First two days

I flew out of Peoria Tuesday evening and landed in Dallas for a layover where I met with the other students from USAC going to Santiago on the group-flight. It was nice to get acquainted with them and we all connected quickly. The flight was fun even though it was a red-eye. One awesome thing about it was watching the sun rise over the Andres as we flew over the coast of South America.

When we landed, we eventually met with our program director, Luis, who checked us in and put us on a bus to the hotel. The rest of the day was spent at the hotel having orientation and lots of food. The morning of day two in Chile was just a little more orientation and then our families came to pick us up. Oscar, my host dad, came to get me. He owns a photocopy store I think, and doesn't speak much more English than I speak Spanish so our conversation was broken but we were able to get to know each other a bit somehow. Monica, my host mom, works for an airline in their office downtown. Oscar (23) and Felipe (19) both go to college but I don't think they go to the same one I do. Everyone is gone all day long at work or school. It seems that the earliest anyone gets home is around seven at night and dinner is usually served around nine or ten. We also have a maid, Nelly, who is at the house all day everyday except for Sunday. I've been given a room that is attached to the main house where I also have my own bathroom, which is nice. It's basically what we would call the mother-in-law suite, so I have an external entrance. Even though we live in what seems like a really nice neighborhood, we have to keep everything locked all the time. We have gates in the front and bars over all our doors and windows. So I guess crime here is quite the problem. The cold is starting to get to me now. Yesterday wasn't too bad, but it's definitely winter here. Utilities are super expensive here so no one keeps much heat going in their houses. I have a nice space-heater for my room, but it's still really chilly (no pun intended... heh heh heh). Tomorrow, Oscar (dad) will take me to more orientation with the USAC group where I'll begin to get familiar with the metro system and a bunch of other logistics like money. After a few hours of orientation tomorrow, we'll be free for the weekend and then classes start on Monday. My class schedule is really nice. I have three hours of Spanish every morning. Monday I have a three-hour economics class and Tuesday I have a Latin Dance class, so school should be a lot of fun this semester.