New apartment, new family, new friends... new spanish dictionary?

What a week it's been!
This time last week, I was waiting for my family to pick my up at the hostel. It was so scary and exciting! I was picked up second to last of my orientation group, so the anticipation was killing me by the time they got there. Claudia, (my host mom) Javiera (my 19 year old host sister) and Daniel (Javi's boyfriend) all came to pick me up. It felt so funny to meet them for the first time! Even funnier was the fact that Javi and I look surprisingly alike- she also has long curly hair and brown eyes, and is a year younger than me. Claudia laughed when she saw me, saying that she wouldn't be able to tell us apart.
I spent most of the day moving my things into my room and getting situated. At lunch I found out two things: Claudia makes very good food, and I can actually communicate perfectly well with my host family. Both very good things! I spent most of the meal wondering at how I could speak with them AND understand what was going on. Somehow I had been imagining that all of my spanish would disappear once I had to actually use it in my new house. Fortunately it didn't.
At night I found out the best part of my new living situation- I have a scaldasono!!! What is this, you might ask? It is, in fact, the most wonderful thing possible to find in a country where there is no central heating. A mattress heater. This is my new favorite piece of technology. Only problem is, it is nearly impossible to get out of bed when it is literally generating its own warm toastiness. Oh, but it is so worth it.
Sunday morning I woke up feeling ecstatic. All that nervous energy I had pent up now translated into the most deliriously happy morning I have had for quite some time. The sun was coming in the window, I had a cute little room all to myself, I finally had clean clothes and a kitchen and a pet turtle, (!!!) and my host family was nice! I had chocolate cereal, manjar (dulce de leche) on toast, and tea and sat on the porch. Life was good.

Javi and I spent much of the day together, talking, making lunch, and later taking a test run through the micro and metro system. The micro bus system seemed a bit complicated, but not impossible to sort out.

Monday morning I had to wake up really early to go to the immigration office and apply for my Chilean I.D. It took a long time and the building was freeeezing, and I couldn't get the fingerprinting ink off of my hands for most of the day, but I am excited to get the card. Later we took a Spanish oral exam at the Universidad Catolica, where we will be taking Spanish class. (The rest will be at Universidad de Chile)

I cannot believe I will be taking Spanish classes in this place. It is beautiful! Old gothic (?) architecture, stone buildings, and a courtyard right outside the classroom? I can't believe people go to school there. And... now I will be going to school there?!

Monday night I ended up being alone for much of the night, because Javi was just starting a new job and so was Claudia. Tuesday morning, they gave me directions to the Tufts office and I took the micro bus for the first time! It worked out fine, but it is very difficult to learn a new bus system when you don't recognize where to get off. These first few weeks will be a lot of trial and error, I think.

From the Tufts office we headed to the Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities, where we had a tour and orientation there. On the way back I got completely lost on the micro with Rebecca, and ended up on the wrong side of a highway. Oops. Again with the trial and error.

Tuesday night Javi and Claudia were at work until late again. Unfortunately, this meant I stayed up quite late and then realized I had to wake up at 6:30 for my first class! It's very different here, since an early class means that you have to leave the house suuuper early to get there in time on the micro and metro. Finding the class was a challenge, but the three other Tufts students and I who are in the class made it on time. In fact, the teacher was the one who was 15 minutes late! There was only one other student there, but luckily we found out that there are 9 other Chilean students signed up for the class, and that it technically starts next week. After the class I went back to the apartment, where I realized someone had stolen my Spanish dictionary out of the outside pocket of my bag on the bus. Really though? Nobody needs that more than I do! And it was so cute and miniature :( Luckily, I only keep the less valuable things in the outside pockets. At least they didn't take my tissues!

Later, I had a phone interview with the SFS Kenya program coordinator for this spring. After a 30 minute interview, she told me that I got into the program!!! Yay! I can't believe I am in Chile, and now might be going to Kenya in 6 months. What an incredible year!!!!!

Second week of orientation: lots of trips, lots of lectures, and too much wine

So much has happened since the last time I wrote!

The second week of orientation was very busy. I didn't end up going Salsa dancing on Saturday night, because everyone was feeling pretty under the weather. On Sunday most of our orientation group woke up feeling quite sick. Sharing pisco sours on Friday night probably wasn't the best idea! Pisco sours = amazing citrusy drinks made with pisco, a liquor made from grapes. They are very tasty and very popular here.
We spent Sunday morning at an artisanal village called Los Dominicos, where we had lunch while a live big band played. It was really sunny and beautiful there. Later we embarked on a "social geography tour": We started in Las Condes, where my host family lives. This is the richest area, full of tall buildings, malls, and nice apartments. It is the area closest to the mountains. From there we headed all the way to the southwest area, where we visited a poor community famous for dug trafficking, and toured a drug rehab center there. It felt a little awkward touring around this area with such a big group, but it was really interesting to talk to people there. It is incredible what an extreme difference there is between the economic classes in different areas of the city. Chile is often one of the top ten most economically divided countries in the world, and this tour made me really grasp the extent of the problem.
On Monday we had an early lecture by Robert Sandoval of the armed forces, and an afternoon lecture by Manuel Garreton on politics and the election process. I was so tired, I had a hard time taking any of it in. So many interesting lecturers crammed into such a short time period! After the lectures we went to a general orientation at UChile, (the university) which made me remember that we were actually going to LIVE here and go to school, and that this isn't just a two-week vacation.
Tuesday we watched a video directed by Peter Winn, then attended a lecture on women and work in Chile over the years. Afterwards, a rep from a women's rights group called SERNAM talked to us for a while. Gender difference is so much more prominent here. I have noticed it on the streets (catcalls and "sucking" at women- a very strange tradition) and also in signing up for classes. I tried to sign up for soccer, and was told that it was a men's sport and that there were only soccer class/teams for men. After encountering the same problem in most of the departments, I finally found one that accepted women. What a frustrating system.
During the rest of the week we went to La Moneda (the government building) for a tour, had lectures on religion and newspapers (there's one here that's like the newspaper version of the Daily Show- very funny) and had personal class advising sessions. We also took a trip to Valparaiso, which I LOVED. The city is really beautiful, with thousands of colorful buildings stacked up around a picturesque port with palm trees. Megan and I took off our shoes and ran on the cold beach. It was so refreshing! Later we visited Neruda's old house there and ate in a restaurant that we had to take an outdoor elevator to get to- it was extremely old and rickety and a little frightening, but once we got to the top the view was amazing! We all ordered different types of delicious fish on silver platters, and sat in a room of glass windows overlooking the ocean. Someday when I'm rich and famous I will eat there every day.
On Friday, we went to a Poblacion, a poor urban settled community. This one was famous for being the first that was taken overnight by people who organized in the 70s and settled on public land. This was seen as a big step for the urban poor, so they named this particular poblacion La Victoria. We talked to students who are working to bring together the youth in the community through soccer and mural painting in the city. I am hoping that I can have my semester internship there, and help them with the murals or other projects that ECO (program that works with the urban poor) does there.
Friday night we had our last orientation food experience at a fancy restaurant in Santiago. We all got big bowls of clams, mussels, and other seafood and meat in a broth, plus two delicious desserts and pisco sours, red wine, and champagne. I need to learn to hold my liquor a little better here, they serve so much at dinner and I have a bit of a hard time composing myself at the dinner table after 3 glasses...
After dinner we went to a salsa club called La Maestra Vida, which was very fun but not what I expected! It was very crowded, and people dance a different sort of street salsa here. Trying to follow/watching everyone else trying to follow was hilarious.

Saturday morning I packed for moving in with my new host family! Ah! I was so nervous and excited. It was a great two weeks, but we didn't really have to branch out very much, and I still hadn't done any significant exploring alone. I couldn't really picture what my life would be like after this- my family, my house, my neighborhood, and my school were still so unknown! We all brought our suitcases down to the lobby and waited...

Chilly Chile

Hello everyone!

I am currently in an internet cafe next to our hostel. It is frigid.
Thought I would give you an update on my life: Chile is AWESOME! I have been so incredibly busy every day, I can barely absorb it all. This orientation is really intense, but really interesting and fun too! We have been learning all about Chilean history, and learning from INCREDIBLE people, like the woman that ran the workers' union in Chile during the dictatorship, and a news reporter, and a guy who was tortured in the concentration camps here and took us on a personal tour of one of them. Soooo intense and sad but very interesting. I really didn´t realize how bad Pinochet´s rule was, but I am learning more and more that it was extremely horrific. It makes me appreciate our government much more.
The orientation isn´t all serious. We are also going on fun excursions, like wine tasting at this really fancy amazing vineyard, where we had the most delicious, enormous dinner EVER. Avocados, beef (the best I´ve ever tasted, and I know I´ve been a vegetarian, but seriously. amazing.) crab stuffed shells, mussels, rice with yummy spices and things, a ton of types of cheese, asparagus, swordfish, vegetable lasagna, three types of cake (merengue, dulce de leche, and peach) and chocolate truffles. The man serving us saw how excited I was about the truffles, and after serving everyone, came back and put the rest of them at my place. So funny!
The people here are really great. I am finding out more and more that they all have a great sense of humor. There isn´t the major obsession with Americans that I have sometimes found in Peru and Guatemala, which might be why people say that Chileans are less friendly than people in some other Latin American countries, but I have found them to be fun and friendly, often with a kind of ironic sense of humor. Today we went to the Aconcagua valley, and saw the second highest mountain in the Andes. It was beautiful! Later we talked with farmers who were part of a labor union there. They farm walnuts, and so after the talk we went to a really cute restaurant in the area, which was very homey with raisins and garlic and other things hanging to dry on vines on the ceiling, and a little woodstove. I sat next to Daniel, one of the men who spoke to us earlier, and he was the sweetest man ever! We shared stories about having horses growing up. : ) I thought I had the best food in the world at the vineyard, but actually I think it was here. We had WALNUT SOUP! It sounds strange but it was absolutely phenomenal. Creamy and warm and mild tasting, with chicken and potatoes in it. Soooo heavenly. Later we had a very unusual squash dessert which was sweet and apparently the "caviar of desserts in Chile." Afterwards we went to a musician lady´s house in the mountain area, where we had a gorgeous view of the mountains and she played us songs she had written. Then we all went to a Chicheria, a surprise. It turned out that it was a sort of moonshine making place, which was full of tubs of grapes fermenting with other spices. As the man there said, "this stuff would never pass any of the country´s regulations on drinks, but it´s the best Chicha you´ll ever find." I´m slightly curious about whether my stomach will be in pain tomorrow, but it was worth it! Soooo good. It tasted like mulled cider, with a little orangey grapey taste and a little alcohol.
What else... it is very cold here. VERY cold. I guess the actual temperature isn´t that bad, in fact it is above freezing, but there is no central heating anywhere! I sleep in my coat and scarf and two wool blankets every night! Quite the shock after the 90 degree weather we were having. I am a bit concerned that I am starting to get a cold, as is everyone else on the program. We shall see...
Last night I went on a much more successful discoteca trip than last weekend. We arrived late instead of at 11 like last time, (which I had THOUGHT would be late enough before we found out everything starts at 1230.) The place we went to was actually on the top floor of a parking garage! Kind of sketchy looking but it ended up being really fun! I went with a group of 11 other Tufts students. Danced with a very amusing guy named Antonio. His mom is an english teacher, so we spent much of the time switching between languages- it was quite challenging. It turns out that he lives right down the street that I will be living on this semester! What a coincidence. Maybe I will run into him again. Anyways, the discoteca was packkked with hundreds of people, and had colorful lights and great music. It´s awesome to be allowed into a place like that here!
Tonight I am trying to decide whether to go Salsa dancing. I will have to see if I am still feeling a bit under the weather in a few hours. But it´s so tempting!!!
Tomorrow we are leaving late in the morning to go to a shantytown. Should be very interesting. I have so much more to tell you but the keyboard in this internet cafe is impossible. And this is already an essay.

Miss you all!!!

~Molly