¡hola!

¡buenos tardes a todos, estamos en chile! i am actually really proud of myself – my spanish has been more than good enough to get by, and i just waded right in. it all came flooding back to me, as soon as we got off the plane and i realised that the only way we were going to get the 20 kms into town was if i tried actually, you know, conversing. there is (thankfully) very little english in these parts, which has forced me to get over my fear of embarrassment and just go for it. and all the chilenos have been very warm and helpful (even if they do speak really fast and indistinctly), making it easy for me to blunder through with a smile. immersion is a wonderful thing. (and yes, i rock just a little bit.)

crossing the international date line has not been as wonderful, as we essentially went 48 hours without sleep in a single day, and are now back on eastern standard time, so still rather jet-lagged (which explains, and hopefully excuses the very disjointed post). we finally ventured out this afternoon for a long wander through santiago, which, interestingly enough, reminds me most of rome (and, of course, spain). there is something very european about the city, which is both familiar and different – lots of plazas and wide avenidas, cafes and sidewalk restaurantes. they seem to have an inexplicable obsession with hotdogs and ice cream, but you can’t beat the empanadas and cerveza. yum. the architecture is to die for.

the current, very tentative plan is to head south for a while, perhaps to the lakes district (want to go to patagonia, but that might not be possible in the off season), and see how far we get. it’s also occurred to me that we have only 8 short weeks left of this incredible experience, so we must make the very most of it.

more soon, mis amigos.

ciao,
jen

This entry was posted on Sunday, 20 August, 2006 at 8:16 pm and is filed under chile. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.