Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Settling In

Me cuesta mucho cambiar siempre entre Espanol y Ingles.

This has been the longest day so far. It seems like forever ago that I took the shortest shower of my life and rode the metro to the University with mama Lorena for the first time. Seeing Americans again after two days straight of extremelyfastspanish was more of a relief than I realized I needed. We listened to a presentation (in blessed English) about the University, Viña, transportation, safety, and everything else we could ever want to know. Then we had two and a half hours to go home for lunch, so we decided to go to Colin's apartment. We took the micro (bus) for the first time without a chileno and we both survived! Nana made us pastel de choclo, which is kind of a corn mash with some kind of meat in it--it tasted like Grandma's gravy, so I'm guessing it was giblets--and covered in a ton of sugar. It was delicious and as always, about three times more than I could possibly eat.

We arrived back at the University a few minutes late for our test, but since that's early for chilenos, we were actually congratulated. :) Both the oral and the written tests went well, and we got to spend a few hours getting to know the other international students. When we finished with our responsibilities for the day, Colin and I went back to my apartment so he could meet mama Lorena. They both seemed rather taken with each other, so I hope we'll all be spending lots of time together. We had a lovely afternoon snack and chatted with mama Lorena until it was time for Colin to go home for dinner.

I feel most proud of our accomplishments in Chile when we figure out the public transportation, so it was the second great success of the day when I walked Colin to the colectivo stop near my house by myself and then he hailed and then rode one all by himself!

I don't realize how much I've already learned until I try to explain it, but a colectivo is somewhere between a taxi and a bus. They are black cars with taxi-like signs on the roof; they have set routes and prices, but they will drop you off anywhere along their route, and they only have up to four passengers at a time. Riding in a colectivo feels about like how I imagine it feels to ride in a taxi in New York City. Which is terrifying. :) It could just be that I've never lived in a big city, but the public transportation here fascinates me more than anything else. It feels like the city never sleeps, and never stops moving.

Anyway, I spent the rest of the evening practicing English with Sidney (who sounds about like I did in Spanish two), which doubled as getting to know each other better, relaxing, and having a Corona--in glasses from a 1Liter bottle--with my family. And now finally, I'm going to sleep to rest for a long day of exploring Viña tomorrow!

Buenas noches,
Rachel

1 comment:

  1. I love you and miss you and love you and miss you and love you and miss you!

    ReplyDelete