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.