Greetings from Santiago

I just wanted to share a quick update with you guys about how things have been going the first week in Santiago. To be honest, there has been so much going on, and I have been here such a short time that it is almost impossible to explain everything. But I will do my best to give a short summary.

I arrived in Santiago very early Saturday morning after about twenty hours of flying and airports. Unfortunately, it was a bit of a rough start, since my luggage, along with the luggage of my travel companions Eric and Tiara, did not arrive in Chile with us. We spend about two additional hours in the airport giving them information about our luggage so that they could find it and get it to us as soon as possible. Afterwards, we all met our host families and headed home.

My Chilean family lives in Las Condes, one of the many comunes in Santiago. It is a nice, safe area, and we live in an apartment here. I have my own room, and it is very comfortable. I am thankful that although many homes in Chile do not have good heating or do not use the heat because it is really expensive, we have a good heating system, and my host mom does not like to be cold, so we use it quite a lot. 

Monday was my first day at the University. I am attending Universidad Alberto Hurtado, which is a Jesuit university, just like SLU. The faculty and staff were all very welcoming and helpful. I also met the other American students in my program. Other than Tiara, Eric, and I, there are three others. We are all taking a series of intensive Spanish classes together before our academic classes start at the end of July. In order to get to school, I have to use a combination of bus and metro. It takes me about 40 minutes to get to the university.

When I am not in class, I have been spending my time getting to know my new city.

This doesn't even begin to cover everything I have been experiencing, but I will post more soon! As we say in Chile, chao chao!