NEWARK, Del. - During the winter, Michelle LaLonde of the University of Delaware volleyball team embarked on a study abroad program in Chile. Throughout her trek, she kept a journal of her activities in order to share her experiences with everyone back in Delaware. Below is an excerpt of her journal...

“This past winter session, I studied abroad in Chile. I stayed with a host family in Santiago, Chile and studied two 300-level Spanish courses at Universidad Mayor in Providencia.

Although Santiago was an amazing city, we were not there all that often. The first weekend we traveled Friday through Monday up to northern Chile to Iquique. This city is situated in between the Pacific Ocean, the Atacama Desert and the Andes Mountains. Needless to say, the scenery was amazing. Besides enjoying the 90-degree sun on the beach, the next best part about this weekend was witnessing first-hand the giant hieroglyphics that are still intact in the desert hills.

After having classes on Tuesday through Thursday, we then flew to Cusco, Peru for the second weekend. The first day a lot of people experienced altitude sickness, so we waited until Saturday to do any sightseeing. That day we hiked through the Inca ruins of Sacqsaywaman, pronounced “sexy woman,” which is situated at the top of Cusco.

Then we traveled to the city of Pisaq, where we hiked through Incan trails and religious sites. Pisaq was a difficult climb, being at an 11,000-ft high altitude. I realized no matter how good of shape you are in, the high altitude completely overrides it!

Finally, on Monday, we visited one of the most amazing parts of the trip (I’ll never be able to pick my favorite part), Machu Picchu. This Incan city is so peaceful and serene. It is like nothing I’ve ever experienced before, and I cannot wait to take my family back there someday!

On Tuesday before our afternoon flight, we were able to all huddle in the hotel lobby and watch President Obama’s inauguration. It was really moving watching it in another country and being so proud to be from the USA.

After a couple days of class, we had our free weekend. (Is it becoming obvious yet that most of our studying was done by just immersing ourselves in the culture rather than actually sitting in a classroom…the best way!) The entire group of 28 students traveled to southern Chile to a tourist town called Pucón. This town is situated around the Villarrica Lake. It reminded me a lot of pictures I have seen of Lake Tahoe, but instead of being surrounded by mountains, it was situated under the Villarrica volcano.

We stayed in hostels and relaxed the entire weekend; that is until we climbed the volcano that overlooks the beautiful lake. From a distance, this volcano looks gorgeous and maybe I was a little overconfident, but it didn’t look that big either. Little did I know that we would actually be using the ice picks they gave us. I thought they would just be for extreme situations, but as it turns out, every step was an extreme situation. We literally had to chip away ice to give ourselves solid footing for each step.

After 4.5 hours, we finally made it to the top. I honestly couldn’t think of anything more mentally challenging than that 4.5-hour climb...well, besides my first volleyball preseason at Delaware :) .

The last two weeks of the trip we had more time in Santiago. We visited the houses of the famous Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda as well as Viña del Mar and Valparaiso. It was hard to leave Chile, but the wonderful people I met and the wonderful experiences I gained on the trip will never leave my memory and have changed me forever.”