Day 5

Sooooooo as the title would suggest, this is my 5th day in Chile...and its pretty freaking chilly. Like seriously haha. Anyway, so far I have loved it here besides the weather! Flight here went pretty well and I successfully made it to the Che Lagarto hostel in downtown Santiago after my flight. I´ve never stayed in a hostel before but it was a pretty cool experience. This particular hostel has locations all around South America and very good reviews and I can see why. The staff was very friendly and helpful, and speaks English haha. I stayed in a dorm type room with 5 bunk beds and a bathroom. Most of the people who were staying at the hostel were a little bit older that me, usually around 24-26, and traveled in small groups of around 3-5. Luckily, 3 other people in my program were staying at the same hostel, so it was nice to have someone to talk to and go out with for the first couple nights. The first night I met a group of Brazilians who were friendly and invited me and another friend to go out with them to a place called PatioBellaVista, which is a cool little downtown area that has good restaurants and bars. The second day I went with two other girls on a free walking tour of  Santiago that the hostel suggested and I´m so glad I did. We started in a place called Plaza de Armas that has a huge cathedral and old buildings from the time when Spain controlled Chile. Our tour guide Felipe was so good, he showed us all the major government buildings and gave us the basic facts of the Allende and Pinochet governments, with some Chilean context of how it affected the country and the people. The tour was 4 hours long, but most definitely worth it. And we got a free dinner out of it! While on the tour, I met two people from the US, one of whom went to Davis law school. One was a District Attorney and the other a Federal agent who invited us over and made us a delicious pasta with sea food. Hooray!
The next day, Wednesday, was the official start date of the program. We were told that we needed to meet at La Catolica, the school I will be attending in agosto, but we needed to find our way there. Santiago has a well set public transportation system, but since we had our luggage, the 4 of us from the program who were at the hostel decided to take a taxi...which didn´t out so well. We didn´t know which direction the campus was and only until the taxi driver asked us if we flying an international flight did we realize that he is was taking us to the airport in the opposite direction of where we needed to go. Worried that we would be dismissed from the program from being late, the ride there was a little stressful, but thankfully our host mom´s were waiting for us and greeted us with open saying "ay! mi hija!". So for the next month we will be living with our host families and I love them! My mom´s name is Sandra who has a son Ricardo who lives there and there is another student from Ecuador, Renato, who is going to the University of Chile for 2 years. Oh, and Catalina, the very cute perro :) The host family´s typically live pretty near the campus, mine is about a 5 minute drive, and in a pretty safe and calm part of town. Also, the families don´t speak any English, which obviously has its advantages and disadvantages. Of course, I get a total immersion of the language, but at the same time, Chileans speak very very very fast and with a lot of chilenismos, or slang. But for the most part, my host mom understands that she needs to speak slow and clearly with me because she has hosted I think about 5 girls before me from the program in past years. I understand her for the most part, but I feel bad that I have to concentrate so hard on what she is saying that I think I only say two words - si or no. But classes start next week, so the spanish will come I know.
This weekend we are going to Algarroba, a beach about an hour ago for our retreat con the program. There are about 45 kids in the program and from almost all the UC´s, excpet for UCLA. Should be fun and a good experience to meet all the new people.
P.S. I´m pretty sure I´m progressively getting worse at speaking English each day lol.