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Published: January 11th 2010
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from taxi
those are the Andes in the background; you can see them from some parts of the city, especially when you fly into the santiago airport on your way into the city I've been meaning to start writing in this ever since I actually arrived in Santiago but I haven't had a chance to, so this is going to be a long entry...sorry. However, for those of you who only want to see pictures, there will be plenty, so get ready to be jealous of how beautiful it is here 😊
So, I'll start at the beginning. My flight was last Tuesday afternoon (January 5th). I flew to the Dallas/Ft. Worth international airport in the afternoon and Anna and I (for those of you who are reading from Ohio or wherever, she and I are friends from USC and we're both studying at the same university in Santiago this semester) were on the same flight to Santiago. It was over night and took about nine hours and wasn't that bad, but I didn't sleep much and I was pretty sore when we finally arrived in Santiago. The flight was uneventful but when we finally were flying over Chile the sun rose and we could see the Andes when we got closer to the city, and seeing them from the air while the sun was rising was amazing. I took a video of
hotel room
my hotel room and awesome canadian roommate! it on my iPod but I don't know how to put it on this website at the moment, but hopefully I'll figure out how to get it up. Anyway when we got to the airport we had to buy a tourist visa (for those of yall who have listened to me rant about the process I had to go through to try to get a student visa, it didn't end up happening because my FBI background check never came back so all we ended up doing was waiting in line for about 20 minutes to pay USD$130 and get our passports stamped. Frustration.) and then had to go through two separate customs lines to get our checked baggage and get out of the airport. So that took pretty much forever. Then we took a taxi to the orientation hotel, which was about 30 minutes from the airport in an area called Vitacura. I took the first picture from the taxi on the way to the hotel.
Anna and I are studying with a program called University Study Abroad Consortium (USAC) and there are about 50 other students in our program, and we met all of them on Wednesday when
hotel
some of the grounds behind the hotel we got to the hotel. Everyone is really nice and friendly and I've really enjoyed hanging out with them so far. And the hotel was awesome...it was really different than the setup of hotels in the U.S. and had all of these beautiful walkways and grounds that I didn't even know about until we were almost ready to leave...woops. Anyway we had the first part of our orientation on Wednesday night (the cultural part) and then we ate dinner with some Chilean students who started a group at Universidad Andres Bello (the university at which I am studying) to welcome foreign students and show them around, have conversation partners, etc. After they took us out and it was really funny (and slightly embarassing) because there were about 30 of us walking down the block and we caused a lot of problems attempting to get into a bar, but it was a good time. On Thursday we had the rest of orientation (the academic part) and then the people with host families met them, and everyone else went to their respective residents. Anna and I took at taxi to our apartment, which is really cute but tiny...it was a challenge getting
hotel
the hotel also apparently had a fairly well-known restaurant so this is one of the places they set up for reservations, but we didn't eat there. it was farther back on the grounds behind the hotel everything to fit but I like the building and our landlord and everything is in good condition and our location is great, so no complaints.
Anyway, that was Thursday. On Friday everyone met for a tour of our university and of the city, and the pictures are a better representation of what we did than my account of the day. Then anna and I went shopping for food and such things and that was an experience...we got most of our food at the central market and all the produce and meat and cheese and stuff is fresh, so that was cool. And the way the department stores are set up here are misleading--it looks like they just have this little store with shoes or clothes or cosmetics but it's actually five or six levels, and each level has different stuff on it like houseware and linens and etc. I went out with some people on Friday evening and didn't get back until like seven in the morning...anything you've heard about latinamericans partying all night and sleeping all day is definitely correct, as far as I can tell. Hopefully I'll be able to handle such a schedule. So on Saturday
hotel
more grounds I definitely needed to recover and that night Anna and I went to the Parque Forestal by our apartment to relax and take pictures (anticlimactic, I know, but I couldn't handle another night like Friday in the same weekend).
Yesterday, on Sunday, Anna and I went to this cute little Presbyterian church across the street from our apartment and I really enjoyed the service--the hymns were familiar and I could understand most of the sermon so that was nice. And the two of us were introduced multiple times throughout the service because we were obviously new to the church (there were about 30 people there) and even more obviously not Chilean...so that was cute but fairly embarrassing. And today was our first day of class, which after everything that has happened was anticlimactic because I had gotten used to exploring Santiago/hanging out with everyone/enjoying how beautiful it is. But I think my classes are going to be interesting and I'm looking forward to my Spanish improving, so bring 'em on.
That's it for now I guess (relatively speaking, because I realize this was super-long and probably not that exciting...) so thanks for reading, I hope you enjoy the
hotel
more grounds pictures, and if you feel the urge to skype me, my username is lsplow11. Hope everyone's semesters/travels (for the others who are studying abroad)/jobs are going well! I'm planning on posting more regularly from now on, so until then, it's been real.
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