Hola amigos!
Today marks two weeks in Santiago! In some ways, I feel like it's been months, and in other ways I feel like it's been about three days. I've walked more in the past two weeks than I have in the rest of the summer combined (can you blame me? Chapel Hill in the summer is truly awful), and I feel pretty familiar with my area of town and the area around the program's building at this point. I'm also starting to venture out with friends and spend time in other barrios (neighborhoods) and municipalidades (municipalities, just in case anyone needed a translation for that). Here is a picture of me with a giant statue of a catfish chef that a friend and I found while on a 3 hour search for Thai food. We did not find Thai food, but we did find this huge catfish.
I signed up for classes this past week and ended up deciding to take a Spanish grammar class, a class called "Spanish for Healthcare Practitioners," a Healthcare in Chile seminar with a community health aspect, and I'll be doing a service learning internship as well! These all start tomorrow, and I'm excited to get back to an established school schedule!
Otherwise, this past week has been pretty relaxed. I'm exhausted still, which makes me think I'm getting sick, or speaking Spanish all the time is really tiring! Or a combination of both.
I spent a bit of time on the San Joaquin campus of La Católica, the Chilean university where I will be taking the Healthcare seminar, and it is beeeauuuutiful!
I've also spent a lot of time with Steph this week, who is my best friend from Chapel Hill who I've known since 4th grade. We both ended up here coincidentally, and it is so fun to explore with her! Here she is at a coffee shop, and here is us today at Danielle's house for brunch with Danielle's cat.
Several people from my program also went and hiked up Cerro Santa Lucia, which is a beautiful vantage point to look at Santiago. Here's a picture from the top! I had to step on several Chileans' toes to get this, so I hope you all enjoy it.
That's all for now! I'm going to go watch the Olympics with my host mama.
Un abrazo,
Nina
