¡Mi familia!

I finally got to move in with my host family on Friday. It was probably the weirdest thing I've ever done in my entire life. The whole situation was really strange and emotional for everyone in our little group. First of all, they drove us all in a huge bus to this track field near the city we'd be living in for the next five months. When we got there, there were cars lined up all along the street, and our new families were all waiting outside the cars. When the bus stopped, all the families made a mad dash toward the bus, and they all waited right next to the doors for all of us to come out. I don't know what was wrong with all of us, maybe it was nerves or something, but as soon as we saw our families we all started crying...even they guys were really emotional. I have no idea why, but seriously I cried so hard for no reason at all. My little brothers were waiting with flowers and balloons for me, and they are soooo adorable. I've been living with them for about three days now, and I absolutely adore them. We get to watch Saturday morning cartoons...Rugrats in Spanish, you can't go wrong with that....and they give me kisses and hugs every time I enter the room. My new parents are sooo sweet too. My host mom is very protective of me, and last night when I went out she insisted on walking me to my friends house so I wouldn't get lost. She's so nice, and she even offers to serve me breakfast in bed...which I don't take since I prefer to eat with my little bros, but still it's nice that she offers.
I'm still getting used to the whole Spanish thing, and I'm having a really hard time with all the accents, but for the most part I'm surviving it. Last night I went out with one of my American friends, Mary, that lives a couple blocks away from me, and on the way home I got totally lost (nothing new for me), and I was wandering around aimlessly when all of a sudden I heard my name being yelled and I turned around and luckily found four guys from my group sitting in a bar, and they were able to take me home since I was hopelessly lost. One of my friend here, Nick, had a little uncomfortable incident with his host family the other night. When he and his family were leaving the house, he accidentally let the family dog out, and it ran away. Later that night, they got a phone call from their neighbor, saying that Nick's family dog had killed their dog and left it all bloody in their front yard. It wasn't a funny story really, but we were all laughing about it earlier for some reason.
OHHH...I almost forgot. I HAVE FOUND MCDONALDS!!!! It's all over the place here, and there's one right down the street from me, so we're good. AND...Era de Heilo 2 (aka ICE AGE 2!!!) comes out soon and I'm definitely taking my little brothers to see it!!! That's pretty much all the good news I have for now. Hasta luego!

Um...did that just happen?

Ok, so a ton of stuff has happened to me this week. Everything here is so different, but I still love it. So, anyways, during our last day of orientation, Thursday night, five of my friends got arrested in the middle of the night. It was insane, especially because I would have been arrested too had I gone with them, but at the last minute I decided to stay in the hotel instead of going for a walk with them. You see, Thursday night we decided to all hang out in my hotel room and we all bought wine since it was the last night there. We had maybe twelve people in our room and we were all just talking and everything, and then my roommate Taylor decided to go for a walk, and a bunch of other girls went with her. When they were out walking in the city, they met up with a group of Chilean guys that were our age, and so they decided to talk to them to get the whole "cultural immersion" thing down. Anyways, while they were talking to the guys, a bunch of carabineros (chilean police) came up behind them and grabbed them and started to yell at them in spanish. Apparently, the guys they were talking to were in possession of weed, and so all of the others with them were guilty by association. So, my group of friends, having no IDs and looking obviously American, was brought back to the hotel in a cop car, where luckily our program directors were able to get them out of huge trouble. I am SO glad that I didn't go with them, but apparently Americans get picked up by the police here a lot for no reason, so we were all given a huge speech about safety on the streets and everything the next day. But it's been really scary, since the crime here is reeeallly bad, especially in the city where my school is. So anyways, after that eventful night, we went to a national park that was near the hotel and we went on a huge hike up a mountain and went into copper caves that were pretty awesome. So, yeah, orientation was pretty eventful and freaky, but I'm still so happy to be here.

Pictures

I don't have much time to write today, but here are some pictures of the view from our hotel in Olmue. And there's a picture of a cool looking tree that looks like a pineapple...they have them everywhere here. Oh, I went to a bar legally for the first time last night and had my first chelita here. It's just a small beer, trust me, I'm not an alcoholic and I never will be :) Anyways, that's all for now!

I made it!!!

Hey everyone!!
I made it to chile, and it is absolutely amazing here!! I had a little trouble at the airport with my thousand pound bags, and I´m definitely suffering from sleep deprivation right now, but it´s all good. We flew in next to the Andes mountains, and they surround everything here so I can see them all the time. It´s like ninety degrees today, but im not sure exactly because everything is in cel. and I dón´t understand it. sorry if I screw up a lot on the writing, but this keyboard has keys all over it and everything is a little off due to all of the spanish letters on it. I´m at my orientation program this whole week, and we had testing all day today and now we have time to just chill before dinner, which we eat here at like eight o´clock at night--it´s insane. They eat sooo much food here too. For our first dinner, they served us empanadas (meat, fruit, and hard boiled eggs TOGETHER wrapped in baked bread), then they gave us cream of asparagus soup :( and then they handed us all a plate of sliced tomatoes and we all just took them and ate them plain because we all had no idea what we were doing, and then the guy next to me realized we were supposed to put them on the NEXT part of the meal, which was something they call choclo, and it´s mushed up corn wrapped inside of a corn husk--and it´s going to take a LOT of getting used to. After that part of the meal, they finally gave us dessert, which was strawberries covered with sugar. But all of the meals here have at least five courses, it´s crazy. All of the people here are super nice...and luckily all of the chileans are really patient and willing to help us out a lot. I´ve met about five people from Minnesota so far so that´s cool since I thought I was the only one in my group. Right now we are all staying at a really nice hotel in a city called Olmué, and it is so gorgeous. On the way here we passed a lot of little shack houses and I was getting really worried, but luckily it turned out to be a really nice building. The little kids here are all soooo adorable, I want to keep them! There are a bunch of them staying at the hotel we´re at, and today they played vollyball in the pool with all of the American guys in our group, it was adorable. I took a lot of pictures yesterday, and I´ll try to put them up here as soon as I can, but right now I was happy just to find a computer. It turns out that for now we are three hours ahead of Minnesota time, but soon it´ll change to be an hour...not sure why. Anyways, I haven´t seen the ocean yet, but I will for sure on Friday when I go and meet my host family...they live right on the beach AND right next to a mall, so i´m psyched. Well, now I´m going to go swim in the pool and then we´re all going to some sort of fair or something later. I´ll write again soon! Love ya!

The day before take-off...

Alright, so tomorrow I'm finally leaving for Chile. I've spent the last three weeks saying goodbye to everyone, and now it's FINALLY time to leave. All of the goodbye parties and dinners were awesome...thank you everyone :) I'm going to miss everyone soooo much while I'm gone, but luckily I know we'll all have an awesome time together when I get back! I think I'm finally packed and ready to go, although I have no idea how I'm going to make it through the airport with all of my luggage...right now I fall over every time I put on my backpack, so tomorrow should be really interesting. I've been e-mailing my host family for the past few weeks. I'll be living with the Diaz-Aguirre family: Jeannie, Patricio, Felipe, and Raimundo. My new little "brothers" are 10 and 7, and they are absolutely adorable and I'm so excited to finally meet them. My host mom says that they talk about me every day, and they're planning my birthday party already...hahaha. My first week in Chile I'll be staying in a hotel with all American students, and they're going to take us out on excursions around Chile. I have no idea what we'll be doing, but it involves some sort of hiking on mountains so that should be interesting to see my try to survive that...
I have no idea how often I'll be able to get to a computer or phone while I'm down there, so be patient with me. I know I promised a lot of you guys pictures and everything, and I swear I'll do my best to post them for you. So, anyways, once again thanks to everyone for all of the free dinners and all of the pictures everyone put together for me! I'm gonna miss you all so much! I'll be back July 15th...it's not too far away...keep in touch!!! I want to hear everything that's going on!!! E-mail me as much as you want, I'm going to want to read some English every now and then :)
Goodbye and I'll see you all in July!!!