First impressions.

     Though they say they offer more legroom, airlines lie to those of us taller than 6'5". My night on a Delta flight from Atlanta, Georgia to Santiago, Chile erased any doubt from my mind that "more" legroom was meant anything real. This "more" is probably the same "more" that pizza chains use to advertise that they now have "more" cheese on their pies, or the "more" insurance companies assure you that you'll save. Yeah. It wasn't so bad until about hour 3 of the flight when serious knee and thigh cramping began. This was about the time everyone on the flight fully realized that we would have to sleep on this flight and call it a good night's rest (good and rest both being relative terms).
     Our flight left Atlanta at about 11, the night of Wednesday, July 18. After a cramped night we arrived in Santiago at about 8 in the morning. Running on minimal sleep we bumbled off the plane, grumbled through the immense customs line, and fumbled through the cash exchange as we quickly tried to convert how much 483 pesos actually meant (more or less one dollar US). We were greeted by a representative from the International Studies Abroad program who spoke to us only in Spanish and greeted us with a customary kiss on the cheek.
      As Gringos (slang for white non-latinoamericanos, sometimes derogatory, sometimes friendly, sometimes neutral) the other international students and I responded with adequate levels of discomfort to this kiss. I apparently pulled away too soon and was corrected in Spanish "Solo es un beso" and that apparently we weren't done since we hadn't made sufficient contact...I guess. Another guy in our group said he went in for a second one on the other cheek, also apparently wrong, as was it for one female student to "bear hug" our director who only wanted a little peck on the cheek. There has also been the problem getting accustomed to Chilean Spanish, which is, in a word: slurrysuperfast. At one point I was asked, "¿Como fue tu abuelo?" meaning "How was your flight?" I heard "¿Como fue tu vuelo?" meaning, "How was your grandfather?" Thinking this must've been some customary thing, I responded what roughly translates to, "Well, I think he's fine...?" I wasn't the only student with a vuelo/abuelo confusion, since one girl (the bear hugger) was asked her flight number by a customs agent and she responded by giving her grandpa's name. Needless to say, we all have a long way to go before we're anywhere near fluency.
    All in all, the past two days here have been nothing short of incredible and overwhelming. So far we've ridden the metro twice, visited the Presidential Palace (where the tour guide was all but unintelligible to most of us), gone to a mountaintop to view the city/see an chapel/view a massive statue of the Virgin Mary, eaten bread with oil and vinegar about six times now, seen the incredibly massive Catedral de Santiago, and repeated about 1000 times the phrase, "Guys....we're in Chile."
     So far we've mostly been doing orientation-style things, with a few excursions in between. So far we've been meeting our fellow international students here in Santiago, but we'll be moving into our host family homes when we arrive in Valparaiso/Viña del Mar on Sunday. I'm looking forward to so many things on this trip, I can't even begin to express my excitement! As for now, it's late and I need to go to bed because breakfast here, unlike in The States, is just about mandatory since people don't eat a noon meal here. It's more like a 1:00 or even 2:30 meal, so even if you catch breakfast you're still feeling pretty peckish by the time lunch rolls around. So, hasta luego, adiós!