Schools Starts

Everything´s going great, the internet is down in my apartment and I´m about to go to class. The semester is looking pretty good. More details later, I love the apartment and I think I made a pretty good selection with these classes. (Also, I´m the only foreigner, and definitely the only american) in the 3 I´ve been to so far. I go to the last one on Wed.

More details later.

Apartment found, moving in tomorrow

Well, I found a pretty good apartmet, 8 rooms + kitchen and right across the street from a park. It´s right in the middle of Santiago, about 30 minutes from where my classes will be. I´ve also got an international student orientation tomorrow at 3. So, between moving and that, it should be a full enough day.

Also, my phone number is (56) 76275218.

Day 4

Today we saw the last places available on our list, and I´ll probably have a place by the end of this week (Or August 1, at the latest).

On a side note, the three foreigners decided not to let the Chilena pick the restaurants anymore, seeing as the bill for 4 people at her choices was usually around $40US, and when the travellers picked the restaurant it was around $15. Jean and I left a restaurant that we had stopped in for lunch under the guise that we had left our wallets at the hotel because the place was too expensive.

In the mean time, I think I´m going to go take a nap.

Dia de busqueda # 2

Today was spent similarly to yesterday (except I got a phone). We saw a bunch of great places for rent, but in every one there´s always exactly one thing wrong (it´s a really old building, far from campus, only Americans...). Right now I´m deciding among three (and there a ton to see tomorrow: One close to campus (close = 20 min, far = an hour), very cheap, the owner seems to be a really nice, laid-back guy... but the building is pretty old and the place is just so-so. There´s one that all the Frenchies have heard about, which is a house with 10 rooms that´s known throughout Europe as the place to stay in Santiago (but there´s a group of 6 french people already there, and it´s pretty far from campus), and a really nice place with a young professional type guy (and two other roommates) moderate distance to campus.

With any luck I should find a place by tomorrow evening. I´ve got some good options so I won´t be settling for anything.

It´s hard for me to write in English, and after every sentence I feel like I should punctuate it with some Chilean slang. I said about 10 words total today in English, maybe 20 in French, and that makes two days in a row that I´ve said less than two sentences in Enlglish. I went out for a bit with a group of mixed internationals, French, Brazilian, Peruvian (I was proud to be the only American) and we all spoke Spanish.

Pretty much everything is a small adventure (and sometimes not so small) around here. At times it´s somewhat shocking, but I think if I could spare a year away from UT, I´d probably stay down here.

Oh, and things to send with Gavin- Laptop Battery... I´m sure I´ll think of something else. Oh, my cell number is.... written on the box upstairs. I don´t pay for incoming calls, and I have no idea what it costs to call a cellphone in Chile from the US. I imagine it´s not cheap.

Anyways, all is well in the southern hemisphere, hope everything is great in the US!

I´ll send more emails etc when I have my new place. As for now, it´s dial-up on an old computer and a shared line (that means it´s really, really slow)

Full Day number one

I met a guy named Jean last night who is a french exchange student studying in a university down the road from mine. We went around Santiago to check out places to live, after deciding that el punto didn´t make the cut for proximity, ambience, neighborhood (it´s safe, that´s about it). We saw a few great places and I´m starting to build confidence with my Spanish after communicating all day (apart from a half-conversation with a realtor from California) in Spanish. The Chilean accent is giving me less and less of a problem. I´ve so far got a few good options on places to live (I don´t want to live with many Americans, which cuts out a few places) and we´re checking out a few places tomorrow. I have mastered Chilean-realtor Spanish.

We ate in a little cafe for lunch, good sandwiches (beef with avocado, egg, and some crazy sauces) for practically nothing ($3, I think) and pizza for dinner ç (about $8).

I´m getting a phone tomorrow, as well as transformers for my computer, so I should be more accessible later in the week.

-Dan

Also, the toilets empty counter-clockwise.

Arrival

The plane was delayed out of Dallas until 2 AM, which was hardly welcomed by anyone. I translated food and drink orders for two Chileans in the Mexican restaurant in the airport (the Chileans didn´t know what the items on the mexican menu were, and the people working in the restaurant were all gringos). They were in the US on business, and gave me a lot of advice on where to go in Chile for vacation and how to get there, etc.

I got on the plane and actually managed to get a few hours of sleep, before waking up and talking to the Chilean next to me, who works in IT. He gave me his card as well as a lot of advice on getting around the city and what to do.

I took a taxi to the dorm, which is farther away from the university than I was expecting. I´ll go to the university tomorrow and get all the international information and everything around there. Although, since my cell phone doesn´t work and the clock on this computer is kind of screwed up, I realized I have close to no idea what time it is. I think we´re 2 hours ahead here, judging by a very confusing map in the airline magazine.

I´m pretty sure my Spanish has improved in the last 3-4 hours dramatically, or at least a lot of it came back to me, because now I´m finding it a lot easier to communicate that it was 24 hours ago.

I went around a park pretty close to the dorm and wandered into a free museum of natural history. I was expecting a few quiet families and some geology nerds... but it was almost like a playground for a bunch of toddlers running around in there. They had the skeleton of a blue whale in the entrance hall, quite amazing.

Well, apart from the fact that everything is closed on Sundays, everything´s great, and I should have plenty of time to get everything done that I need to tomorrow.

4 hours til takeoff

This is to see if everything works on this site. Everything's packed, and I'm about to sit on a plane for 10 1/2 hours.