Can?t believe I?ve been here a week already.  Have had a great week at the language school as I?ve met an American and a Canadian - very bad for my Spanish!  I?m in a class with a young Californian girl, Carmel, who was born in Santiago but then moved to California as a baby so never learned Spanish except at school.  She is amazing in that this is the second year she?s returned to Santiago trying to discover her roots and improve her Spanish - and she's only 19!  Another girl, Marie from Canada, is our lunch buddy.  We are having a lot of fun trying to ask for a table, order a sandwich and get the bill - all proving very difficult and just putting together a whole sentence that someone understands is cause for celebration!  They?re both doing the volunteer and language study program so they study Spanish in the mornings and volunteer in the afternoons.  Carmel is volunteering in an orphanage and absolutely loves the babies to the point where she turns up an hour early and leaves late!  Marie is teaching English to teenagers at a boys home for kids who can't live at home either because they're orphans or because there're problems in the home.  They?re teaching her lots of interesting Spanish words!I'm really enjoying studying at the language school in Providencia at the moment as it's a familiar feeling, very safe suburb. It pretty much reminds me of South Yarra in style as it?s also got loads of shops as well as cafes - and is more expensive than other parts of Santiago!The language school also offers excursions as part of the course to help with the Spanish practice.  On Wednesday I went to the Museum of History which presents a brief overview of the history of Chile since the Spanish conquest until the present day.  It was interesting but couldn?t read a lot of the explanations as there is way too much new vocabulary for me - and it takes ages to read anything in Spanish (ominous signs for university next week)!Yesterday afternoon we went to a winery very close to the city.  The tour was in Spanish so I couldn?t understand everything but it was great fun as Chilean wine is fantastic!  It?s certainly as good as Australian wine, especially the reds, with the same advantage - you don?t have to pay a lot to buy a good bottle of wine.  A decent bottle of wine is around AU$3 - $4!  (Pisco is only around AU$4 per bottle too and it goes a looong way since it?s similar to drinking rum or vodka).Today I went on a ?city tour? of Santiago with Marie and another Canadian student.  It?s good to start to know my way around and see the different suburbs of Santiago.  We went over to Barrio Universitario (barrio means suburb in Spanish) and I saw the uni I?m going to be going to starting at in two days time!  We also went to a beautiful market in an old convent with lots of traditional handcrafts and souvenirs.  Hopefully I can find it again.The photo for this entry is of some ?micros?, the yellow buses, and the suburb Providencia, very close to the language school.  It?s a very modern suburb, full of cafes, restaurants, bars and shops, kind of like South Yarra in Melbourne, and it?s very safe.  Except that taking one of the micros here means taking your life into your own hands!  That's if the drivers bother to stop and pick you up in the first place as you wave at them madly from the bus-stop.  The drivers earn commission from the bus tickets they sell so are always in a constant hurry to pass the other buses and pick up more passengers at the next stop ? haven?t worked out why they don?t find it an advantage to pick up the ones waving at them from this stop but they?re obviously very experienced ? I can tell by how fast they drive, how much they cut in front of one another, and how rarely they crash (apparently almost never)!The commission can't be much though as a bus ticket a little less than AU$1 in total.  An incredible and very sobering thought.  My host-dad took me on the bus the first day so I wouldn't get lost, and has given me a list of buses I can take to get to the language school and back.  Another exciting aspect to the micros is the difficulty in working out where on earth they are heading to and which bus to take.  They have a sign in the front window listing the main roads they go on but if you?re not a local it?s impossible to know all the streets they list, plus they drive by so fast you don?t have time to read it!  It's so cold walking that I've been wearing my gloves to and from the bus stop (a five minute walk from my host family?s house!), but during the day it's a bit warmer - still colder than Melbourne though. Only two days until I start uni.  I?m looking forward to starting after my week at language school and have also spent the past week looking at the timetable and trying to organise what subjects to take.  Am also looking forward to meeting the other exchange students.  I know I?m here to learn Spanish, but I hope some of them can speak English - I really need a translator!!