as promised, pictures!

me in front of the statue near Santa Lucia, holding (more like, grasping and trying to suck all the warmth out of) my cup of steaming hot..nescafe (I know, it's anticlimatic...but warm!)

American friends, chilean friends, at the Irish pub/karaoke.





Chilean pesos and "cough drops" (i.e. sugar and honey)

My host family's front door

This is the street I live on/the gate I open to get into the courtyard of my group of houses.

My view on the way to the metro =)

Today I went to an artisan market called Los Dominicos with a few of my friends, which was really cute and full of little jewelry shops, and stores with artists selling their paintings, sculptures, hand-knitted sweaters, etc.. the jewelry is beautiful, lots of silver and copper and pretty stones which apparently come from the river and the mountains. 

This is the park in front of the metro stop/the market.

it only seemed fitting...

"Pozo de los deseos" --> wishing well =)

I thought the hands sculpture was really cool, I'd love to draw it..

this is the street I walk on to get from my house to the metro--Alcantara =)

today, I tried to buy some shoes, and was informed that the largest size they had in any store was a 39. I wear a size 9, which here is a size 41 or 42...fail...

I'm gonna drink some coffee, try and thaw out the tips of my fingers, and work on picking my classes--we have to register this week! I have been starving these past few days, and I've taken to sneaking into the kitchen because I feel bad asking for more food at dinner...hopefully my host mom doesn't notice how quickly I've gone through the box of oatmeal , haha. 

<3 

Arriba la viiiiddaa

hola!

This is a picture from our welcome dinner...which was only a week ago, although it feels like I've been here for much longer. It's weird how quickly we get used to things, and the strange (cold, freezing, and borderline painful) becomes the familiar and tolerable. Showering, washing my face, drinking sub-arctically cold tap water, and getting into and out of bed are things that require huge amounts of willpower here, and yet, life goes on, and you learn things along the way--for example, laptops and hair dryers make nice bedwarmers, 4 (huge) scoops of nescafe begin to approximate the strength of a  cup of brewed coffee, and in a city where everyone smokes everywhere and smog is out of control, putting honey in anything and everything is a great way to save your throat.

a recap of the last few days:

--I went to a salsa club with a few of my friends from the program, and we got there in time for the class they put on at the beginning of the night. We learned a few steps, and I guess I can chalk it up to being both directionally challenged and a feminist that I am unable to either lead or follow when I dance, lol. The lesson was really fun though, and everyone on the floor was amazing. It's inspiring to see so many people just enjoying the music.

--Getting home at night here is logistically rather difficult, since the metro closes around 11pm, and the buses run later, but apparently are not safe. Getting directions in Spanish is even more challenging than in English (which...admittedly is harder for me than most people, thanks mom for passing on the directionally-challenged genes) because in Spanish, derecha means to the right and derecho means straight. Miss one little letter and you wind up super lost.

--the exchange rate doesn't really work in my favor like I thought it would, and the cost of living seems to be about the same here as in the US. One dollar is about 500 pesos, and a pack of gum here is about 1,200 pesos. Chilean money still looks and feels like monopoly money to me, and while change is more useful here than in the US, I feel like a fool trying to count it at the grocery store, since I still can't tell the coins apart. I also really miss tofu, soy milk, Mexican food, my fresh basil plant, shorts, being able to run with my ipod, and summer. I don't really miss Georgia's humidity though..there's almost 0 humidity here and my hair is so much less frizzy =)

--I feel like a giant here. I stupidly only packed tennis shoes and my boots which have a low heel, and so anytime I wear them, I'm about 6 feet tall which makes me about 2 feet taller than any other Chilean woman within a 2 mile radius...when I ride the metro I feel like I can look over the head of every single person, all the way on down the train.

--I met my host dad's parents today, and we had lunch in their apartment. They are both super sweet, and cooked us so much food. Their apartment is on the 10th floor of their building and looks out onto la cordillera (the mountain range) ...stunningly beautiful, even more so today since it rained yesterday, which clears up the smog which usually makes it harder to see in the winter here.

So far, what I've loved most about being here is that it's like the colliding of two worlds for me, the world around me, and the world I always carried around inside my head. I love Spanish music and culture, and it's so cool hearing the songs I've always had on my ipod blasting in supermarkets, metro stations, street corners, and out of car windows. I like getting to talk in Spanish all the time, and I'm excited (if slightly intimidated) to start my classes soon. I also got to go on a tour of one of Pablo Neruda's (one of my favorite poets, who was from Chile) houses. Seeing his library, and the room where he wrote, and learning why he built his house the way he did (divided up into sections so that he wouldn't have to knock down trees to build it, and fashioned with slanting floors, odd lighthouse-like light fixtures, and secret passageways, to give it the feel of a ship) made me appreciate him even more as a poet.

I'll leave you guys with a song that's on the radio a lot here: arriba la vida !

I keep meaning to bring my camera but it's heavy and is a dead give away that I'm a gringa...but I promise soon I'll post some pictures.

Love!

Mi pieza chilena

this post is for my mom, who wanted to see pictures of my room...

(for those of you who know me well, you know I'm not actually this neat..my host family has a nanny who cleans my room ..and moves all my stuff around in the process..it's slightly disorienting.)

I'm guessing the Colorado poster was a gift from one of their previous exchange students.

this is my best friend, la estufa...

In other news, my straightener exploded yesterday. I had it plugged into the wall with  my adaptor, but since it is so cold here all the time, and I had been storing the straightner in the bathroom, I think it had moisture in it or something, and when I plugged it in, it starting smoking and then sparks came out =(

I've been riding on the metro a lot, and we've started our Contemporary Chile orientation/class. We went to La Universidad de Chile's orientation for foreigners yesterday and it was super boring and way too detailed. The woman giving her presentation started randomly talking to us about how to register for classes and health insurance and showed us a rapid fire slideshow of itty bitty maps (which mean nothing to us since we all JUST got here) of where we can go if we get sick. I've got a pretty sore throat now, so I'm crossing my fingers that Nyquil and honey will do the trick. 

Today we went  with CIEE to a place called La Vega, which is a fruit, vegetable, and meat market...it was super sketchy and random people, including the police, kept stopping us and telling us to be careful. It is raining today and is already dark, and is supposed to snow tonight. My host mom told me it never snows here, so I'm hoping she's right and the weather forecasters are wrong...


tomorrow I'm on a mission to find a drug store and buy some cough drops. love you all, leave me comments!

it's the small victories, really...

Yesterday was really fun, in the morning I went for a run along this long street near my house called Avenida Americo Vespucio (the guy North and South America are named after). The street is sort of like a long highway but the median is really wide and there's a running trail/little mini parks and swing-sets all along it. There were a lot of other people running, mostly Americans, judging by their college sweatshirts (my host family thinks I'm slightly crazy for wanting to go running in the winter.) In the afternoon, I met up with one of my American friends and we went to a marketplace where they sell all sorts of handmade bags and sweaters and jewelery, really cool stuff. We also discovered this museum/historic building called Castillo Hidalgo that looks like a cross between a park, an old European-style mansion, a castle, and a garden.

Here is a picture (not mine, I forgot my camera) so you can get an idea of what it looks like:


There are really steep stairs that go all the way up and beautiful flowers and trees..and when you climb all the way to the top, you can see the entire city. So far, it's my new favorite place in Santiago. We went out later last night (in Spanish, usually "to go out"=salir, but Chileans have their own words for it: carretear= to go out  carrete=the noun form) with Sophie's host brother and the American who is staying with Sophie's family from last semester, and her Chilean pololo (boyfriend, another Chilean word). The situation was rather ironic: we went to an Irish pub in Santiago, and listened to people sing karaoke..to AC/DC songs. People here apparently take karaoke really seriously and are also freakishly talented; everyone who went up to sing was amazing. This morning, I'm gonna try and go for a run again, and I think I'm going to a barbeque with my host family later in the afternoon.

My accomplishment of the day so far: I successfully figured out (after many, many failed attempts) how to light my estufa, and my feet and hands are no longer dangerously blue. Christine 1, Chilean winter 0.

Hola desde Santiago! (hello from Santiago!)

Hi everyone! 

I arrived in Santiago on Wednesday, around 7:30 am. My flight was long, and really turbulent because there were bad storms in Atlanta on Tuesday night. At one point, I woke up and there were lightning flashes outside the plane window and the plane was bouncing so hard that it it threw me into the air and over into the seat next to me. It was my first international flight, and they made all the announcements on the plane in English and Spanish, which was cool. When my plane landed, we came in over the Andes Mountains as the sun was rising. It was so incredibly beautiful...I've never lived near mountains before, and I get excited every time I look up and see them in the horizon.

When I arrived in the airport, I had to pay the reciprocity fee, go through immigration, and then go through customs. The people there asked me something which I didn't understand, and I had to declare my granola bar because it had almonds..apart from that, uneventful.The airport has no heat, and it has been FREEZING (seriously..I know I'm from Georgia, but I survived 3 blizzards in DC last winter and I have never been s cold inside a building before) here the last few days, and we had to wait for a few hours for everyone from my program to arrive. I had my first chilean cup of coffee, and wished badly that I hadn't packed my coat and gloves in vaccum bags..I could see my breath the entire time and couldn't stop shivering. 

We stayed at a hotel on Wednesday night, which was really cute and much warmer than the airport. We've had orientation for the last two days, and the food so far has been amazing and super vegetarian-friendly. I've had huge plates of vegetables and avocados (here, they use the word palta instead of aguacate) and fresh fruit juices and salsas for every meal so far. The meals are also really long, they bring each course out separately and then when you can't even think about eating anymore food, they bring you desert. This was the view from my hotel window: 

This afternoon, we met our host families, and left with them, and I'm all moved into my house now. My host family seems awesome, I have a host mom and dad, who are both really young, and they have two little girls, Cristina and Javiera, whoare 3 and 5 respectively. My host dad is a PE teacher who is going to law school, and my host mom is a social worker who is getting her masters in public policy. My dad made jokes about Bush and likes Bob Dylan ..and an odd amount of 80s rock (apparently everyone here listens to old rock music in English..why the 80s of all decades..?), so I think we'll get along just fine =) The little girls are adorable, they drew me lots of pictures and hugged me when I came in. I can understand most of what people here say, except for their youngest daughter...hopefully with time I'll pick up on the accent. My host dad was making fun of me, he says I have an accent that is Spanish (from Spain) and Mexican at the same time..I explained that I had a professor from Spain and worked in a Mexican restaurant, and he says..fine..as long as you leave with a Chilean accent, haha.

I also bought a Chilean cell phone today...it cost me a whopping 10, 000 pesos..which is approximately 20 bucks. Not a bad deal. Right now, I'm in my room, wearing 3 pairs of socks, 4 sweaters, sweat pants, a scarf over my head..and I'm still so cold I can't feel my fingers or toes. No one here has central heating, instead they have estufas..which are propane tanks which you light with matches. I'm afraid of mine, but I have a feeling its going to be my new best friend. I'm definitely buying slippers ASAP. I learn how to use the metro tomorrow, which is how I'll be getting to class. I'm excited to be here and am loving everything so far! I miss you all, besos y buenas noches!

Last night in the US!

Hi everyone!

It's 2am, and I think I'm finally, almost finished packing. I'm still trying to figure out how to fit my shampoo and my Spanish vocab book into my suitcases, but aside from that I'm pretty much ready to go. I'll be flying out of Atlanta tomorrow (well, at this point, today...) around 10 pm, and I'm scheduled to arrive in Santiago, Chile around 7:30am.

Once I arrive, I have orientation from July 14th-16th, and I'm supposed to meet my host family and move in with them on July 15th. After that, my study abroad program requires us to take a two-week course called Contemporary Chile, and then my university classes will start on August 2nd. I'll be taking classes (mostly international relations and Spanish/linguistics courses) at two different universities, La Universidad de Chile and La Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. I'm really excited to explore the city and get to know my host family, and see all the street signs written in Spanish =)

I won't have a phone while I'm there, and I may not have internet in my house (I'll let you know once I move in with my family), but I will be able to get online at internet cafes and at school, so the best way to get in touch with me is via email/blog/facebook/skype/etc. I'm going to try and get some sleep now that I've finally packed everything that was covering my bed; I'll try and update as soon as I get there and get settled in.  Peace and love to everyone, I'll miss you all; please keep in touch!

-Christine