El Primer

Buenos Dias and greetings friends! Welcome to my blog (yes nerdy I know but also highly convenient) Chilin' in Chile. I figure that instead of having to e-mail everybody the same stories and progress I would use a blog to let ya'll know how my semester in Santiago is going. It's been a busy first two days in town. We arrived yesterday morning at 7 AM and went to a hotel for our orientation. We had a lot of free time so a group of us that had origionally met in San Francisco deceided we would walk half an hour to the nearest mall to figure out how to get cell phones. Unfortunately, the enitre group was terrible at Spanish and only me and one other girl were able to communicate and succesfully figure out a plan. That was an awesome intro to the country to be able to communicate and get what I want with little effort. Reality kicked in today however and I realized that I don't really know that much Spanish. Most of the kids on the program are staying with families but that creeped me out (sounds like a horror movie waiting to happen) so I chose a residencia which is kind of like an extended stay hostel (a horror movie that has already happened). As everyone was meeting their families at the hotel I jumped in a taxi to head to the building. I got by fine in the taxi but as soon as I arrived at the residencia it was as if I had never even heard spanish in the first place. The woman who met me spoke very quickly and with a thick Chilean accent which is confusing as they don't often use the "s" sound and drop a lot of endings to their words. Very quickly she realized I was terrible at Spanish, however I could understand well enough to tell that the rest of the time we spoke she would toss in the occasional gringo insult. My room is small with dimensions similiar to that of a prison cell and even features bars to keep me in as seen in the above photo. In any event I'm doing wonderfully and I've enjoyed Chile so far!