¡Hola Chile!

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¡Hola a todos! I am finally in Chile and I can´t believe it! So much as happened in the past three days that it already feels like I´ve been here a week. I don´t have any pictures yet, but we are leaving for the Atacama desert tomorrow morning at 4:50, so I´m sure I´ll have lots of pictures after that.
We got into Chile around 8:30 Friday morning. We were all exhausted because no one could sleep on the plane. Not to mention, I managed to leave Atlanta with a head cold and have been fighting it ever since. Oh what luck. haha. A bus took us into the city because the airport is on the outskirts of Santiago. I was afraid that Santiago would feel like just another city because it´s so big, but I was wrong. It definitely feels like I am in South America. There are the huge Andes mountains to the West; some of them are even topped with snow, even though it was 95 degrees when we landed! The city is huge, from the shanty towns on the outskirts to the large buildings in the center of the city. It´s very beautiful though; the streets are lined with trees and even though it´s hot, it´s a dry heat and there is always a breeze. Friday night we went to la Bella Vista barrio and had an amazing dinner at a restaurant near Pablo Neruda´s house. We sat in the patio outback under these beautiful trees and it was amazing. I even tried my first oyster! I figured if I´m gonna be here, I got to go all out and try everything. It was...interesting, slightly chewy. Of course, they weren´t kidding when they said Chileans eat dinner late. We didn´t start until 10 and we finished around 12:30!!
On Saturday we got to meet our Chilean families. They came to the hotel to pick us up. Our mama was the last one (Emily Poe and I are living together). She has a very nice apartment in Los Condes. It´s a nice area of town. We have an older brother named Cristobal who is 28. He seems cool and helps us a lot with words we don´t know how to say. Our family asked Emily and I to please speak Spanish to each other, even when they weren´t around. So far, we have, but it´s been really hard. I am able to understand about half of what is being said to me and can answer questions. Last night our mama, Nena, took us to her mother´s house for a dinner. We helped her make tacos; of course we didn´t even start cooking till about 9:45 at night. I thought it was going to be a dinner with her and her mother and brother. Next thing I know, there´s 20 people in the apartment and everyone´s talking to everybody and I don´t know what the heck is going on. Most of them were very kind to us and slowed down if they were talking directly at us. I still felt awkward though because I was coughing and sneezing the whole time and all I could think about was sleeping in a bed. haha. It was still a good experience.
Like I said, tomorrow we leave for the Atacama desert. We are spending four full days there; I think it´s going to be awesome. I´ll post again after our little trip, hopefully with some pictures!! ¡Hasta luego!

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