From Chile with Love!  (Sophie’s Blog)

 

Hello all! After being here for over a week it’s probably time for an update.


I left the states on Thursday the seventh of August 2015. It was 13 hours flying and 7 hours on layovers but never the less, it was fun with the other exchange students that were on the same flight as me. For the first few days after I left the States, I was at orientation and training. Their function was to let all inbound exchange students get to know each other and to tell us of everything fun that we were prohibited from doing.  It was great to hang out with the other exchange students to talk about our shared worries and fears. When the weekend was done and we all said our goodbyes and everyone else had been picked up by their host families, seven of us hopped on a bus to go to the way far south of our district. We got on the bus and people got off at their stops and after traveling for a total of 33 hours, I arrived to my host family. We live in Chonchi, on the island of Chiloe in a large house with pastures surrounding us and a view of the sea and surrounding islands from every south east facing window. My host mother is a stay at home mom runs the house and serves as the maid that many other Chileans have. She’s awesome. Since she used to be a kindergarten teacher, she knows how to speak really slow, and use pictures and motions to illustrate what’s going on so that I can understand her and the dialect of Chileans. The rest of my host family is also very cool, I just spend the most time with my host mom. My host sisters both go to school and my brother and dad both work at the factory that they own that processes abalone, so I don’t see them as much. I feel like I’m doing pretty well with the language and can tell that my Spanish is improving. Yessenia, my host mom, says she’s just happy she doesn’t have to use smoke signals to talk to me. The culture is different, definitely more family oriented and more laid back. I love the food here and I often help Yessenia to cook meals. We eat loads of fresh fruit and vegetables and every other day we go to a fruiteria (small fruit and vegetable market). So far I don’t miss much other than the electric toothbrush charger I forgot but I’m sure in time I’ll miss more. If you have any questions email, Imessage, whatsapp, facetime, facebook, tumblr me and I’d be happy to answer them.

 

Thanks for your continued support,

 

Much love, Sophie

 

PS. I was just kidding about only missing my electric toothbrush charger. I also miss food

PPS. And I guess I miss my family friends and adorning fans as well <3 ;)

PPPS. I have attached some pictures of what I’ve been doing
and where I’ve been if you’d like to see them. For the sake of email length I will
not describe every one of them but if you have any questions I will tell you
more about them.