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!
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