Día 2

Amazingly full (adj. busy, adj. no longer hungry after immense quantities of food) day of Orientation today here in Reñaca preparing for my semester at PUCV (Pontifica Universidad Católica de Valparaíso).  We started the day at 8am with a normal bacon, eggs, fruit, coffee hotel breakfast, but the hotels in Chile actually serve you and clear your dishes for you rather than the "continental breakfast" of the US. We had a long information session about how to use the transportation systems, exchange rates (still unbelievably confusing, but the bills have fun little windows of clear paper you can look through), expectations and rules. We don't get to sign up for classes until next week, which I am incredibly anxious to get rolling considering how strict Tulane seems to be about transferring credit and all of the factors you have to consider (i.e. transportation time from class to class here in Chile because there is no unified, traditional campus but rather scattered buildings around the city and surrounding areas organized by subject) Students in Chile, however, choose a direction from day one and only take classes in that major for the rest of their university years without fun electives that I've thankfully been able to take (i.e. my days of classical guitar, Salsa, Black Women Pop Culture,and Sexuality). But I digress; later on in the morning we went to the beach on the Pacific for three hours to play icebreakers, including the collegiate version of the trust fall which basically entailed a 5 foot rope that we assumed was for tug of war that was actually a team sport of hoisting your entire team to the other side without touching the rope. This was insanely hard when it came down to the last few people, I was third from last which wasn't too bad but my team lost with each side down to ONE last person. We also played Chilean dodgeball which uses only one ball and you have to hit below the waist, and the people who are hit and "out" can be passed the ball to throw from the endzones. I was the last one standing on my team! (sadly I failed us and we lost again...and then the ball was run over and popped by a bus! It sounded like gunfire and all of the Chileans watching us cheered). We had another session after our multi-course lunch (each meal at the hotel has included salad, soup, main course of some kind of scrambled egg tortilla or lasagna, and pudding-type dessert) that was all about safety. Moral of the story: Chileans thoroughly enjoy opportunistic robbery and we should cling to our stuff like it's our children. We all went out to eat at an amazing local chain, Entre Masas (which means "between the masses") that served all 33 of us at once with fried empañadas (em-pahn-yadas), which are like fried dough stuffed with any variety of things, I had one with oregano, tomato, onion, and cheese and the other with shrimp and cheese. DELICIOSO. The CIEE staff took us out to a karaoke bar afterwards where everyone sipped local Pisco mixed drinks and sang American music with a ten year time lapse. I had the overwhelming feeling as I sat there that said "you know what...you're going to be allllright."