Our long lost luggage arrived this evening, and with it my computer cord, hoody and razor (the three things I wanted most out of that bag)! There is so much to say about these first two days, I will try and condense it all into one little reader's digest version.

I managed to sleep for about 5hrs on the plane, with the help of earplugs, eye mask from delta, and a little bit of medicine. In the morning before we landed we had a little continental breakfast. A croissant, two cups of coffee (yes I drank coffee) and I was ready to go. I had a window seat on the port side of the plane which turned out to be the best seat in the house, or plane. It was the best because I had a perfect view of the sunrise over la cordillera de los Andes (the Andean mountain range) The horizon was such a bright orange that it looked like it was on fire. It was without a doubt the most beautiful sunrise I have ever seen and a great welcome to Chile!

It's been cloudy the last two days here, and did I mention cold!? The worst thing about it being cold here is that the houses do not have heat. Some have little portable heaters, we have one but it doesn't throw out much heat. Oh well, I'm sure I'll live.

My "mom's" name is Ruth, I don't know her husband's name I think he works a lot and I've only seen him a few times. They have two son's Mercelo and Alvaro. Mercelo is 23 and Alvaro is 26 or 27. Both of them live at home but Alvaro works and Mercelo is in college, and has final exam's right now. I've gotten to hang out with him some though and his polola (chilean for girlfriend) Triny.

Mercelo and Alvaro speak English fairly well (I think) but they almost almost always speak with me in Spanish because Ruth said I'm here to learn Spanish! It's difficult to understand though because they speak quickly and with a very different accent. Valerie said learning Spanish in Chile is like learning English in Brooklyn!

There is another guy from our group, Brent, who lives in the house across from mine. This afternoon his "mom," Rosa took him and me up to a town called Reñaca (Rey-nyah-ka). We walked around the beach there and then she dropped us at the mall in Viña. We really just walked around a couple of times and then walked home, stopping at the beach in Viña and going out on the pier (muelle) (Side note, for my family and the other non Spanish speakers... double LL's in Spanish are pronounced like a Y in this case mway-yay. Also N's with a ˜ over them are pronounced like an nyah in the case of Viña (Vee-nyah) with an a after the ñ or año (Ah-nyo) with an o. Those are some of the more important rules because for example if you say "tengo 21 años" (I am 21 years old) and pronounce año like ano you are saying I have 21 buttholes... to put it nicely.)

That's all for now, so much for the short version. Oh yeah the food is wonderful, some stuff I haven't seen before and some I've never tried (guacamole for one ... I like it a lot! we had it on hotdogs with tomatoes tonight) If I would have come here when I was younger I probably would have starved, but now I'm loving the opportunity to try new things.