Chile!

So, after many hours of "watching movies" on the plane, chatting with the nice (albeit odd) man sitting next to me, eating airplane food, and attempting to find that one comfortable airplane sleeping position... I am here, sitting in my host family's house in my own little room!

The airplane ride was uneventful - unfortunately I did not get to finish watching Never Say Never... maybe on the way back.  I did however get to watch more Modern Family, Toy Story 3, Somewhere, Harry Potter 7.1, and some bits and pieces of other random movies.  Mostly they were just background noise - I think I saw maybe 45 minutes of each movie (if even that.)
I had an aisle seat, but it actually was not nearly as painful as I had thought it might be.  The plane was about 75% full, it was the kind with 2 seats on either side and then 3 down the middle - I had an aisle seat in a pair of seats.
The man I sat next to was born and raised in Chile but moved to New Hampshire 20 some years ago - I wouldn't have ever guessed that he's a native Spanish speaker as he had absolutely no accent in English.  He first told me that I was very brave for going by myself for a month- then proceeded to tell me how hard and ridiculous it can be in the city (and several other things along this same line that kinda freaked me out...) But, overall he told me that same things that everyone else has - it's going to be awesome!  Which I'm pretty sure I can now say that I wholeheartedly agree with.

Upon deboarding, I exchanged some money and paid my reciprocity entry fee.  They're super particular about the bills that they accept, and apparently my ATM in Denver didn't give me enough clean, unmarked bills because they wouldn't accept my cash.  Thankfully they do accept credit!
I have already mastered the "I-don't-speak-Spanish-and-feel-like-an-idiot-so-I'll-just-stand-here-and-smile" smile - so if nothing else, I got that goin' for me!  When the customs man asked if I spoke Spanish I weirdly answered "not yet! but I will soon!" and he just stared at me, stamped my passport, and sent me on my way.  I think I'll stick to the traditional "no... smilesmilesmile" route until I can actually answer something in Spanish.

I then made my way to the baggage claim where my suitcase was promptly spit out.  That's always a fear of mine traveling, that I'll end up standing there seeing all the other suitcases go round and mine will be nowhere to be found.  However, not this time!  Everything went quickly, smoothly and was very efficient.

Speaking of efficient, they had an incredibly odd and inefficient way of getting us all through customs in Toronto.  We were made to line up (as yelled at to do so by a small asian woman with a thick accent.)  Then, we were lined up again to go through a door with her screeching at us to hurry up so the alarm wouldn't sound.  The alarm did go off, she was not pleased.  She then herded us to another place to line up (note that we have done no customs anything and we've been lined up 3 times for a total of about 30 minutes) She then yells at us to "move as one! stay together!" to go line up for the 4th time, finally at the customs window place.  She then takes us all back to our former holding pen because she realized that there are people who need to make it through customs and onto their plane immediately as their last call is sounding.  In the end it was fine, everyone made their flights and there was a certain amount of commaraderie felt within the group after being told 100 times to "stay together! move as one!" Had this not been at 10pm at night when I was already delirious from lack of sleep - it may not have been as funny.  But man I am glad for weirdos like her to put a smile on my face!
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Anyways, back to today!

As I said, make it through everything super quickly.  I then found the shuttle place that had my reservation (my name was on a board and everything!) and was shuffled out and into a shuttle.  We hung out for a bit, waiting for more passengers, which presented me with a great people watching opportunity.  The adjustment from warm summer Denver weather to Chilean winter weather is an odd one,  but also moderately comforting to see as it very much resembles a Denver winter.  Some people were wearing tee shirts and jeans, some where wearing scarves, hats, and winter parkas.  Overall it seemed like it really is very similar to the dress and weather of Denver.

After driving through some of Santiago - I was dropped off at my host family's house!  I had no idea what to expect, and the front gate was locked and I couldn't find where the doorbell was (I was also trying not to drop my pillow/purse/jacket... I didn't look like a tourist at all!) but before I could find it a very sweet, smiling woman came bursting out of the house.  She promptly introduced herself as Pabla and ushered me inside.  Her husband, Roberto, came out and demanded to take my suitcase.  After much hugging and kisses-on-the-cheek I was brought into the house.  Pabla may or may not speak English, I'm not sure.  She did say that since I'm there to speak Spanish we will speak in Spanish, but she might speak English as well.  Roberto does speak English and was able to help translate some of the little things (but said not to expect that in the future.)  It really worked out perfectly, due to my level of exhaustion and everything I think I probably would have been overwhelmed had it just been Spanish.
I get the impression that they have hosted a lot of students before, because it seemed that Pabla spoke Spanish more slowly than other people I have spoken to today - I could understand a lot of what she was saying, though not everything (yet!) I have a very nice little room, big windows, and little desk, and table, and a bed of course.  Apparently there's another student coming "later", I'm not sure how much later, but either way that should be fun!  Pabla and Roberto have a 23 year old daughter named Daniela whose room is right across from mine, she seems nice!  I didn't get much of a chance to talk to her yet.

Overall, I think this is going to be completely wonderful!   Classes start right away tomorrow, so it'll be nice to be able to dive into that right away!

Alrighty - it's just about lunch time so i'm gonna go make myself somewhat presentable.

Hope to hear from you all!  I'll try and be on Skype more than I usually am, so hopefully I'll catch y'all there!