Week One: Santiago!!

As of tomorrow morning, I'll have officially been in Chile for a week! And what a week it's been.

Pretty light packing job, for me. Success!

My first view of Chile was a spectacular view of the Andes mountains from the window of my plane, which was a dang good start to living somewhere for four months.

I successfully made it through immigration and customs, and met up with the rest of the group of students in my program. USAC has been really great about setting everything up for us and getting us all the information and resources we need to be successful in Santiago, which is great, and a definite relief when I felt like I was kind of floundering around at first, not knowing how anything worked.  The group of about 45 students stayed in a hotel all day Wednesday and Thursday morning for orientation, and then that afternoon, we met our host families! I'm currently living with my host mom and her adult daughter, and they couldn't be more delightful. They're always saying things like "Que rico!" (how rich, literally, but basically how wonderful) and "Que lindo!" (how cute, how pretty) about everything - food, views, art, things in stores, etc.

My room

The view from in front of my house! Las montanas!!

Also, my host mom is an amazing cook, and I love to eat good food, so that's always nice. Chileans eat a lot of bread with cheese and ham and/or butter and jelly, they drink a lot of coffee and tea, and since it's summertime here, they have the most amazing fruit with basically every meal. And, Chileans love icecream! Those are basically all of my favorite foods, so I fit right in. Seriously though, the fruit; from a purely fruit-based perspective, it seems that Chile is basically the Garden of Eden. Every piece of fruit here is amazing and more delicious than most fruits I've had before in my life.

Helado!!

Tomatoes, plum, potatoes with ahi, lemon chicken, egg. Yum!

On Friday, we had another day of orientation activities, including a tour of Santiago. We saw La Moneda, which is sort of like the White House in DC, except the president doesn't live there. There was a museum underneath with art and a samurai exhibit, which was interesting. Something you quickly realize is that there are just dogs everywhere; as one of my professors said today when there was a dog in our school building, dogs being everywhere is just a part of normal life in Santiago. One dog which accompanied our group for part of our tour followed us into La Moneda; it was strange to see a dog walking around a museum, but such is life here, apparently. There seems to be a different culture about stray dogs here than in the U.S. Rather than trying to get rid of them, they're somewhat taken care of. As a dog lover myself, there has already been more than one pup that I was seriously tempted to snatch and keep!

(Crooked) picture of La Moneda

Algunos de los perros

We also went to Plaza de Armas, which is the center of the city. We saw a cathedral, ate some icecream, and listened to some musicians playing in the square. Several people were dancing to the music; I'm taking a dance class this semester, and maybe one day that'll be me! (That will never be me. But the point is that it could be!)

Catedral Metropolitana de Santiago

  

After that, we went and walked around a sculpture park. There are parks everywhere in Santiago, and plants absolutely everywhere. It's a delight to the eye, and most certainly a delight to the soul!

Friday evening, my host mom told me they were going to take me to their cabanas near Isla Negra for the weekend, which was, needless to say, fantastic. It was beautiful; I think I can let the pictures do most of the talking for me! Isla Negra is where Pablo Neruda, the famous Chilean poet, had one of his homes. While I didn't get to visit the house on this trip, I can definitely see where he got the inspiration for his poetry!

 

 

Yesterday (Monday, January 11th), I had my first day of classes. Classes seem pretty good so far, everyone is very nice, more on that later!

To be honest, I had a profound moment on the plane where I wondered what in the world I was doing flying across the globe to South America for four months. While that fear subsided, I definitely had a good bit of homesickness the first few days, especially. I was tired, scared, and felt totally disconnected (holla no phone life. This was a good exercise for me, but dang it was hard! I even had internet and my laptop, and I was only without a phone for two days, but it definitely magnified the feeling of being far away from everything that was familiar to me). Happily though, after being here for a week, I'm already feeling a good deal better. I'm still feeling some homesickness, but I think I'm finally adjusting! Looking forward to many new adventures!

Also, shout-out to Shereadstruth for giving me an easy way to stay on top of doing devos every day, and also for having a bunch of great lockscreens like this one to the left. Even just the small fact of seeing it every time I unlock my phone gave me a small comfort in its reminder of God's constancy and goodness! Looking forward to what he's teaching me now, and what he'll teach me while I'm here. I'm already pretty far out of my comfort zone, so the door is wide open and I'm excited to learn to lean on him in all things and whatever other lessons he has in store for me!

Please continue to pray for me and for the rest of the students here; if you have any comments, advice, or verses you'd like to share, I would LOVE LOVE LOVE if you left there here at the bottom of this post!

Much love to everyone, hope everyone is well and (assuming most of you are in winter climates) staying warm!