It's raining today and I really don't have anything to do so I figured it is a good day to stay in bed and read/write/etc. The last week has been a blur. For three days and two nights EAP (the program) took all the students to Algorrobo, a beach town about an hour and a half from Santiago for a big orientation/get to know everyone event. The town is pretty small and cute although pretty much dead right now because its the winter and nobody really wants to be at the beach even though it was significantly warmer there than in the city. Algorrobo seems to be mostly full of summer homes and condos owned by wealthier residents of Chile and Argentina. There are five huge unique pyramid-like resorts right on the beach full of condos that people own. On an interesting side note, this is actually where the biggest swimming pool in the world is located. We tried to go see it but weren't allowed in the resort so we could only see part of it. It is pretty massive though from what I could see. The beach was fun though overall. They gave us a lot of good information and everyone got to spend some time getting to know everyone else in the program.
Since returning to Santiago I've just been trying to get out and explore the city a little bit with the other students in my program because we have a long weekend this weekend and classes start Tuesday. I must say though that my motivation to go exploring largely disappeared with the arrival of the rain last night, hence why I am writing this in bed right now. Yesterday before it started raining we walked around a bunch through various parks and craft markets and we visited the cultural center at La Moneda which is where the president/government works. Our program also asigned a Chilean friend for each group of 8ish students so that we can learn "Chilean spanish" in addition to formal spanish in school and my friend, JuanFra, has been taking us out around the city. Mostly he's just introduced us to the nighlife thus far although he has some pretty cool activites planned (going to a winery, touring la moneda, etc.) for the next few weeks that I am looking forward to.
Other than that, it is still just very cold here. I can't wait until it gets warmer so I can do more outdoors stuff here because there is so much to do with the beach and the Andes so close. The Andes are gorgeous, even through the winter smog. And I am trying to get used to the food. It is all good but super full of starch and often coated in butter or mayo. Every meal has at least one form of potato... mashed, home fries, french fries, fried balls... and some hearty meat. Salads will sometimes accompany that but are often small and heavily salted. They eat palto, or avocado, on everything though which is awesome. They even put it on hot dogs that they call "italianos" with fresh diced tomatos and, less to my liking although its pretty easy to wipe off, a big glob of mayo. And the empenadas are so good. They are just little fried dough pockets filled with meat or cheese and tomato or veggies and eggs. The eat a lot of eggs here. And a lot of fried food. Another staple food is the "sopapillas" which are just fried balls of dough. They are tasty but all the fried food is already taking its toll on me.
I'm excited to start up school although pretty happy to have a day to chill today too.

Conocer a mi Host Family

So I definitely don't plan on writing daily but I met my host family today which I think is a momentous enough of an occasion to deserve a note. All of the UC-EAP students that stayed together at the hostel last night shared taxis to La Catolica Campus Oriente where we were immediately handed off to our host families for the rest of the day. It was a little bit jarring seeing as we all arrived expecting some sort or orientation that would explain to us what the plan was but instead were immediately greeted by a woman shouting our names to pair us with families. It worked out great though.
My host mother is named Raquel and my host father is named Carlos. They have two sons, Egon (18?) and Eric (25), although the house is much fuller than just that because they are also hosting two Chilean girls, one is named Valeria but I don't know the other, and a girl from Chicago named Laura. All the neighbors in the community are friends and also host foreign students. Two doors down from me is a woman, Kati, who is hosting a student from UCSD as well as a girl from texas, another American boy, and a Chilean boy. Everyone is super nice and the parents are very used to hosting students so they are incredibly helpful in enuncating words and slowing down their speech so that I can understand.
I learned all the "Chillenismos" today, or little things unique to Chilean Spanish, like putting "po" after "ya" or "si" insead of "pues", and pronouncing "como se llama" as "como se llamai" or "que estudias" as "que estudiai" which is how young people say it informally. Of course I also learned the bad words... can't get to far without those. Most of the day, minus a short trip to go buy a metro pass, was just spent hanging around and talking to everyone as I expect many of the days to come will be. I did help make a Juanes music video though with Laura and two of her Chilean friends which was pretty sweet. And this weekend I have plans to go to a dance class with Raquel, Laura, and Laura's dad who will be visiting. Raquel is very energentic and artistic. In addition to attending regular dance classes (she dances Salsa, Merengue, and Reggeaton among others) she painted a bunch of gorgeous flower paintings hung all around the house and showed me her newest hobby which is making silver jewelery. Also this week all of the EAP students have a three day orientation at the beach to go to which I hear will be gorgeous but extremely cold. It is very cold here and there is really no escaping it as nobody has central heating at all, only semi-pathetic space heaters that dont really do much. I think I may need to buy another jacket. Good thing the exchange rate is 560:1 - sucks to calculate but makes things cheap.

Arrival

So it's pretty cold here, around 39 (degrees F) this morning when I arrived, I'm pretty sure I was ripped off by my minibus driver from the airport, and my bankcard was already stopped so I had no money, but no worries... I made it alright.  Tonight I'm staying in a hostel which is pretty nice.  We didn't really have much to do today so we just walked around a long time but everything was pretty much closed because its Sunday.  Tomorrow we have orientation and meet our host family though so that will be a lot more eventful...