I survived my first week!

It was cold and rainy this morning, which made it even harder to get up to go to class. For homework, I got another worksheet in grammar and a story to read for lit. – not bad. After class, everyone in my program gathered to meet our language exchange partners. We will meet with a Chilean student once a week so they can practice their English and we can practice our Spanish. My partner is Jessenia, an 18 yr old girl that was really sweet. They fed us empanadas, which was the first time I’ve had the pastry here. I had one with just cheese in it – amazing!

I went back home for awhile and then Adrienne and I met up back at the university to go to the mall in Viña. We stopped by the bus terminal first to concrete some weekend plans that four of us have been making to go to La Serena, a city located north of here. We effectively conversed with a bus company employee to figure out how much the bus costs and when it leaves. We were proud of ourselves.

We headed to the mall and had a huge meal at a restaurant there. This was an especially momentous occasion, because the restaurant had 13 different kinds of cheesecake – my favorite! I had a big delicious slice of some kind of chocolate cheesecake. We wandered around the mall for awhile and noted all of the American influences: music, McDonalds, Tommy Hilfiger, etc. We took the micro back – it turned out to be the wrong bus and I ended up walking quite a ways alone in the dark to get back home. Luckily, there were a lot of people in the streets celebrating a soccer game. I still need to figure out the bus system here! It's normally a 50/50 chance that I'm on the right bus because there are multiple numbers that go to the same place. It's confusing to most of us!

If all goes according to plan, I’ll be heading to La Serena at 5:30 p.m. tomorrow on a 7 hr bus ride and staying the weekend. We still have to buy bus tickets, provided there are some left tomorrow. Hopefully, everything works out for us!