The First Day

I got in today to Viña del Mar. It's a coastal city in central Chile about 2 hours west of Santiago. Scenery definitely gets better the further you get from Santiago (place is crowded and dirty in my opinion). Viña and Valparaîso are right next to eachother and the way they stack the houses on the cerros (hills) is pretty impressive.

I met my "house mother" Giovanna and she's definitely younger than me at 25. She lives about 20 minutes east of Viña in a town called Villa Alemana with her boyfriend Manuel and their one and a half year old daughter Gianina. She's probably the cutest damn baby I've ever met in my life. Super friendly and loud. During my first conversation with Manuel, we had to keep stopping because she kept getting on my lap. As with most foreign places I go, I'm like a circus animal that people just can't get enough of.

Now, as long as we're talking about conversation, I might as well say that none of the family speaks a word of English. For once, I speak better Spanish than someone does English. Manuel definitely knows more than Giovanna but not much. Our conversations consisted mainly of riddles and I'm pretty sure I mistakenly told them all that I would donate a kidney if ever need be. However, this is perfect for my purposes in Chile since I'm really going to have to learn how to speak to survive out here. We had sushi tonight and spent much of the cena passing an engligh/spanish dictionary around. Tomorrow we're going to Valparaiso.

To all who are actively paying attention, I have wi-fi internet in my house (which is apparently not rare in Chile) so I can update and talk regularly now. Hasta luego