Ya tengo un piso!

I found a place to live!! Yeah!! It's a rather large flat in an apartment building in the perfect area to live in. It's in the Providencia district, literally across the street from a metro stop with the line that will take me straight to school. After looking for places and knowing that this city is huge, I decided that there are three main things that I have been looking for as far as where to live: location (must be near easy access to the metro or direct bus lines), the people (must be fun, comfortable to talk to, and understanding to my ever-changing spanish), the amount of lighting (some places have small windows and are sort of depressing because the Chileans won't install lots of lights for electricity purposes). The place I found has lots of natural lighting, a perfect place to hang out and it feels safe. It's not on a main street, so not loud, and the Chilean girl I met there are extremely nice. She likes to rent to foreigners, she is very kind and seems like a fun person to hang out with. She's 25 and works in econimic development in poorer parts of the city. The other two, whom I haven;t met, are two guys from Spain. The room I get is painted lime green, as I mentioned before is rather common, and it has a private bathroom attatched to it (yes!!) All amenities included, and lets than $300.

As of late...today was really cold. Huge change from yesterday when it almost hit 70 and today the clouds stuck over the city and it probably didn't go over 53 I'd say and may have been colder than that.

Hmmm...what else. Things I've noticed about Chile/Chileans:

1. Chileans talk like they're running out of breath. That is, they chop the ends of words off and continue to speak really fast without many endings. Most of the spanish world uses the work Pues for "well" but here they say "Po" There you go, they chop it off! and they tend to say Mucha gracia.

2. Chileans like Mayo. A LOT. And there is this food they eat here that they call a vienesa which is basically a hot dog thats stacked tall with avocado, tomatoes, mayo and oregano. And then there is churrasco which is a type of shaved beef with some sort of flavor to it that is pretty good, on a type of burger bun, with the goods: avocado, tomato, oregano, and mayo. They eat lots of bread type things. Or just lots of bread.

3. Fanny packs are the cool thing to have. For girls anyway. I think it's a mix between convenience (it's right there always at hand), safety (close to you, not hanging on the shoulder to be robbed from), and they are kinda fashionable. It's recommended by our advisor to have one cause they are safer as far as keeping things close to you. I might have to get a bright green and yellow one to match my green and blue reebok hightops.

4. In a restaurant, there is no pepper and rarely ketchup. There is salt, mustard, a sauce called ahí---red spicy type stuff, and another red sauce that is more BBQ oriented.

Well, I guess that's all for now...pictures will be up within a week. Chau!