First Days in Chile

Hola Todos!

I arrived in Santiago, Chile early Thursday morning. No Flight troubles besides a small delay in Birmingham. No customs troubles either yay! The other program students and I sat around the freezing cold Santiago airport for 4 hours waiting on the IFSA staff to come get us. Like I was literally wearing 2 jackets, tennis shoes, gloves, and a scarf. So cold. The program students are pretty cool. They're from all over the country, excluding the south (minus 2 students who go to Trinity in San Antonio, but that doesn't really count as the south does it...). There are kids from Maine, Washington State, California, and lots from Minnesota and Colorado. Upon learning I'm from Alabama, the first response is generally, "Oh, you don't have an accent." It's funny how we can all find connections within are group though. One guy is friends with Christena's old roommate Nikki, and then this girl named Abby is good friends with Virginia and Dani at Kenyon.

After being picked up by the IFSA staff from the airport (they don't speak English to us at all by the way) we rode in a bus for 2 hours through the Andes. The scenery was absolutely breathtaking. I'd never been on roads like that, such extreme hairpin turns that I thought surely the bus would fall off the side of the mountain.

We've been staying in a nice quaint little hotel in this town called Olmue for program orientation. There's practically nothing here, besides huge mountains rising high above you whichever way you turn. It has been rainy and really cold the past 2 days. My toes never seem to warm up, but I'm getting used to it. I think we're slightly spoiled in the hotel though because at least our bedrooms have small heaters and I hear our homestays won't have any heaters. But besides the bedrooms, indoor rooms are generally not heated. Oh, I have 2 roommates, Holly and Joey, and they're really nice and easy to get along with.

Meals here are HUGE. We have a buffet style breakfast with yummy fresh fruit, toast, pastries (that I avoid), coffee and juices. Lunch and dinner are 4 course meals. They usually start with some sort of weird salad, then a mystery creamy soup, a meat entre, and then dessert. Oh and there's baskets of rolls on the table too. Meal example: meat, cheese, and veggie empanada; tomato soup; turkey and rice; ice cream drizzled in chocolate syrup. I've tried 90% of the foods put in front of me so be proud everyone! Added bonus: most of the time I don't know what I'm eating. We are all constantly full though and I don't think anyone really looks forward to meal time. It was nice to get up yesterday morning and do a brief workout in the tiny gym here (that has an interesting array of equipment I might add).

Orientation is overwhelming and tiring. We've received lectures on culture shock, the 3 universities we can take courses at, how to register for courses (the most stressful process I think), chilean slang, safety, and tons of other information too. Every night we've taken Chilean dance lessons with these 2 men that give me a run for my money in the hip shaking department.

Last night 5 other program students and I went out with some of Whitney's local friends. They took us to this cute little bar where they played lots of american music...not quite sure if that was because we were there or just because they love the music. I definitely enjoyed jamming out to some Jay-Z though. It was so hard to understand them and I got really nervous and couldn't communicate at all. Definitely discouraging but Mexico and Peru taught me that that's just the way it goes the first couple of days. We're supposed to meet up with them again tonight, so hopefully I'll do better in round 2!

We took an hour long written Spanish exam today to evaluate where we stand...I think they will split us into different groups for our mandatory program language class. I have an interview this afternoon with the IFSA staff to evaluate my oral skills. I felt pretty confident after the written exam, probably thanks to my writing intensive course last semester. I was nervous about where I would stand with the other program students considering I had at first applied to be in the intermediate program but then IFSA made me do the advanced program because they said I had taken too many spanish courses to do the intermediate one. Turns out it's a similar case with most of the other students (most of them first applied to the intermediate program). There's a couple of students who are far beyond me speaking-wise though but they have studied abroad before so I don't feel too terrible.

We watched part of a chilean movie last night, which was awkwardly very sexually graphic.

Puuesss, that's all I can think of right now. I'm gonna go take some pictures because the sun's coming back out, finally! No freak outs yet, but this is definitely an out of body experience. I think when it finally hits me, y'all will know. I'll try and keep this updated!

Love and miss you all!