Cachai?

Hello all. My first week in Chile has been interesting and pretty good overall. Orientation started on Monday and goes through this week too. It's been useful but the days are super long. We have Spanish class from 9:30-1:30, then "culture" class from 3-5. During the break we've been walking around the streets by the school, but there's not a whole lot around. The best find has definitely been the supermarket with a food court, Dunkin Donuts, and bowling alley on the second floor. I can't help but think how much better my Kroger experience would have been.

Part of the Spanish class has been "chilenismos," slang and phrases that only Chileans use. One of them, "cachai," is derived from the English word "catch" and it means "understand?" Also, "novio" means fiance while "pololo" means boyfriend. This made for some confusion on day one. Chileans use "super" a lot too, much to the amusement of this AU group.

The class has also taken field trips to a few places in the city center. We went one day to La Moneda, the seat of government. It's the Chilean equivalent to the White House, only with much less security. Anyone can go inside during certain parts of the day, and as one girl pointed out there aren't any snipers on the roof. Of course, President Bachelet doesn't actually live there. She commutes. Underneath La Moneda is a museum showing (for now) an exhibit about Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. It was pretty cool, although Frida's paintings can be pretty disturbing.

I have also been to the Museum of Precolumbian Art, featuring pieces from Mayans, Incas, Aztecs, etc. It was a very nice museum (a bit pricey though). The temporary exhibit there is about these super old (super-viejo!) fishermen that were the first civilization to perform mummification. They had several mummies on display, it was macabre but awesome.

We have a new guest at the house. Fransisco is a friend of the family from northern Chile and is starting university this year, so he's staying with us for a while. He's pretty nice, but he's out all the time, so I haven't talked to him very much. The other kids are coming back later this week.

I had dinner with Dania last night. It was really nice because A) we had the best pizza ever and B) the AU group is still in what I call the "freshman phase," where we don't really know each other and can only have really light conversations. So it was refreshing to chat with someone who I already know things about. Not that I'm not making friends. I went out with some girls to Bellavista, one of the better places for el carrete (another chilenismo for nightlife). I tried pisco, the favorite drink here, for the first time. It was good but kind of strong. We ended up leaving fairly early by Chilean standards, though, since we were so tired from the long week. My host mom asked why I came home so early. At 2am.

I'd like to share more about issues and cultural differences here in Chile but I haven't had time to really observe a lot yet. So more on that later. Ciao bellos!