YES, I'm finally in Chile!

hello amigos!
it's been a long time coming since i've created this blog and updated on my time in chile, but i've just been suuuuper busy with orientation. my first week here, i was holed up in a room pretty much all day for 8 days for worldteach orientation. it was undoubtedly helpful for most of us newbie teachers, but as you can imagine, i was pretty exhausted every day. now i'm in a different hostel from the first, doing my second round of orientation with the ministry of education. we go from 9-6 every day, which yes, sucks. i just want to go to chillan already! i wish i could finally be settled! oh well, i'm having a good time though nonetheless. it's been so nice bonding with the other worldteach volunteers because we're becoming one happy family. there are about 30 other volunteers that i recently met during the ministry orientation, but us worldteachers have become quite an exclusive bunch. frankly, i'm all socialed out, and i'm just concerned about getting closer with my fellow worldteach folks. we'll be seeing more of each other after all.

i haven't seen much of santiago unfortunately since my days have been pretty packed, but we get weekends off! but from what i've seen, santiago is quite a bacan (cool) city. it's friggin huge, and there are so many different comunas with its own personality. interestingly enough, there are quite a few chinese restaurants here and even japanese restaurants. i tried one chinese restaurant and wasn't very satisfied, but i appreciated the effort. from what i've observed walking in the streets, there is a small population of asian folks here in santiago. it's always funny when i see an asian person on the street and she sees me and we immediately lock eyes and bond for those 5 seconds.

i think this weekend, i and some of the ladies in the group are going to head to valparaiso and vina del mar, which is about an hour away and by the coast. one of pablo neruda's house is there, so i'm excited to visit. he also has a house here in the city, but i still have yet go see it. i still have 2 weeks left in santiago, so i have time. plus, i'm most likely going to return to santiago and the surrounding area during my break.

so let's see, what have i learned about chilean culture so far? chileans have their own spanish and are very proud of it. it's kind of annoying to have to learn a different sort of spanish, but at the same time, it's kind of fun to use their slang. a lot of people smoke here too, and it's allowed in pretty much all establishments. i went to an electronic dance club several nights ago, and i just came home wreaking of cigarettes since everyone was dancing and smoking around me. also their fruit juices are reallly sickeningly sweet and concentrated. i'm not a huge fan.

this wasn't much of an interesting entry, but i'll be sure to update more later. i realized i'm not much of a blogger, so i might just switch to sending emails out or something.