So I´ve now been in Santiago for a week.

Saturday.
Went horseback riding in a park called cascada des animales http://www.cascadadelasanimas.cl/bienvenidos.shtml. Alize a girl from Boston that worked in the hostel works on the farm near there on the weekends so I went with her to get there, then hung around till 3.30 waiting for the ride. At 330 a japanese family (mom, dad, jr) showed up and they and I were the group. Turns out they have been living in Santiago for 10 years and so were fluent in spanish and the father could speak english so I talked to him for the ride. My horse was called ´setenta´which means 70 which is how much he cost (70,000 pesos - about 140 US). Anyway this was the best horse I´d ever ridden except for going down hill. He didn´t like it at all because it was sandy and slippery. Towards the end of the tour he refused to go down, so I switched horses with the guide who was more persuasive than I with Setenta.

Sunday.
First day moving in with a Chilean family. Maria, Mario, and Javiera are my host family. They are very friendly and talkative. Even though I understand little about what they are saying.. day by day I hope to understand better though I find my understanding comes in wave - when I have no energy then I find it hard to think in English ... so the Spanish doesn´t improve.

Speaking about the weather it´s hot and humid here. 30 degress celcius mas or menus every day with the sun rising around 7 and setting around 9 pm. Also there is a hole in the ozone down here so I have some burns on my forearms. Weird burns too in that usually when I get burns there is more of a spread to them.. Imagine a straight one inch stripe that goes from my elbow down to my wrist (on both sides).

I went with Javiera to a movie about ´Violetta Perra´ who is a famous Chilean artist that was talented in many different arts - painting, textiles and singing. I could stay focussed for about 5 minutes then sorta spaced out until the french bits came (she lived in france so they were interviewing some people there) and I could follow that a bit better. Anyway Violetta Perra is the name of my school as well and last night I was at a bar with some school mates and ran into her husband´s daughter who is working on a book. I thought she and her friends might have been part of the class. They thought I was suspicious for saying I was from the ´Violetta Parra´school.

Monday
speaking of the school. Went to school on Monday. Davio is my instructor and my classmates are Tjeerd and Wendy from Holland, Dirk from Germany who is living here now, Ingvard who is from Norway and Damikatsu who is a high school student from South Africa. Daimakatsu told us what her name means - I think something like -brings unexpected things. Everyone in the class were together the previous week with a different instructor.

The class went well. I´m in the second week of the class (so the month two years ago in spain translated into a 1 week advancement) but (that´s not how to look at it) as repetition is important and I´m happy as long as I´m learning and can keep up and I am doing both so far.

Tuesday
We. I didn´t get around to mentioning yet - that also there is a Milanea who is also staying in the school so usually we go to school together in the morning. She is from Brasil and is some sort of book reviewer. She doesn´t speak English (or is awefully good at hiding her English) so it is a bit of a challenge to communicate at home as no one is really that fluent. Mario is pretty good at some English.

Anyway the point or I guess the day is Tuesday and I had a different idea about how to get to school instead of walking on the Providencia avenue for 45 minutes we could try and go up and around the base of St. Cristobal hill (Cerro St. Cristobal).

Haha. Well we ended up walking for a bit on the highway for a bit but the good news is that most of the trip was in more of a forest-park setting instead of in what has to be the centre urban spine of santiago (Providencia). Providencia is a wide street and there are a few highways and or other streets that cross it. From the Baquedano rail station to cross it to get to the Bella Vista Barrio you have to cross about 4 full traffic lights with maybe about 6 lanes of traffic between each (no real breaks). So you cross like 24 lanes of traffic and can maybe get through the set in 2 or three stops.

But that´s all a distraction. We found a better way to walk to school which is much more park like.

Wednesday.
Had school in the morning, walked home took a nap, walked back and went to a presentation on a couple activities for the weekend (a walk in El Dorado park or a weekend trip to the Elke valley). I´m going to the El Dorado Park on saturday. It´s expensive but I think it´s good to try and do some school activities. After those presentations I did an inter cabio.

The idea of an intercambio is to meet other people who speak the language you are trying to learn and vice versa. So me and a guy from Poland met two chilean people. It was pretty rough for me because conversation is difficult and we haven´t done future or past tenses so that doesn´t make anything easier. Anyway I ended up pairing with Sergio who is a government employee working on computers (PHP, HTML with SQL Server for some inventory thing). His english is really good. I understand his spanish really well.

For me the concept of an intercambio is - well I don´t know yet. The benefit is that you have an instant translation back into your language for any word you don´t know.

One last thing in the intercabio meeting. Before we broke out seperately the Polish guy (who has shocking white-blond hair) was talking about how he was robbed in Santiago. Basically two young guys grabbed him and a third took his fanny pack (or mini packpack or whatever). Also on the same weekend he went to Argentina and had to pay a $40 bribe to get in because they didn´t like his passport. So he didn´t tiene bone suerte that weekend.

Thursday
School in the morning. Went to buy a swim suit and while walking around saw a small robbery. Well I think it was a small robbery. I saw a guy grab at a girl´s throat then run and take off. He was like about 2 or 3 meters away. Actually I know he was trying to rob her I just don´t know if he succeeded or not. Maybe he grabbed her necklass and took off with that or failed to grab her bag. Anyway it was a bit shocking to see and made me think about it bit.

So the guy looked maybe 18, black hair and pretty fast. I´ve been looking out for him but there are lots of people that look like that. Turns out this kind of petty theft is super common here it´s like a game for young kids. Apparently they have the seperate juvinile-adult court system here so the consequences for them is minor.

Sergio from my intercambio explained that they are usually in a group. There is one guy watching and coordinating, there is one runner and there is someone with a backpack to hold any booty they snatch. If you attack or fight back apparently they may as a group beat you up.

Anywhoo, about a couple hours later I saw a scuffle with a bunch of boys while going for dinner. 3 versus 1. I don´t know what that was.

Finally on Thursday, Milena and I went to a school event at a local bar to intercabio with other students (supposedly the same idea where there are people wanting to learn english and vice versa). I didn´t run into anyone wanting to learn to speak english. Just people from the spanish-wanting-to-learn student side of things. Alot of people were just speaking english (not to learn - just cause it´s the most common language between europeans) which I did for awhile, but also spent time speaking with some brazilians in spanish to practice and because they didn´t speak english so were kind of locked out. I think there was a table of people speaking German too. Well anyway this is a boring paragraph, but drinking and chatting was funner than this. Sorry.

Oh by the way in spanish they don´t say sorry. Or at least I mean they have two words. Our sorry has lots of meanings. The main one is Disculpe which is the main one which is when you wrong someone and know it and can respond right away. Also you can use discuple to get attention like ´disculpe, can you help me with something´. The other sorry is the ´lo siento´which according to Mario is a kind of sorry you only use later when you didn´t realize at the time and then do recognize.

Friday
I was grumpy for school this morning. Mileana wanted to take the metro-subway so she could sleep in a bit more, which seemed like an ok idea at the time, but in actual fact it takes about 30min to get to school by subway (because of all the street crossings mentioned above) and 40 min to walk. I prefer to start my class early and on time so I´m on top of things because inevitably and possibly hopefully at the end of class I am or want to be overwhelmed. I bought a couple shirts and was going to find a hat, but couldn´t find one I liked (mario said he would lend me one).

Turns out sombrero means hat. That´s it. To me sombrero means fancy hat. But here it just means hat.