With love, from Valpo

The view I see every day while I wait for the train!

Which is to tide you over until I finish writing another post. :D

I’m sitting here watching Fineas and Ferb en espanol. It’s fascinating to see what shows are dubbed and which shows have Spanish subtitles. I think in April they are airing Once Upon a Time – I’m curious to see whether it will be dubbed or not!  The other day, I watched America’s Next Top Model with my host mom. Subtitles!

Speaking of my host family, I guess I should talk about them. To put it simply, they are wonderful. I live with Marisa, mi mama anfitriona; Ivan, mi papa anfitriona; Elenia, Marisa’s mother; and two dogs! Marisa and Ivan’s daughter, Andrea, lives four blocks away but is over all the time. Ivan works in IT and from what I understand, fixes the photocopiers of most of the local Universities. Marisa has her own business, a fotocopiadora and a few side businesses. I won’t lie, I was a little worried about how my queerness would impact the homestay portion of this program but it was a bit of a relief when on the first day Marisa introduced me to Ivan, Andrea and Andrea’s girlfriend, or polola.

They have all been so great – showing me what micros to take, the metro stops I need, where to find things in town as well as giving me a home for the semester. They really make a point to include me and make sure I understand what is going on.

Both Marisa and Andrea speak a fair amount of English which was really great the first few days. My speaking and comprehension skills in Spanish are pretty low, especially in the face of Chilean Spanish. If you have never heard of the difference or if you understand the basics of Spanish in general, Chilean’s drop their “s”s. Which makes a lot of things difficult. They also don’t pronounce all the consonants in their words – also difficult. AND THEN they use all kinds of slang. I’ll probably go into more detail about this later. Suffice it to say, it is challenging. But I understand more and more every day!

I am living in Recreo, a cerro, or hill, of Vina del Mar. I’m basically in between the CIEE offices in Vina and the main buildings of PUCV, where I am taking classes. I live on the third floor of an apartment building at the top of a GIANT HILL. Marisa told me I wouldn’t need to go to the gym while I am here because this hill will be my own personal gym. It’s going to kick my butt, to say the least. But beyond that, I am ten minutes from the metro which, with a student card, is 150 pesos a ride. Which is about 50 cents. So that is stellar. I can take the metro most places I need, too! I am also about fifteen minutes from at least one beach. Recreo is pretty residential but it’s nice to be able to go into Valpo or the center of Vina for bustling city and then come home to a more relaxing atmosphere.

In short, I got really lucky with not only my location but also my host family!

(Source: dandelionchild)

I know, I know, I haven’t updated for what feels like ages. I’m going to split it into two separate posts so I can add lots of pictures!

Petty theft is pretty common here so I’ve been a little paranoid about bringing my camera with me places (something I’m usually regretting after I go someplace awesome.) so I don’t have too many photos from the first few days. I’ll have more photos of where I’m at in the next post, these photos are mostly of the Inn and a couple shots from the bus! If you want to see all the pictures I have taken you can look at my flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/75374704@N03/with/6944994499/ !

When I last left off, I had just settled into the Hotel Renaca Inn in Renaca, Chile. Renaca is technically a neighborhood of Vina del Mar but is kind of its own area.  The hotel was super cute and I shared a room with two other girls from the program. On Thursday, CIEE took us on a tour from Renaca to the Pontificia Universidad Catholica de Valparaiso, the university where I will be taking classes, then to the CIEE offices in Vina del Mar and then back to Renaca. They took us on the micros which are the bus system here, as well as the metro, their subway train that runs from at least Valpo to Con-Con. It probably runs farther but I haven’t looked into that quite yet.  My tour finished early so some folks in our group walked back to the hotel and the rest of us walked on the beach from Renaca to Con-Con the next town. We were able to see some of the gigantic dunes that are there and of course, the ocean was absolutely beautiful.

For lunch, CIEE took the entire group of estudiantes intercambios to a restaurant that makes forty different kinds of empanadas. FORTY. It was a little confusing for everyone to get the two empanadas they ordered since there were 60 of us but totally worth the wait. They might be the perfect food – a circle flaky dough folded in half and fried with whatever  you want as filling! Super cheap, too. I had shrimp, bacon and cheese (Surpriseeee. I just can’t resist bacon and cheese.) and my second one was filled with chicken, cheese, and mushrooms! Muy rico!

The afternoon was filled with those silly icebreaker games that I secretly enjoy but on the beach! My favorite was where the CIEE organizers split us into three groups and held up a rope at about my eyelevel. The object of the game was to get your entire group over the rope without touching it or going underneath it. My group put all the tall folks over first and they were able to lift the last (and smallest person) via a combination of teamwork, extreme abdominal strength, and human pyramids. We won! And then we saw dolphins in the ocean! After was a light dinner and general hanging out at the Inn.

Friday was very low-key, a quick presentation at the Inn and then we got to meet our host families! Slightly nerve-wracking for me since my comprehension and speaking skills are pretty awful but my host mom was all smiles and introduced me to the family! I’ll talk more about them in the next post since this one has gotten so long!

Xoxo Arielle