I'm settling down for the night

Ok everyone, I am back from orientation and so I have some time to write. It is after 9 right now and we just got done with dinner. Chileans have breakfast at 8:30am, lunch at 12, tea time (like with bread, slices of avadaco, and tea) at 5 or 6 and then the actual dinner at 9 or later. No one goes out to the bars until after 1 or 2 am and they live this lifestyle on very little sleep. Other odd things I learned in orientation: Chileans consider themselves to be European rather than Latin American (from their Spanish roots, naturally). If I were called a grina, gringet, or other names it is not necesarily bad. No one in Chile wears glasses. Never wear gold jewelry, you'll be a target for theft, however silver jewelry is totally fine to wear. There were other things too, but I can't remember.

Ok well I have to tell you all that the flight was really long, and my day today was really long too. It doesn't seem like I got here today. After watching an entire season of Friends in the Miami airport, I walked to my gate and found three girls from USAC right away. We waited for a bit and found more people while we were boarding the plane. The plane was huge. I was in 39C which was an aisle seat on the left side of the plane in the middle section. The seats were tiny and did not recline very much. The flight attendants served drinks 5 times throughout the 7 hour flight and two meals. It was so much that I couldn't really pull out my computer to watch anything. So I tried to sleep, but alas, it was very uncomfortable. I only got maybe an hour or two the whole night.

When we landed, we went through the extensive customs in the airport which took over an hour. I was so excited because both of my bags made it. A few other girls were not so lucky. I feel bad for one of the girls that I am rooming with tonight because they lost her bags somewhere. Supposedly she is getting them back tomorrow. So we took a 30-45 minute bus ride to our hotel where I am staying with 3 other girls. Our room has one bathroom and is small but not too small. This is a picture of my bed. It is not exactly huge but I am making do by crawling over everything.

And down below is a picture of where we eat dinner. There is a little buffet table off to the left and there are some really attentive waiters who open Coca-Cola Light or Mango Nectar or Aqua for you out of glass bottles and clear your dishes immediately.

For lunch today, we had grilled salmon, mashed potatoes, mixed greens, vegetables, bread, and fruit and sorbet. For dinner, it was either chicken or beef dish things (so good), with rice, corn, rolls, and some desserts that were like a whipped fruit mousse (we couldn't figure out the fruit, one girl thought it was a persimmon mousse), peaches and cream, and sapayyo (sp) the dessert that is fried little wafers with syrup on them.

Anyway, so the Chilean lifestyle is very relaxed. Tomorrow we are getting up, having breakfast, then a break, then going to have an hour meeting for more orientation information, a break, then tested on our Espanol, and then have another break until our host families come to pick us up. Right now, a lot of the girls went out for a couple drinks, but I am just too tired. So I am going to try to sleep before too long. I don't know if I will have wifi at my host family's place but I will try to write a lot. Everyone stay on your AIM and Skype so that we can all chat! Love and miss you all! Hasta pronto! That means see you soon!