Beautiful city

18 julio 2006
Hola todos!


I am in Chile! Once again, there were some issues with the flying, but we were only delayed in Atlanta for 3 hours, and CIEE was still waiting at the airport for all of us, and it gave us the opportunity to get to know each other a bit before we left the country.

Santiago is absolutely beautiful, it is a big city, but it doesn´t really feel like a big city. The Andes are in the skyline, pretty much where ever you turn. The air feels clean when you breath it and it is very refreshing. It is pretty chilly at night and in the mornings, but for the past two days it has been up into the 70s during the day. Yesterday we went out to dinner at a restaurant, very fancy. It was on the 16th floor of the building and it was all windows, so we could see the skyline and all of the lights of the city. The city seems to stretch on forever, there really wasn´t an end to the lights. The cool thing about the restaurant was that it rotated, yes that´s right, we were spinning while we ate dinner, so we got to see the city from all different views. Yesterday during the day we went to the high point of the city and looked out over Santiago, it was quite breathtaking. To get up the mountain we rode the Funicular, s train/tram type thing. It was fun. There was also a chapel and statues on the mountain, a huge statue of the Virgin stood at the top, very cool!

Today we find out who our host families are, I am so excited! We went to La Chascona, one of Pablo Neruda´s three homes this morning as well, it was very neat, there were three different parts, all separated and you had to walk outside to get to each part. In the main dining room there is a hutch, one part of the hutch holds dishes and the other is a trap door that Neruda used to surprise his guests. He would come out of it in crazy costumes and serve his guests dinner. I really enjoyed seeing his house. As part of the program we will have the chance to see his other two houses as well, something to look forward to.

There are 41 students in my group, and we are all getting along quite nicely, there are some that I get along with better than others. I met a girl today from South Carolina, named Emily, with whom I think I am going to be good friends. Emily and I wandered around today after lunch, and encountered a group of musicians in the mall after we found peanut butter for her (something that is hard and expensive to come by in Chile). They were absolutely amazing. There were three male singers accompanied by a small orchestra (one of each of the strings) two of the men were singing traditional male parts, but the other was singing soprano! He was absolutely amazing, he sounded like a woman, I have never heard another amature male singer sound like him, I was in awe!

We leave Santiago tomorrow and go to live with our host families. I am keeping a blog, that way anyone not on my e-mail list can keep tabs on my journey and time in Peru. If you are interested (the postings will be the same as the e-mails) it is www.kathystrek.blogspot.com.

Much love, Kathy