June 5th – Today we got up early to go with some friends to La Campana National Park. It was a nice day and enjoyable, but Nicole had come down with a cold and wasn’t feeling well. Also, the birds were frustratingly skulking, and despite hearing many birds all around us, we didn’t see very many. After getting home very tired, we took a little nap before the start of an asado at my house with the friends of my host family. Nicole was feeling pretty sick at this point and went to bed soon after it started, and I went to bed relatively early at around 3:00 am.


The Campana crew.

June 6th – We slept in late (until 1:00 but we were still up and about before my family was). I was hosting an asado at my house with some fellow exchange students this night, so all we did during the afternoon was go to the supermarket and prepare for the asado. It was a great success, and everyone had an excellent time chatting, eating, hanging out, and singing karaoke.


Nicole's favorite fruit ever, the uchuva or Cape Gooseberry.

June 7th – We slept in a little, and then Nicole and I went up north a little past Concón to walk around and search for a birding spot I had heard about but didn’t know exactly where it was. After a couple hours of fruitless wandering, we finally found access to the beach, and were successful in finding the birding spot, the mouth of a river that had some lagoons and marsh. The best thing we found were hundreds of American Oystercatchers and plenty of other fun Chilean birds.


Some of the Oystercatchers we found.


I'm happy because I found a marsh :)


More of the marsh and Pacific Ocean.

June 8th – Another day of classes, and Nicole was kind enough to attend some of them with me. My classes are wrapping up at this point, and I only have another couple weeks before the classes finish. In the afternoon, I spent several hours working with two other students on a paper for my history class, but we finally finished it and turned it in. A low-key day overall.