With Love From Santiago

So I’m here and I’m loving it!!!

Lets do a brief recap of the day, shall we…

Plane Ride: Sat next to 2 women who were hilarious on the way to Dallas. Then on my flight to Chile I sat next to a girl who has been EVERYWHERE in the world. I’m super envious but she gave me some travel tips (basically make friends that live in cool places so you can visit them and stay for free)

Arrival: I thought high school Spanish was sufficiently informative until I walked up to the customs line with the wrong paperwork filled out…. But lets put it this way: when you’re a blond haired blue eyed American who is trying to get chocolate chip cookies into the country all you have to do is smile at the male customs worker ; ) Oh and while we’re at it, I have been stared at more today alone than I have been in my entire life. One man turned around to continue looking at me as I passed by. You would think this is flattering but lets be honest, I feel like a zoo animal here.

People: My fellow students are great. I have already made friends and am super excited to get to know some of the girls better. We all knew that by the end of this thing we were going to be like family so almost everyone jumped in and started introducing themselves and picking out the people that they wanted to hang out with. Also, while we are here in Santiago we have to move in groups and I am the "hefa" of our four person group which means I am in charge of getting everyone up in the morning on time and making sure we all make it back where we need to be. But right now two of my three roommates are delayed in the states so my job has been easy thus far. 

Orientation: Eh, this was boring and only half informational because half of it was in Spanish

Lunch: Glass bottles of water and chicken with a wine sauce over rice. Hard to cut but not too bad. I took this to be a good omen from the food gods. May the mystery food be ever in my favor!

Cerro San Cristobal: “cerro” means hill and that’s how the addresses are set up in Valpo and Vina (where I will go to school and live) So the address starts with the hill # and then gives the house #. Strange but cool. Anyways, San Cristobal is basically a huge huge huge hill (if we are going by Missouri standards its bigger then a mountain) So it’s a national park and has a zoo. We didn’t go to the zoo but we did walk around part of the park that has a ton of cool vendors and a massive statue of the Virgin Mary. And being a hill, it looked out over all of Santiago. But its not like you can see all of Santiago from one place, you have to move around San Cristobal to see all of Santiago because its so big. One third of Chile’s population live in this city. And its crazy because the upper class is completely segregated from the lower classes. All you have to do is look at the buildings and you know what half of the city is which economic class. After our free time at the vendors and statue we rode the Funicular down to the base of the hill. This thing is a rickety car pulley system that sends you straight down the hill. It’s frightening considering they opened the thing in 1925. So we walked/ rode the metro back to the hotel and finally got our room.
Things that made me laugh: 1) I saw a man wearing a BAZZINGA t shirt over his huge beer belly. 2) there was a Chilean dressed up as Tigger at San Cristobal. 3) A tv talk show where the background was constantly changing from scuba divers to jelly fish to people walking around and back to more sea creatures. We had no idea what was going on. 4) The flusher on our toilet is one that is on top that you pull up and well I guess I got a little excited and pulled the entire puller thingy right out of the toilet! 5) as a rule we are not allowed to bring strange men back to our hotel room...because yes, in my first night in a foreign country I definitely want to get with some strange man that will most likely give me a disease while my other 3 roommates are in the other room. NAST!

Roomie: My roomie is Mary and she’s super cool. She’s into photography, is a vegetarian, listens to good music and is incredibly laid back. Oh and she’s staying here for a whole year. We get along pretty well but she has this crying problem…not really. But the smog here has really been irritating her eyes so she will randomly get really watery eyes that makes her look like she’s crying. I think its hilarious but she’s a little embarrassed about it. 

Hotel: Our room is sick! It has a kitchen and a living room. Mom if you think your kitchen is small, think again. This thing is so cute and it looks like it was originally supposed to be a bathroom. Our room has two bedrooms and one bathroom and is perfect!

Dinner: Since we have a kitchen we decided to cook for ourselves. We walk into the super mercado and this place is weird. They don’t have liquid milk, its all powder, the eggs aren’t refrigerated, and there is no pasta sauce to be found. But we did find stuff to make quesadillas and some pre made queso empanadas. Those babies were HEAVEN!!! I’m talking so stinking good! But Mary had a crying attack so the people there thought she was weird and she couldn’t see so I had to pay for both of our groceries and the checker thought I was weird, and then two guys in the program didn’t weigh their vegetables so their checker lady was yelling at them. Overall this was an informational and entertaining venture.

I was nervous until I saw this view...and at that point I knew that I belong here

 The view from a hotel room where I had to temporarily store my bags

 The view of Santiago from San Cristobal. Note the smog...there is literally a brown cloud over this city

Yeah that's right, I'm so cool I just hang out with Jesus on mountains and stuff.

 My mangy new friend. I wanted to take him home cause is beard is so cute. But rule #1 with the dogs is don't touch them because ether have such bad fleas.

This is the funicular that was going up beside us as we were going down... this bad boy was STEEP!

Well that’s it for now. I’m exhausted and really really need to shower.

With love from Santiago!

Kaity, Kait, Kaitlin