My first fieldtrip

Last Wednesday my class went to Isla Negra, which is about 2 hours away. When we got there, we sat on the bus while our teachers talked about whether we should bring our backpacks or just our morning snack. In the end they decided that we would just bring our snack after a lot of changing of plans.

Then after we ate our snack, we walked through some mud to one of Pablo Neruda's houses (it was after the rain that day). When we got there, we sat and waited for our turn to go into his house. When it was almost our turn, we went out to look at the fish sculpture, which is Neruda's symbol. And they taught us what the letters around the circle mean. Every person that worked there had a little one on their shirt or coat. The "N" stands for nosotros, the "E" stands for estamos, the "R" stands for realmente, the "U" stands for unidos, the "D" stands for de, and the "A" stands for agua (all of us are really united by water).

Then when it was our turn, our guide led us into Pablo Neruda's house. As you may know he collected almost everything, including the ships' figureheads, different shaped bottles, ships in bottles, masks, dolls, different colored glass cups, petrified eggs of huge birds, gargoyles, and much more.

Then after we were done looking at all of his collections, we walked over to a house named "Nave Imaginario" (imaginary ship). Inside it was nothing like an ordinary house. When we got in, the guide told us that the two rules were you can't jump and you can't run. Then he lowered down the stairs to get up to the second floor with a pulley - and let us explore! First to get to the second floor, there was a set of wooden stairs and on the other side of it - a wooden slide. Then after that on the second floor , there was round hole in the wall that led out to a balcony with a big bell on it that you could ring. On the other side of the room, there was a small wooden ladder that led up to the roof. Once you were on the roof, there was a spiral wooden staircase that let you back into the house through a window. After we did all that, we went back down and the guide said we could go into the basement, which you could see through the floor. Once everyone was in the basement, he closed the door, and started stomping with a big chain over the floor like an angry pirate. Since I was one of the first ones to go through to the basement, me and some friends found a trapdoor on the ceiling and we decided to escape through it.

After that we went out and ate lunch on the beach and then headed back to Valparaiso and our school. It was really fun.

-Theo