El comienzo

I haven't been very good about keeping up a journal of my adventures, or of sending out group e-mails to let you all know what I'm up to, SO in this blog I have found a medium that will help me do both.

As a first entry, let me lay out the basic elements of my life thus far in Chile:

I live in a four bedroom apartment with a lovely woman, Señora Ruth Ojeda, (who prefers to be known as "Tuty"). Tuty's daughter Juani, and Juani's two children Carolina (6) and Cristian (9) also live with us, and are a fun group to live with. Tuty also hosts a 24-year-old psychology student named Carolina who is originally from the city of Chillan in the South of the country.

My address here is:
Holanda 280 Depto. 34
Providencia
Santiago, Chile

Tuty came to Santiago from the South with her husband before he died of heart complications several years back. Hosting students is now her main form of income. She says that because her kids had to move away to go to college, this is her opportunity to make sure that young people away from their homes are cared for with a whole heart and lots of attention.

My little room has a bed, a closet, a shelf/bureau thing that folds out into a desk thing for my computer, a TV (which I didn't really want, but Tuty doesn't want me to get cold in the living room watching that one so she bought me a new one...), and a window that looks out onto the back porch of out apartment.

Transitioning from the dorms to this lifestyle is a change that is taking some getting used to. Here, my meals are laid out for me in courses and my dishes and laundry just disappear and come back clean without any effort on my part. The kitchen is very small, and is Tuty's domain, so there is no such thing as a communal cooking effort. I try to help out where ever I can, but I sometimes throw the system off kilter when trying to be productive.

There are about 5 million people in the metropolitan area of Santiago, and let me tell you, one can really feel this when riding the metro (subway) to school at 9am! My transition from our family vacation in Wise River, MT to being in Santiago three days later was quite the culture shock. But I am getting used to living in a crowd, and to the brusque city mannerisms. I still occasionally commit the grave social error and smile at the people I accidentally make eye contact with on the metro, whatever, I'm a gringa, hear me roar.



The thing that keeps me balanced here when I start to get overwhelmed is the "Cordillera," the Andes, which you can see if you walk a few blocks west of my apartment. La Cordillera spans the entire length of South America, and the jagged snowy peaks are awe inspiring and intimidating in their vastness--I just wish I could hack down some of the buildings downtown so they wouldn't cut off the view!!--

I got to go skiing the last weekend in July at a resort called Valle Nevado, which is a 2 hour convi-van ride (up a switchbacky road, full of sharp turns that made a girl in my van puke, and that are lined by cliffs that I swear we were inches away from going off!!) outside of Santiago. I ended up having to teach one of my friends who had never been on skis before how to get down a mountain before I took off to ski for real, but it was still an amazing time and I got some great pictures.

I started school two weeks ago, but becuase of the frustrating chilean university system, classes didn't really start for me until this past week. Essentially they move around the classrooms,the times,the locations and the professors during the first week of school. All of this would be made far easier, if they advised the students more often!! I only just found the new location of my Theo class on Thursday after missing it twice in a row which sucked!

I am taking a theology class called Inicciation to the Bible, a political science class on international conflicts, a class on the relationship between art and politics, and finally a class called Music in Chile and America. All of them are now working out well, but are going to be very challenging.

I think thats all the background info that is necessary for the moment. I will write about my first weekend away tomorrow.