge myself on chocolate or cookies to help time pass.

Now in Chile, the big course trip is an activity and party filled week in Bariloche, Argentina. In fact, it isn’t just my school that goes on this trip. Pretty much every school has what they call a “Gira de Estudio”, either at the end of 3 medio (11^th grade) or 4 medio (12^th grade), depending. My school and the other school in Yungay go on the Gira at the end of 3 medio so that the course can bond and have this fun memory before they enter the final year together. Also, the location of this Gira depends on the school and the course. For example, the course of my friend who lives in Santiago spent a week in Cuba, the old school of my host cousin spent a month in Europe, and my course had the option of going to Brazil or Argentina. Brazil was SUPER expensive, and there were too many families who couldn’t afford it, so my school chose Bariloche through the tour agency, America Travel.

We set out in a big bus at about 8 pm on the 12^th of December. We left at night so that we could reach the Argentina border super early in the morning and be one of the first tour busses to cross (keep in mind, there are tons of student groups traveling over the same border crossing to get to Bariloche; Giras always overlap). I don’t think I slept at all that night because we blasted music and danced in the bus with our coordinators (another thing: we had 2 coordinators through America Travel that were in charge of us. One of them was 19 and the other was in her 20s…so we weren’t stuck with a bunch of strict, old sacks hahah).

So yeah…first night no sleep. The next day, we arrived at about 1pm in Bariloche and immediately began our city tour; we took group photos, took more photos with this famous Bariloche dog, and went to the fabrica de chocolate (side note: Bariloche is internationally known for its chocolate). We were all internally dead from lack of sleep (already), but the coordinators and the city in general got us hype for the fun week to come.

To be honest, I kind of forget what days we did what, so I guess imma just make a list of the activities that I remember doing XD

Disco: We went to 4 discos (for every night we stayed in Bariloche). The first night, we went to Rocket, the second night Genux, the third night Bypass, and the final night Grisu. We would all meet in the hotel at about 12:30 am and would leave in either a bus or walking depending on how far away the disco was, and we’d stay until about 3am. I’ll post some videos below of when we were at the disco to give kind of an idea what disco in Bariloche is like (Bariloche is also known for its world-class discos jeje). My favorite night was probably the third night in Bypass…the music was by far the best because it was all old reggaetón (which I knew a lot of), so I could actually sing along. Another fun night was the night of disfraz in Genux; the first day, during the city tour, we stopped in a store where the travel agencies rent costumes for the costume disco night, and we chose our costumes. ALL of the costumes for the girls were superrrr sexy…like I literally felt like the costumes somewhat resembled the costumes that Regina George and her clique wore in their Halloween party. I ended up choosing monja sexy with a couple other girls. As for the boys, there were costumes like stripper, but there were also marvel and DC costumes as well. To be completely honest, it was kind of hard to dance and move around in my sexy nun costume, so although I liked the idea of dressing up, it definitely was not the most convenient or comfortable way to go to clubbing. In the final night, we went to Grisu (as I said earlier). Grisu was TOTALLY hyped up, especially when everyone I talked to before told me the music was awesome and it had six floors. The six floors, although a seemingly good idea, ended up being kind of overwhelming, and they made it so that there weren’t big clumps of people all dancing together. People were more dispersed. We left Grisu early to get back to the hotel.

The After: After the disco, we would have a snack (called bajon), which was usually a completo (minus the part that made it a completo, so I guess it was really just a hot dog) and some juice. After eating for a bit, many of us went to what Chileans call an after, which is basically just a party after the other party. We had afters pretty much every night, and two of them lasted all night (so no sleep AT ALL). Even though we were all sleep deprived and tired from dancing in the disco, we still danced all night in the after to the music of our choice. It was lots of fun hehe.

- Bowling: the first night, at about 10pm, we went bowling. But half the people didn’t end up going bowling (including me) because it was more fun to hang out in the center and dance to the music they were playing.

- Rafting: In the morning, we left at about 8am to go white water rafting!! Overall, it was SOOO much fun. We broke into two groups and competed to see who could reach the end faster. The river we rafted in was CRYSTAL blue and was located in a desert just outside of Bariloche. When MY team won, we all jumped into the freezing water. Aside from all the fun we had, I did notice something interesting. As we entered the rafts in our groups (half of us were boys and the other half girls), the rafting jefe only gave paddles to the boys. Like some girls were seated on the outside (including me) expecting to be the ones to receive the paddle, yet for some reason, the guy still only gave the paddles to the boys and avoided the girls.

- Paintball: Paintball was surprisingly the worst activity we did for me. First of all, the match itself lasted maybe 5 minutes, and second of all, getting shot was physically very painful. I got shot like 4 times, and every time that it hit my skin, it broke my skin and made me bleed. One of them hit my butt, and I literally still have the purple bruise. But at least now I can say I’ve done paintball XD

- Canopy: One day, we took jeeps up a mountain to go zip lining. The view was super gorgeous, and the zip lining was really exhilarating and fun, despite the lack of sleep😊

- Escaperoom: This was epic and pretty self explanatory. My team won!

- Kayak: The lake in Bariloche is SUPER blue and clear (it originated from a glacier), so it was super cool kayaking and seeing everything beneath us.

- Tom Wesley: Tom Wesley was basically a huge campo filled with all sorts of activities, like horseback riding, group obstacle courses that reminded me of the TV show wipeout, a kincho where they made a giant asado for all the students on the Gira with America travel, and a cool, real life taki taki game (each player basically connects themselves to this harness that is suspended in the air and we play a regular game of taki taki except we are the plastic football players).

- Ice skating: NOBODY could ice skate (including me haha) so it was super amusing to look around and watch everyone suffering. Wow I sound like a monster hahaha. There was also a pretty view of the lake and mountains.

- Circuito Chico: We went to another campo like area that was filled with a ton of activities like driving in motorcycles with 4 wheels, using electric skateboards, climbing through canopy obstacle courses, and some other things I seem to be forgetting.

- Hot springs: on the final day, we drove back into Chile and went to Puyehue National Park to chill in the hot springs…by this point, everyone was dead with fatigue and could barely function or talk, but it was still super relaxing and a fun activity.

I might be forgetting some of activities, but as you can see, I had a totally different experience on this class trip than I had in the US on class trips. After the hot springs and a restaurant dinner on the final day (and before an 8 hour drive back to Yungay), we all gathered in a circle (it was supposed to be around a campfire, but unfortunately, it was raining) and reflected on the trip. The coordinators said some nice things about the course in general and reminded everyone that soon they won’t be together everyday (after graduation), so naturally, everyone started crying and giving speeches about how special the course is to them and how much they will miss each other the next year. I didn’t exactly know my place in all of this because my course of 38 had all known each other since before kindergarten, so they are all kind of like family, and I didn’t know if I was or wasn’t apart of that. I also wasn’t extremely close with my course before the Gira because I hung out with the course that already graduated outside of school more (the course that already graduated invite me to more stuff than my course does), so I really didn’t know what I should be feeling. At the end, everyone from my course were hugging and saying how much they loved each other, and I kind of just awkwardly sat there alone waiting to go onto the bus. Then, on the bus, a lot of them grouped in the back and were still talking and trying to enjoy the last bit of the trip together, and I just remember feeling super uncomfortable and lonely in the front of the bus because again, I didn’t know if they felt sad thinking about me leaving, as they had only really known me for 4 months. I also couldn’t help but think about all my friends at home and how much I missed them and being in that bubble of comfort where I have a secure group of close friends.

And although I felt kind of sad during this time, my classmates really did do a good job including me. Like although there were some times I felt left out or out of place, I was good about recognizing that they had all been best friends for their entire lives, so of course I’m not going to be able to contribute to some of the conversations. I also still have that language barrier that prevents me from being able to make a lot of the jokes or engage in a lot of the conversations I was able to in my English world. I was proud of myself for taking a deep breath and not letting the occasional loneliness affect me.

But yeah, overall, EPIC trip full of many memories and crazy Chilean experiences haha.