aqui estoy

Well I do apologize for not writing the past week and a half or so. Almost every day has been packed with tours or with lying out at the beach since I know this weather is going quickly.

The first four days of the trip were spent in Santiago. We woke up early every day and went around the city seeing things like La Moneda, Pablo Neruda’s house, art museums, etc.

I think I was just overwhelmed that I actually was in South America after months of waiting, and not believing that it would really come. After four completely packed days of tours, and seeing Santiago, we headed over to Valparaíso to meet our host families.

A forest fire nearby darkened the sky on our way in, doing some crazy things with the sun and covering our clothes with ceniza (ash). It has finally just cleared up a couple of days ago, so now I can finally see the beautiful vistas of the oceans from the hills.

The first couple days living in Viña del Mar and learning my way through Valparaíso and Viña were a bit overwhelming. When I got to my host family´s house last Sunday, they had a large once and aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters came over. The rapid Chilean Spanish knocked the wind out of me. It was shocking to see how little I understood. But my Chilean family, which consists of Marcela, 32, Sergio, 14, Laura, 12, and Constanza, 6, along with Marcela’s pololo, and her mom and brothers, speak Spanish slowly to me. I can understand the majority of what they say. The hard part, I guess now, is actually speaking it.

Despite a little bit of a culture shock the first few days, I really love Chilean culture so far. In Chile the meals run differently… breakfast is light, tea, coffee, bread, and cereal (which I can’t tell if they are giving it to me because I’m estadounidonse or if they usually have it), lunch is huge (everyone comes home for lunch and is usually served at around 2 or 3), and once is served around 9. Once is a light dinner. Usually it consists of pan, palta (avocado), jamón, tea, jugo, etc. With all these changes, I think my appetite has yet to kick in the way it usually is, haha, so the once has been just fine with me. My favorite thing so far has been the palta in everything they serve. I have to try a completo, which looks amazing every time I walk by them. My other favorite thing has got to be the juice that is made every day. Peaches, melon, and what I think is a prickly pear? I can’t recall the name of it at this point in time, but it’s super sweet.

There have been a couple things I´ve had to get used to. I have to be really conscious of how much energy I use. I always need to turn off the lights when I leave a room, not leave things plugged in too long, don’t take long showers, etc. It will be good to have to get used to that. Another thing, they think it’s weird when I walk around the house barefoot. Although my host family hasn’t said much, Marlayna and Jennifer’s host mom told me I’ll catch the flu. So I walk around with flip flops. They don’t really put their napkins on their lap. Marcela told me that if it’s cloth then they do. I was eating dinner once and set it on my lap and they passed me the napkins because they thought I didn’t have one.

Chileans greet each other with a kisses on the cheek. Unless you both are men, then it’s a handshake. People drive here a bit more intense. Everyone honks at everyone all the time.

My first day of class is today. All I have is an advanced writing class for extranjeros at clave 11-12 which means at 17:20 to 18:50 which means 5:20 to 6:50. So fun. If I wasn’t feeling sick and lunch wasn’t in like an hour, I would probably have gone to the beach to enjoy the last few weeks of summer.

I realize that everything I wrote seems so scattered but I shall write more in a more put together manner. Chao.