Bienvenidos a Chile

Hola todos...well, I'm in Chile! Yeah! I arrived fine and got to hang out in Mexico City for a few hours with an exchange student friend I met in Germany who is from Mexico. So now I can say I've been to Mexico too! It was nice.

Santiago has been a fun time so far. Since I arrived it's been pretty consistent between meeting up for our orientation and the first day of my language program and finding housing. I've already been able to navigate through the city quite well and comfortably, but have really only seen a couple districts and there is soooooo much more to see. We are staying in a hotel in Providencia, one of the more central districts of the city. It's very hip and trendy and a fun place to wander around and look at. I've checked out a couple places to live and have walked A LOT. I probably did at least five miles yesterday (I mapped one route I did and it was 3.3 miles, and later that day there was much more involved, but too random to map) and a good two or three today. I just decided that if I don't need to be anywhere then there is no point in taking the metro and spending 80 cents when I can walk for 10-30 minutes (or in yesterdays case, over an hour, through a rather run-down portion of town) and see things.

The weather has been beautiful. They said Chile (Santiago) is really really cold. True, it's cold at night, gets to the lower 40s and can go to 30s, but it really warms up in the day...I'd say today it could have hit 68 or so. I was fine with just a tshirt. It is weird how much the temperatures range from night to day, not like that in california in the winter. It's been sunny and quaint.

I've checked out a couple places to live: a family (Grandma, her daughter, and the daughters 6-year old son) who live in a district called Ñuñoa. It's a bit less central and more just a neighborhood with more stray dogs ther than in the city. It's not as nice--i would say it is dangerous but just not as convenient as far as transportion goes. I went to the house with two of the guys in our group who were interested in it as well if I wasn't. I didn't care for it but mostly because of location but I can give you all a good story from this. MOm, you will find this especially interesting. We walked in with the daughter who met us at the metro and somehow got on the topic of what the artwork was in the house, as they had us sit down. She had been collecting books and paraphenialia (i spelled that completely phonetically) of anti-pinochet messages to create a big history type project. Then the grandmother went to get some other notebooks where they had been keeping original papers from the 60s--which they called messages. These messages were all drawn by hand and then reprinted by activist groups that wanted to bring democratic elections to Chile and get rid of Pinochet. Turns out the grandma was very very involved in one of these groups, which had to be kept secret. They would only distribute the little flyers at night on the streets, leaving them out so people could see them in the morning. Ironically, her husband (who we dont know what happened to) would go around after her and pick them up because he supported Pinochet. It was super interesting and the grandma just reminded me of some really tough lady that wouldn't take anything from anyone.

OKee dokee, I'm gonna write more later, hasta luego!!!