Hola! My name is Tom and this is my first blog post from Santiago, Chile. If you want to know a little bit about myself, go ahead and read my short bio. I’ll try and recap my last two weeks here, be prepared though because there’s a lot of stuff.

First flew in to Santiago on Friday, January 10. My first full out exposure to Spanish included my luggage not arriving at the airport and having to describe my bags to an employee hahaha. Fortunately, my host mom is super nice and she called the airline company every day until my luggage arrived on that Sunday. I live in a house in Las Condes with her and my host sister Carolina, who is studying to pass her law test to become a lawyer. They are both very engaging and supportive, I feel very comfortable at home. I also have a brother here, but he lives in a different house with his girlfriend and daughter Rosilo, who is three years old and so cute!

Basically I commute from my house during the week to downtown (or El Centro) Santiago where I’m taking a Spanish class at Universidad Alberto Hurtado. It takes me about 50 minutes to get there after taking a bus and the metro, which is extremely fast compared to the L in Chicago. My Spanish is pretty good – I had a lot of exposure and practice before coming here – so the class is easy to me. That leaves me plenty of time to explore Santiago after class in the afternoon. So far I have seen La Moneda (Chile’s White House), La Catedral (the Cathedral), Cerro Santa Lucia and Cerro San Cristobal (two mountains you can climb and see the whole city), the biggest mall in Latin America, and many other places!

Of all of those places, I think Cerro San Cristobal was my favorite. It is this mini mountain that you can either walk up or take an elevator-like machine. My friend and I took the machine up and then walked down the mountain on this awesome, dirt bike path through the woods. At the top of the mountain, you can see all of Santiago! The city is very flat, except for Tobalaba, where the skyscrapers are. Besides that neighborhood the city does not have many large buildings like cities in the U.S. Due to this, the city just keeps going and going and going. It takes up a lot more space because there are not many skyscrapers, thus most people live in houses or small apartment buildings.

To summarize, it has been a great first two weeks and God blessed me incredibly. I’m starting to meet some Chileans, understand the culture, and communicate effectively. More to tell later, let me know if you have any questions! Hasta luego!

P.S. I’m having some trouble uploading pictures but as soon as I figure it out I’ll post them.