Settling In

Hola todos,
It's been a few days since I've blogged,but it's because life here is picking up and I'm beginning to settle in. Again, I can't believe I've been given the opportunity to live with a Chilean family and study in one of the most beautiful, respected schools here...it's feeling a little more real everyday. So here's a summary of what's been going on, with longer descriptions below.

• Fútbol!
• Intensive Language Program begins
• Immigration....
• Yo no Americano 

Monday was a pretty relaxing day. After a lazy morning, I met up with a few friends at a metro station. From there we were trying to figure out what to do, because it was kind of a spontaneous meet up. We decided to head over to Barrio Brasil, which I don't think is the official name for the area. It was a little sketchy and had some strange restaurants, like a Vikings Restaurant. It had viking helmets and goblin statues in the window and everything.We wandered a bit and found an Irish Pub, where we wanted to "chill out" and watch the U de Chile vs. O'Higgins game. Well, in Chile there is no such thing as "chilling out" when watching fútbol. We walked in as a an awkward group of foreigners upon a pub full of stone faced locals, transfixed on the multiple t.v. screens showing the game. We got seated, up on the  stage actually which we thought was funny, because there was all the Chileans around the pub and us in front of the whole crowd on a raised platform. Tonight's performance "Gringas!" Anyways, we got to catch the last 20, action packed minutes. Every time there was a goal, the pub went wild! The chef even ran out of the kitchen multiple times, to catch the exciting parts. This video is an aftermath of the excitement. The two men at the beginning of the video are the chef and owner joining in on the excitement.  Sorry for the poor quality....

On Tuesday our Intensive Language class began. My professor is really sweet and patient. She sure doesn't speak Spanish like the rest of the Chileans, a.k.a one hundred miles per hour and dropping the letter s everywhere. We're beginning to learn "Chilenismos," which are uniquely Chilean slang words.Some of my favorite are "bacán," which is like awesome/cool and "guagua" (pronounced wawa) which they call babies. Guagita is also a cheesy term of endearment that "pololos" (boyfriends and girlfriends) use for each other. I could go on forever about Chilenismos,but maybe I'll just add one to the end of each blog post!
Yesterday, I had to get up early to go to immigration and finish the visa process with half the EAP group. I don't want to taint this blog post with the story of my 6 hours of torture there. Let's just say I will never ever ever ever complain about the DMV again!
But on the plus side it was independence day for AMURICCA. By the way, we don't call ourselves "Americano" here,because the U.S. is not the only America...helloo South America! So we say "norteamericano" or "estadounidense." We were gonna go to a place called California Cantina but it was PACKED with gringos. That's where they hide in Santiago! Instead we settled on a place which had happy hour all night and where I gorged myself on the most amazing cheesy empanadas. It wasn't very United States-ish,but I still had lots of fun!Well, I have to get going to class soon. They've been starting at 2 this week,but it's going to move to 9 a.m. soon. I'm actually looking forward to when that happens, so we can get out sooner. What can I say, I'm  a bit of a morning person! Chau for now!