La Lengua de Vaca

Hola todos!

There is already so much to talk about and I have only been here for three days! Let me start from the beginning.

On Tuesday night I flew overnight from Atlanta straight to Santiago- luckily I met a guy at the airport in Atlanta who is in my program and happened to be sitting right next to me! We spent much of the flight playing games on the touch-screen TVs on the seats in front of us. We finally arrived in Santiago around 9am and had to rough spanish customs officers in uniforms! I was actually quite proud of my first real Spanish conversation with the officer- I told him where I was going to school and what I was studying and I'm pretty sure he understood me! It was funny, though, because it was soooo obvious that we were lost foreigners in the airport just WANDERING around everywhere! We all finally made it (there were 6 of us on the flight) out of customs and met up right away with Brigita, who is one of the CIEE coordinators. After waiting around for about another two hours, everyone else finally arrived and we were off to Santiago!


For some reason, the reserach I had done about what the weather was going to be like here wasn't very correct! I was thinking mid 70s, maybe 80s. The first day I was here it was over 90! It is so so so nice, and there is always a breeze, but I didn't even bring ONE pair of shorts so let's just say I've been a little sweaty :) (especially when I was hauling around my 100lbs of baggage!)

For our first two nights, all 48 of us stayed in an apartment-like hotel with four people to a room. They were small but so nice with two bathrooms and a little kitchen, not to mention wireless internet! Everyone on the program is extremely cool. And my roommates were from USC, Georgetown, and Bucknell, and they were all awesome. The CIEE staff took us to a bunch of great, cute chilean restaurants for every meal and at night we decided to go check out the night life. There is a street right by our hotel called "Suecia" and is known for having many restaurantes, pubs, and discotecs (clubs). The only thing that is really hard about walking down that street, especially as a "gringa" (American) is that people who work at the restaurant or bar stand outside and try and convince you to come in! Definitely wasn't used to that, plus it is really hard to politely say "oh, no thank you" in Spanish- I ususally just stayed with a simple NO haha. But it has been fun to walk around and drink a traditional and very cheap drink here called Pisco Sauers. You can get one anywhere and they are delicious!(My friend Lil and I after being mauled by 50 chileans trying to get us to come to their place)

I have also had my fair share of language mess-ups, as well as misunderstandings. The first one came when a bellman was in the elevator with me, alone, helping me take my bags upstairs. Keep in mind, at this point I had been in Chile for a total of 2 hours. After asking me if I knew how to dance the reggaton (rap type dancing?), he told me his name and proceeded to lean in and half kiss my cheek. Needless to say I didn't know at the time that this is a very common tradition here.

Also, we ate at a buffet today. I was in line, and the server behind the counter pointed to two different kinds of meat and asked which one I wanted. I just happened to point to the one on the left. As I am walking to a table, a guy in my program yells- "Oh man! Why did you get la lengua?!" It took a minute to register, but I soon realized that lengua means "tounge". Sitting on my plate was an entire cow tounge, complete with some tastebuds that were left over. It may not have been as bad if it was in little pieces, but it was literally in the shape of a huge tounge. Apparently tougne is a very common chilean dish... (see below... ugh)

I just moved in with my host family today, but that is completely another story! I will write another blog soon allllll about mi familia chilena, with pictures and everything.

Miss everyone!

Ciao,
Laura (pronounced Low-ra en Chile, according to my advisor haha)