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DAY 43 - 49 : 28th August - 3rd September - Santiago
I arrived in Santiago at 7am on a Sunday morning and nothing was open. I made my way to the metro station to work out the route to Jeanette house. I was kind of nervous as I was living with this random family, in a random city - I had no idea what to expect. I knocked on the door and was met by a very short woman in her Pjs - Jeanette had not expected me to arrive until 8pm not 8am. She quickly sat me down with a cup of tea while she got the room I would be staying in ready. I met two of her sons - one was three and the other was six. I decided to go to sleep, as I didn't have much sleep on the bus from Pucon. I woke up in the afternoon in time for family lunch/dinner (still cant work out what they eat in Chile - they always eat I think). Although, they invited me to eat with them I decided to check a bit of Santiago out and see where my school is and how long it takes me to get there. After getting some dinner I returned to my new home for the week and Jeanette introduced me to another student that was staying with her called Felipe - he was from Brazil, although he seems more relaxed than most Brazilians I had met. That evening I got an early night, as we had to leave for school at 9am!!! The first day of studying Spanish had come. I went to the school and was greeted by the owner who said to me "where is your brother? Did you not walk in together?" I thought what the f*** is she talking about my brothers are not coming to Chile, she must have me confused with someone else. Then she went Felipe (obviously my faced must have looked very confused), apparently for the next week he was going to be my brother; this meant for the week I had 8 brothers!!!! I got put into an intermediate group - lets put it this way I had know idea what was going on for the first hour but then I got the hang of it. The rest of the people in my group had been at the school for 3 weeks so they had been practicing everyday. The first day was by far the hardest - but as each day went by I understood more and more of what was going on. By the end of the week I was very happy with my progress and I am now so excited about studying for 7 weeks in Mexico - should be amazing. On the Wednesday afternoon I went on a tour organized by the school to the graveyard in Santiago - I don't really understand why people visit dead people and why people take pictures of them but I went to see what all the hype was about. Although, I still find it very odd to be taking pictures of dead people and looking at them even though we do not have a clue who they are, the graveyard was amazing. It's just so different to home (see pics). It was massive it took four hours to walk around and we didn't even cover a lot of it. On the following afternoon I went on a Wine tour with people from the school. The vineyard was about an hour from the Bellavista School on the metro. The wine tour was really good and we received a wine glass but I gave mine to another girl, as I couldn't carry for the next few months in my backpack without it breaking. Friday was my last day at the school and one of my teachers held a little party with red wine mixed with fruit and sugar, pisco (famous Chilean drink) and some food. This was the start of the drinking. 11:30am on Friday till 6:00am Saturday - and the hangover was not too bad! Saturday led to me having to go and book a bus ticket so I woke up at 3pm, packed and got on the metro with my brother Felipe to the bus station and to get some lunch. I decided to book a bus to Valparaiso - I had studied about the place in my Spanish lessons so I thought it would be nice to go there and its only 2 hours away. I went back to the house to collect my stuff and say bye to the family. I brought them some wine and the kids some chocolate. I was really sad to leave the family - the boys were so cute and they really loved having me around. When I said goodbye the mum and the two younger boys cried, I managed to hold my tears in until I got around the corner and then I couldn't help it the kids were so cute and they were a lovely family. I will definitely stay in touch with them. That sums up my time in Santiago - finally spring is here and it's getting warmer so I am excited about heading further north.
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