I left Raleigh last Sat, Jan 1 and flew to Miami and then on to Santiago. I arrived in Santiago on Sun. The house where I am living is fondly called La Casa Loca and is owned by the school. Its got about 10 rooms some of which have one bed and some of which hav
e two. My room is on the third floor in a big attic looking space. It was a pain in the patootie to drag my huge suitcases up the last narrow flight of rickety, wooden stairs. I think the room is one of the bigger ones and one of the only ones with a big bed so I can't complain too much. However, it gets to be about ten thousand degrees during the day so I can't spend time up there in the afternoon. But I have my own bathroom (with no hot water) and I'm very comfortable. 
I've taken some fotos but I seem to have left my USB cable at home so I can't upload them until I buy a new one. You'll have to use your imaginations for now.For the rest of Sunday I mainly just puttered around...slept a bit, shopped for some food, and met some peeps. On Monday I had to be at the school (which is about three or four blocks up the road) at 8 to take a placement test. I tested into the level I was expecting and picked up exactly where I stop remembering things from school. The first day was great, my teacher was super sweet and I was seriously loving Chile. I walked around with a new friend that afternoon and met her and another friend that night for drinks.
After that things started to go downhill. School continued to be great, though difficult but I started coming down with what I think was the flu so Tuesday thru Thursday are all kinda a feverish haze. I got talked into going to salsa lessons on Wed night and I'm pretty sure I would've had a lot of fun if I had been able to breathe. I actually had a pretty high fever on Thurs so I skipped school (those of you who know my study habits know I don't take school lightly so that should be some indication of how shitty I felt.) So the majority of this week has been spent taking it easy and hoping that I wasn't going to die my first week in a foreign country. I did manage to find the Farmacia and get some drugs which helped quite a bit and today I'm feeling heaps better! Thank goodness.
On Fridays (every other friday i think) we take a test to determine if we're ready to move to the next level. Each level is two weeks but I think I came in in the middle of a session so I had one week at the level I was at, and will move on to the new one next week. So yeah, despite being sick as a dog all week, I passed my test so yay! Many of the students from the school are going on a pub crawl tonight, but its one where you pay up front and then get free/cheap drinks all night and since I'm still not feeling great and wont be drinking it seemed silly to pay that much. And tomorrow we are going to La Isla Negra to see the museum of Pablo Neruda and the beaches, etc and thats at 9 am so I figured I'd make good life choices and get some sleep tonight.
So I think thats a good recap of my first week.
Hopefully things will get more exciting once I'm feeling better. There are so many little stories and fun things that I would love to tell, but then this post would be about twenty pages long so I'll refrain. Suffice it to say, I'm really loving it here. Everyone is very friendly and welcoming and the school is great. Please please please keep in touch with me via skype or facebook or email or I can even text (its a new number so let me know if you want me to text you). And stay tuned for much more excitement to come! Besos!
