Finally some blog time!

So I failed my first Spanish test- the flight attendant asked me if I wanted beef or chicken for dinner and I said, "Water please." Now for those of you that speak Spanish and can´t imagine how I mistook "Carne o pollo" for "Algo de tomar", let me just say that the Chilean dialect is really freaking extreme. They pretty much leave out all the consonants, it seems, and half the words I learned in Mexico are not used here. Actually I´m getting used to it now (it´s been five long days since that flight attendant tried to trick me) and even hearing it in my own speech now and then, but still there are people whom I cannot understand one word from.

As I´d suspected would happen, Rotary is keeping us extremely busy and I´m not finding much time to post. Also I haven´t really figured out how to do this yet and it seems to take forever to upload photos, so I really need a good chunk of time to make a post. Maybe I´ll get better at it as we go along.


Here´s the view from
Pablo Neruda´s home in Isla Negra, about an hour from Santiago. What a wild place! Couldn´t take any photos inside the house unfortunately so you´ll just have to imagine the crazy collections: navigational instruments, seashells, butterflies and beetles, glass liquor bottles, masks, those women with big boobs that are posted on the fronts of ships to calm the seas...you name it. And the house was constructed as much as possible to feel like a boat, so low rounded ceilings, really narrow doors, everything wooden, etc. Sam would be in heaven. I really hope he can see it someday. And the view from the bed in the only bedroom in the house is such that I´d never get up if I lived there!

Sorry I don´t have the patience to try and upload more photos right now (I actually had about four more on here a minute ago and somehow deleted them!) but I will tell you that I´m having a fantastic time with many new and hopefully lifelong friends and I could definitely live here. Tomorrow I´m going to visit an ESOL class for adults taught (I think) by volunteers. Can´t wait to see how they do it (and how much they might want to pay me to stay and run the program for them.....?!) Just kidding, Sam- I´ll come home, really I will.