Hello! Tomorrow after class Melissa and I are going to leave for Viña del Mar and Valparaíso! Woohoo! We bought our bus tickets today, and they were pretty cheap - round trip tickets were only about $10.50, which was pretty fabulous! Also, Melissa's papá found a great place for us to stay this weekend - it´s a little apartment that is in a central location in Viña del Mar. At first, I was a little nervous about us two going alone, but I have heard from my family here, a professor, and a few students that Viña del Mar is super-safe during the day and at night. Valparaíso is a Port city, so we were told to only tour that area during the day. We were just told to stick together, to take taxis at night (always a good idea) and to not flash around our cameras or mp3 players at night. That's always good advice though, so I'm sure we'll be fine. We will have our cell phones and will be able to call either of our family's or our advisor (she told us that we can call her any time of day if we need her) for help if we need it. The cities are very close together - they have metros and buses that go from one city to the other (although apparently they are connected now). We are planning on visiting the house of Pablo Neruda, the who is the most celebrated Chilean author. The cities are both border the Pacific Ocean and the Andes mountains, so it's supposed to be beautiful. I would be embarassed to go to Chile and not visit these cities!

Anyways, classes are going well. I am feeling more and more confident in my Spanish every day. Melissa is also improving! We have gotten to practice Spanish with our families a LOT and have tried to only speak in Spanish with each other - although sometimes we fail. We usually speak in Spanglish (in Spanish with English words and phrases inserted when we don't know how to say it). Today after class, we went and ate empanadas with some students from our class. One is from South Korea and the other is from Australia. We spoke mostly in Spanish, but the Korean was more comfortable with English suprisingly, so we spoke in English some. Apparently people from Australia really like southern accents, so I tried to imitate one. Alas, I am not very good at accents! Oh well. Of course we've been having fun listening to the Australian accent. Who doesn't love that?

I am suprised at how popular American culture is here! Whenever you go into a store or restraunt, there is usually American music playing. Also, I live across the street from a Holiday Inn Express and a Landrover store. A couple blocks away are a Hooters and a Ruby Tuesday. It just seems wrong! Oh well, I don't plan on eating American food while I'm here. I can eat that for the rest of my life, and the food here is fabulous! I think I am walking it all off though. It takes me about 45 minutes to get to school in the morning. The nearest metro station is about a mile's walk away (more or less - haven't actually measured it). Then, I go five stations, change lines, and go one more station to get to school. The school isn't too far from the last station. This morning was a disaster - the metro was so busy! There was a huge crowd waiting to get on the trains. I was finally able to board the fifth train, so I was a little bit late for class. Luckily, tardiness is completely normal here.

Mykl and I got some frustrating news today - the apartments we were going to move into (had already paid to reverve the apartment a couple of monthes ago) told us that they weren't actually going to have any openings. So, we're having to look for apartments again. Or rather, Mykl is looking for apartments. We have a couple of ideas, but we will see if they even have openings. It's very frustrating being a hemisphere away when there are things going on in Springfield! Oh well, I am sure things will work themselves out.

Well, gotta go! I probably won't be able to write again until maybe Sunday night since we'll be out of town. Hopefully I'll take some pictures this weekend! I think I've only taken about 10, because I want to look less like a tourist.

¡Hola! The weather in Santiago has been beautiful the last couple of days! The sky is a beautiful blue, with no clouds (unless you count the smog) and lots of sun! It's by no means warm, but it's not super-cold either, except at night.

Melissa and I did some exploring this weekend. Saturday night, we hung out with Pilar, a girl from Chile who is a relative of some family friends of Melissa. Complicated? Yes. Anyways, she's really nice and is going to be studying English in Detroit this fall, so she practiced her English with us and we practiced our Spanish with her. We ate the most amazing ice cream (besides the ice cream in Rome of course) and walked to her house through a beautiful park next to the river. They have these really cool fountains with different colored lights that change - the fountains change too. It was really pretty! Then, we hung out with Pilar's family a little bit. We ate dinner at my casa and decided that we were too tired to go to the birthday party, so we talked with my family for a while and then Melissa spent the night. Sunday, we slept in, ran some errands, and then went to eat lunch at Pilar's dad's house. His apartment had an amazing view of the Andes. We also went on top of the roof to get an even better view. The top floor of his building has a heated swimming pool! Weird place for a pool, huh? Anyways, after lunch, I worked on homework and hung out with my family the rest of the evening. I had a lot of homework to do! But, it wasn't super-hard to understand, so I was fine. I am also working on memorizing 20ish new vocabulary words a day while I am here.

I'm beginning to understand the money system here. They use pesos, which are worth almost nothing. One American dollar is worth 535 pesos. Their smallest bill is 1,000 pesos, which is about two dollars. I was confused when I had to pay 300,000 pesos to stay with my family, but in reality it wasn't as much as it sounded!

Last night my hermanita (little sister) and I went up to the roof of the apartment, and I saw El Cruz del Sur (The Southern Cross) which is a constellation that you can only see in the southern hemisphere. I also saw a statue of the virgin that they have on one of the smaller mountains. Apparently, you can see the statue from almost every part of the city. It must be huge!

Well, I wish I could write more, but ¡ya es la hora a almorzar y tengo que irme! (It's time to eat lunch and I have to go!).