Pre-Departure

Hello everyone, and welcome to my blog! Here I will be chronicling my international adventures during my semester abroad in Santiago, Chile. I am living with a host family and taking classes at Universidad Diego Portales. I will hopefully also have an internship, but I won't be applying for that until I get there. I am leaving Feb. 19 and coming back June 24. In between, AU's program has trips planned for Easter Island, Torres del Paine in Patagonia, and the Atacama Desert. I also plan to go to the beach and visit Amanda at Viña del Mar and possibly make it over to Buenos Aires to see Jenelle (and tango!). And, of course, I will be exploring Santiago with Dania and the other AU people I meet on the trip.

I'll be posting pictures, of course, and I got one of those little Flip video cameras for Christmas so I'll probably post some short videos too. My host family has internet at their house (at least, I think that's what they said) so I won't be unavailable. My email address is kp61692@student.american.edu; AIM screenname is theKeltzreigns; and my Skype address is kelsey.poole. Hopefully I will have the webcam figured out by the time I get there. I will not have my phone so please don't try and call or text it. I'd prefer not to have 800 texts waiting for me when I get home.

Just a few thoughts before I end the post. I'm excited but I'm also pretty nervous because my Spanish skills are very rusty. I'm sure I'll make a fool of myself for my host family in the first five minutes. As some of you know, I'm pretty anti-seafood but I will have to deal with it while I'm there because that is mostly what they eat. I've heard the Chilean nightlife is pretty fun so I'm looking forward to that. Also, I was very surprised by the number of people here in the States who asked me what language they speak in Chile. The manager at Bola Pasta asked me to bring him a monkey.

I guess that's it. Next post will be from Santiago! ¡Hurra!