I am sitting in my Chilean house right now as a cool morning breeze blows through my window, listening to the hum of traffic that never ceases. It is a peaceful, quiet morning here at Casa Isabel (lady I'm staying with) and I am excited about my day of visiting a feria (market) and joining my teammates and amigos from church for an assado later in the afternoon. What a perfect Saturday.

My room

This peaceful quiet is quite the opposite of what is to start on Monday so I wanted to get a blog post in before things get crazy. On Monday we start language immersion classes. This means Spanish class from 9am-6pm where even lunch and breaks are supposed to be in Spanish. Then I come home to Casa Isabel and speak more Spanish and do it all again the next day.

This is the way we have chosen to learn Spanish and in the end it will be worth it but it will not be easy. Despite the anticipated difficulty I am looking forward to it. I have learned a lot of Spanish just being here for one week, not in class, so I am excited to progress even further.

My first week here in Chile has been a wonderful one. Most nights I crash because I am so worn out for the language learning and just how much we cram into one day, trying to get things done before school starts. I have ridden the bus many times and can now get from school and church and the city to my house with no problem. I even survived rush hour in hot, non- AC public transportation and I came out alive.

My Bip! card for public transportation

I have eaten an uncountable number of paltas (avocados), drank numerous cups of coffee, had lots of delicious empanadas and am still on the hunt for the best ice cream ever. Yum. Thank goodness I am also walking a lot everyday. Amazingly, I have also had Mexican food. Who knew we could find a Mexican food restaurant in Chile!

Mexican food!

Drinking cortados

I have bought a pre-paid cell phone (they won't give us plans w/o visas) and have even had a few successful phone calls with Chileans. I always felt triumphant because it is hard to talk on the phone in another language.

We all have cellphones

I will end with this story and video. Our first real Chilean friend, Alejandro, took us to an art exhibit where art is projected onto the river that runs downtown. We heard this explination and were like "huh?" but then when we saw it, I realized that is as accurate of a description as you can give. It is art projected onto the river. Now this art is not like a paiting of Van Gogh but more like graffiti type art and the pictures were huge, maybe almost half a football field big. It was quite impressive and appears that this is the first time this form of art has ever been done in the world. I really enjoyed it and was thankful to Alejandro for taking us.



Until the next time I have a chance to blog, nos vemos!