Orientation, travel, y otras cosas

The past two weeks have been incredibly busy!! We completed orientation with our program, which consisted of Spanish grammar classes (that were debatably successful), trips around the city to see a lot of the historical landmarks, and cultural experinces (we read a poem by Pablo Neruda and then discussed our feelings about it in Spanish). This has all been taking place from 9am-1pm everyday in the university's library. University of Diego Portales is goregous. It's worked into a few blocks downtown-sort of like GW-but is so modern looking and oldwordy at the same time. Almost building has a courtyard like area and there's a river that runs through a couple of the connected buildings. While orienation has been fun I am excited to start real school tomorrow! Our earliest day of classes starts at 10 (thank god, we are not morning people).

Orientation trip to the top of Santa Lucia!

In addition to fake school we've been doing a lot of traveling. Last weekend we went to Tongoy, a small beach town about 5 hours to the north of Santiago. We laid on the beach, ate 61 fried empanadas between our group of 13, and went to a carnival. We rode the mini montana rusa aka a child sized roller coaster. It was the best.

Thursday-Friday of this week our prgram took us to Vina del Mar and Valparaiso to end orienation before school starts! We went to Isla Negra to see another Neruda house and it was goregous. He had the most amazing view of the Pacific and rocky beach. Allende visited him in that house so that was also totally cool. Megan totally thinks Neruda was a hoarder, he just had three houses to put all of his stuff in, instead of one. She's a little sensitive on this issue... Then the program took us out to a nice dinner in Vina and then on a walking tour of Valparaiso the next day. It was beautiful-a lot of hills and colorful houses. Our tour ended with lunch at a resturaunt on the 5th floor of a high rise. Valpo is more of a shipping port town than a beach town, so we had a great view of the bay and we're fed wine, piscos, ceviche, and steak! Good to see my AU-abroad dollars at work!

We also discovered a fun game that Kevin and Megan like to play. Everyone tries to find the most inspiring piece of graffiti and then we decide if the graffiti is fact or poetry. So far the count is 2-2 with one disqualification for vulgarity. Megan's personal favorite was besame amame soy un pirata. (aka kiss me, love me, I am a pirate) You can not imagine how much conversation ensued on this point, but just so everyone knows, it's poetry.

We decided to stay for the weekend in a hostel in Valpo with the other kids from AU. Our hostel was charming and we found a great Chilean kitchen nearby. But unfortunately we don't have any pictures of the weekend. On Friday Megan and I and one other person from our program were jumped and robbed while we we're opening the door to our hostel. We're okay-so there's no need for anyone to worry. But we're a little shaken up and back home resting. Sorry for springing this on everyone at the end of our blog post but we honestly didn't know what the best way to tell our friends and sisters who we wanted to know. We will have more ( and less dangerous) stories to come soon!