Let's see... where should I begin?  I've only been in Santiago for about 30 hours, but so much has already happened.

I arrived in Santiago, Chile at 5:30 am yesterday morning after traveling for about 24 hours.  I had a layover in both LAX and Lima, Peru, which weren't so bad.  My flight from LAX to Peru was brutal, though... I left LA at 1:20 and didn't get to Lima until 8 hours later.  When I got to Santiago, I took a cab from the airport to the program's meeting place. I was planning on waiting around to meet up with a few people from my program to split a cab, but as I was waiting this lady at the taxi stand started yelling at me to get a cab so I had to hire my own (I had to pay $34! So much for a budget!). Anyway, so it's 5:30 am, I haven't slept at all, and the driver is talking to me in Spanish asking me where I'm going. I tell him, but then I'm like, what am I going to do in Chile at this university with all of my stuff at 6 am? My program didn't start til 12. So I was asking the driver, and he's like, "well, nothing's really open, so you can always go sit at McDonalds" and then he starts laughing, and I'm like great, it's my first day here and I'm already going to get killed for being an idiot and sitting alone by myself in the dark because nothing is open.  So we end up at the University and he just drops me off and I started freaking out, but then this guy from UCSC came out of no where and had already had an arrangement set up where he dropped his bags off at security. So luckily I was able to do the same, and then we walked around the city for like an hour but nothing was open except for gas stations and McDonalds.

Because my program started at noon, hardly anyone showed up until about 11 am.  I was sitting in the main hall of Pontifical University of Chile with a few other students when this Chilean guy comes out of no where with a flag on his back and invited us to watch the Chile-Switzerland game at 10 am in the cafeteria.  We obliged and at 10 we went to the cafeteria to watch the game.  The room was packed and we had to stand in the back, but it didn't really matter because we wouldn't have been able to see anyway, because any time Chile had the ball all of the students would be standing up, screaming, and chanting.  Chile ended up winning 1-0... it was so intense when Chile scored that 1 point!  People were screaming, hugging each other, crying... it was cool to see all of them so into the game.  Chileans were celebrating the win all day afterward... there was honking in the streets, people were throwing paper, and when I went for a walk in the park afterward with 3 other UC students and our host madres, there was this big group of Chileans drinking and giving everyone high-fives, and one of the madres was like, "hay mas vino en el sangre que chileno en el sangre", so I guess it's pretty typical haha.

I got my host family after the soccer game.  I'm living in the Providencia neighborhood in Santiago with a woman named Gladys and her 4 kids and 2 grandkids.  It's nice because there are 3 other UC students on the block, and Gladys is really good friends with all of their host madres.  So I've been spending a lot of time with them, like yesterday we all went for a walk around the neighborhood to get our bus passes and to exchange money, and then afterward we all went over to one madre's house and had a big dinner.  There were about 15 of us at this tiny table, and the madres had prepared a feast!  We ate biscuits with egg salad, tuna salad, hearts of palm, and chicken, and there were also all sorts of sweet breads and wines.  It was interesting because the madres were telling us stories about other foreign students they'd had before who had said really stupid things that they thought had meant something else... I have learned to look up ANYTHING I say because in Chile almost anything can be twisted into a sexual innuendo haha.  For instance (this is the "cleanest" example I can think of haha), "estoy embarazada" means "I'm pregnant", but many of them said that they'd had students who'd said that to mean that they were embarrassed.  I'm sure many of them were even more embarrassed when they found out the actual meaning!  After dinner, I came home and passed out because I'd barely slept in the past few days.

The city of Santiago itself is nothing special... it's very smoggy and busy.  It reminds me of a combination of the Mission District of San Francisco and Honolulu.  I'm excited to start my language classes, too, because I can communicate on a very basic level with people, but I definitely can't have conversations with them.  Tomorrow my program is off to the beach to have orientation!  And then I'm back in Santiago in time for a 3-day weekend.

I will write more later, but for now I'm going to go!  Ciao!