Week 1

While it's not the most exciting thing to have occurred throughout this past week, I find it necessary to describe the plane ride, because it was pretty awesome. LAN airlines is based out of Santiago, and has all of the following amenities on board:
-Large seats with FOOTRESTS!
-Individual television screens with countless hours of FREE movies and TV shows
-Unlimited free wine with dinner

Needless to say it was pretty awesome, if not the most comfortable 10 hours of my life.

Arriving in Santiago I was hit by a blast of warm air: while I haven't yet figured out the conversion between Celsius and Fahrenheit yet, I'd approximate it to be around 85-90 degrees during the day, and a balmy 70 at night. Two employees of IES were there to greet me and direct me to the van that would bring me to my home. After what would be considered a short amount waiting if one were to speak in terms of Chilean time (about 2hrs) a van with four students and their luggage (myself included) set off to homes. Being the first to arrive at my home stay, I had no idea what to expect, but was greeted kindly with a kiss to the cheek by each of my host siblings: Jose Tomas and Maria Jesus. The following are a few shots of my street:

A few minutes later I was introduced to my host grandma Sonya and, when she got home from work, my host mom Vivi. Living with them thus far has been very easy, as I'm in good company and have plenty of good food!

While I've spent the majority of time this past week in IES orientation, I have had the chance to meet some genuine Chileans and to experience the area. A few notable things about Chile that I've been getting used to:

-You pay to park at supermarkets. While this doesn't affect me (there's one 5 minutes away walking) you are also expected to tip the students who bag your groceries. My host brother later informed me that the tips are their only form of income, as the supermarket itself does not pay these employees. 

-The police here are called Carabineros  (not policia). The school to train police is about 2 blocks from my residence, as is the 'mansion' that the head of the police department lives in. The neighborhood I live in is extremely safe. The picture on the right is of the police training center. 

-You do not put toilet paper in the toilet. Because many of the pipes are old, they will break from flushing excess paper. (It took a few tries to get used to this.)

-Hot water is not automatic: you have to turn on the gas every time you want to have hot water. This isn't too big a deal, but I've heard horror stories of other students who didn't want to ask again how to start the heat and had to take freezing cold showers!

-If you have bare feet inside you WILL be asked if you are cold (despite the weather conditions) and it is assumed you will soon have a cold.

-"Salad" is not a mix of veggies over lettuce or spinach. Rather, it is chopped vegetable. AKA a bunch of lettuce or chopped tomato (only). This can be seasoned with lemon juice, oil, and salt.

-There are no schedules in Chile. The public transportation comes when it comes and that's all you can expect. I've found this to be the hardest part of Chilean life to get used to, but I am working hard to adjust to "tiempo chileano" and not worry about exact times. 

There are far more interesting tidbits than I've described above, but I figure my audience is probably yawning by this point, so I shall wrap up with a few final locations of importance.

On Saturday I had the privilege of visiting two other cities, Valparaiso and Vina del Mar. The colorful houses built into the hillside are the former, and the gorgeous beaches with NH-temperature water are the latter. Valparaiso also had a ton of murals throughout the streets, one of which I've included below. Also noteworthy of Vina is the phenomenal dessert we were served at the upscale hotel where we ate lunch. It was so pretty I took a picture of it:

Finally, today I visited La Moneda, the "White House" of Chile. (Except the president only works there, he/she doesn't live there.) A picture is presented below:

Thanks for taking the time to read this week's post! I'll do my best to keep it up next week as well!