Day One...Coming in Hot

It´s a long dusty walk up that hill.

On April 3rd, 2010 I touched down in the airport at Santiago, Chile. The flight was overnight, and I slept the majority of it so I didn´t even feel the nine or so hours. By the time I was awake, the Andes were in clear view outside the plane and I was being handed a horrible egg biscuit for my breakfest.

I made it through immigration fairly quickly after paying the tit-for-tat fee...er, I mean reciprocity fee which is a ridiculous 131 USD. The immigration and customs were nearly as slack as LAX, but not quite. My first hicup came when I tried to get on a transfer bus and the guy didn´t see my name in the reservations list. I, in broken Spanish, explained to him that I was told my ride would be paid for and he should have a list of name for the Ingles Abre Puretas program on which should appear my name. He was very helpful and offered to call up someone at the program when he didn´t see me in the system. Thankfuly, the Lord had given me the foresight to bring along a contact list and he was able to reach someone who told me that they had never recieved my flight iternery and so hadn´t added me to the list. This is a falsehood, and I have the email correspondence to prove so. Anyway, the woman with the program said to pay and keep the reciept and I would be remibursed the whole 10 dollars it set me back.

After sitting in the shuttle van for about an hour waiting for more transfer passengers, we were finally off and I soon reached the hostel and checked in without further incident. I immediately met a handful of other volunteers, as they have us bunked four to a room. My roomates are good fellows, two from California and the other from Queens, NY. After a I took a shower and did a bit of settling in, we went and met more folks downstairs who were also volunteers and began to become facebook friends accordingly. Yeah, I know, things are moving pretty fast with us.

My roomates and I then set out on the city for some grub, led by one fellow who has already been here a week and knew his way around. We took the metro to the main pedestrain strip in the city where he knew of a small cafe that served typical, delicous, and cheap Chilean dishes. I had a pork sandwich known as a lomito that was tasty and filling.

The sandwich was burned off quickly though as we then took to climbing up the Cerro San Cristobal, which is a wooded hill in the middle of the city covered with parks and crowned by a giant statue of the Virgin Mary that presides over an outdoor chapel area where, presumably, they will hold Easter Mass tomorrow. The views from the top of the hill were spectatular, as the city is spread out all before you and entirely rimmed in by mountains. The journey up to the top was hot and dusty, as the sun here is quite opressive. However, it was worth it and so will be the pictures when I get them up.

As for the future, apparently only half of our orientation is in Santiago, which means we all leave to our respectives citites next weekend to do a week of observation in the schools we will be teaching in. Seems a bit quick to me, but they´ve been doing this program for seven years now, so I suppose they know what they are doing. I personally leave Saturday night, a week from now, to go North on a 12 hour bus ride that has me a little less then stoked.