Oh, hello. Come on in

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Well hello to everybody, or maybe nobody if no one actually reads this. I thought it would be a good idea to start this travel blog for my trip to Chile so that I have some way to let everyone that takes the time to look at it down when I forget to update it. But no, really, give me a couple weeks and I'll try to stay on top of it and we'll all be happy!

So here's a little background: I'm going to Valparaiso, Chile through CIEE to study from July 15th (Yep, today!) until January 3rd. Well, let me be clear, classes start on August 1st and end on November 24, at which point finals begin and run until December 10th. At that point, I just have to hope that I've actually made a friend or two and can have a place to stay while I'm not out exploring South America until January! I will be attending Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso where I'll be taking classes with other Chilean students and just about as completely immersed as I'd feel comfortable with. I'll stay with a host family that will feed me two meals a day, give me a place to sleep, do my laundry (yes!), and hopefully just be a resource for me while I'm in the country. For anyone that is interested, I don't know what classes I'm taking yet for sure, but I will post them when I find out.

So now I'm in Atlanta, Georgia on a 12 hour layover waiting to get on a plane for 9 hours and 25 minutes, and the reality of what I'm about to do still hasn't set in. I had a little trouble with luggage and what not when I got here (of course), and realized how glad I was that it happened when I was still in an English speaking country. My Spanish, well, it isn't the greatest, and it is definitely the thing I'm most worried about. But oh well, it will be interesting!

I can't really think of anything else that it would make sense to write about right now, and this thing is already pretty long, so I'll leave it at that. I'm pretty sure that you all can make comments if you want, so feel free to! Later posts will have pictures too, but so far between Minnesota and Atlanta I haven't really seen anything worth taking a picture of (unless you count the dinosaur skeleton standing behind me, but I don't).

Thanks for stopping by, so long!

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Comments

[Diane V Jerde]

Hi
I hope you can get some pictures on here. I envy you so much,being able to see another country and get the feel for it. Just stay safe and have a wonderfull experience! Love ya, and think about you all of the time. Aunt Diane