Bienvenidos!

Bienvenidos a Chile! Yes, I'm finally here. I never want to travel that long ever again! We got up at 2:30am to leave from Wenatchee (it was supposed to be 3:30 but we couldn't sleep) and flew out to Seattle, then Texas, then Chile. 28 hours later we made it to our hotel. Between the drunk guy getting arrested behind me on the plane and the very uncomfortable plane we didn't get much sleep. We came to the hotel and slept for 4 hours. We finally got ourselves out of bed and showered so we could walk around the city.

The city is nice but not very cultural. There is a ton of fast food...Burger king, McDonalds and KFC (which sells beer..It makes me laugh everytime I see it.) The people are super nice. I expect it to be like Mexico where the people are always trying to sell you something but it's not like that at all. The people seem genuinley thankful when you buy something.

We keep going out around four which apparently is siesta time because everything is closed. Tomorrow we're making a point to go out earlier. This morning we met up with a family friend who lives here. She took us to meeting (church). We took the subway (first time experience for me, woo!) It was pretty clean and nice, I was impressed. The meeting was nice but definitely different from how it is in the United States. The workers translated for us so we could understand. The biggest difference was people kneeled to pray and didn't stand up to give their testimony. The kneeling part was very uncomfortable. Mom and I were squirming like we were 5. Also the wine is actually wine and not grape juice! Anyway, we went to lunch after and then slept for a few hours. We're very jetlagged. I'm hoping I'll be able to actually sleep tonight and get on schedule.

Communication is really annoying. My phone doesn't work and my calling card doesn't work. I'm hoping we'll get it figured out tomorrow. Speaking of communication I need to get into contact with my host family. I'm thinking I'll email them tonight..or try. Communicating with people here is easier than I thought. My spanish is coming along nicely. I mean I can't have a conversation or anything and I can't understand more than a few words at a time but it's better than I thought it was going to be.

The weather here is very deceiving. Yesterday it was probably around 70 degrees and beautiful and today it was freeezing. We but about ten layers on before going outside. Apparently winter only lasts like two months in Santiago and so its already becoming spring which is why the weather changes so dramatically. I've had like ten people tell me that the weather in Valdivia is going to be waaay worse. It's kinda worrying me because I'm not sure how warm my clothes will be. We went looking for boots today but were not successful. We'll try again tomorrow. Sizes here are european so it's hard to know which size to look for.

We're here til Tuesday and then we fly down to Valdivia. I kinda wish we could stay here the whole time and never start school but that will just be the next great adventure I guess.

Ciao!