Más experinces
Hoy was my first day of escuela! Well, that is the first day of my month long intensive Spanish course. I had to wake up at 7am, the earliest time yet for the trip and is really early according to Chilean time and mi Padre walked me to the Metro stop that is about 15 minutes from our apartment. He works downtown anyway, so it wasn’t out of his way for him to go all the way downtown with me. I didn’t think I was nervous until I actually got off the Metro and saw the university, with all of the students signing up for classes and socializing; because in Chile the semester doesn’t actually start until March but in January is when they have admissions. So today through Wednesday is when students come and tour the university, apply to admitted for the semester and what not.
I was the first one there, and so I was able to talk with my coordinator, Isabel. She is really nice and speaks a bit of English that is helpful, but today she said was the last day she would speak English to us! We had our welcome breakfast in the university consisting of coffee, biscotti, croissant and avocado sandwiches, and lots of fruit- the usual of Chile. It was a great time to really get to know everyone! There are, I think only about 10 girls total with our program but they are from all over the USA and we spent the entire afternoon together-I love them all! We took a Spanish test to see where we place at, and it was hard as I expected but that just means I have room for improvement 🙂
After class, we all ate lunch together in the school cafeteria that was nice, and we walked all over the city just exploring and being extremely obvious gringos (white people in Chile). It was fun though and we ended up getting delicious gelato, exploring market places and sitting a park talking for hours. It was definitely an exhausting day- really every day here is just because I have to be constantly concentrating on translating the language and speaking Spanish. But it is the best feeling every day knowing I’m improving! I already have learned so much in just 4 days, it’s amazing. After an exhausting day of touring the city and class I was able to come back home, just in time to cool off after the 95 degree weather and I swam in the pool for a while that is in our apartment complex. Then, to top off the perfect ending to a perfect day we had a family dinner together and talked all about Chile, Latin America’s history and the best beaches and dance clubs that my family recommends for this weekend!
Yesterday was really great too; Eva and I went downtown to meet up with my new Chilean friend Alejandro. He took us on a really authentic tour of Santiago; we hiked up two different volcanoes! After all “Chile es un grande volcano” according to my dad! Its true though, everywhere you turn you see dormant volcanoes and mountains, and even a few active volcanoes too! It is definitely a roller coaster every day though, trying to adjust to the new culture and trying to fit in with the Chileans.
The other students and I are all fighting the same battle together now though now, and it seems that just as long as we stay busy then we aren’t quite as homesick. Tomorrow though is the first official day of Spanish! I am nervous to see how hard it will be; yet I am anxious to combine my every day conversational skills with some really good classroom learning time! It is just amazing how much I am learning on this trip. Literally everything I do is something new and different, from walking to school, to waking up to see that yes I’m actually in Santiago and this isn’t a dream, to taking showers.
“The true fruit of travel is perhaps the feeling of being nearly everywhere at home. ” -Freya Stark