The point of muy poco español lies in the joke me, Camila (my host sister) and Ani (my new Chilean mum) made for my brother Felipe, who went to the States and apparently needs more practice, at least, according to Ani. Camila explained to him how the "volunteers had lied to the family of my language skills just to find one for her (that's me)", and all of us spent quite a while of awkward conversing in English, me not pretending to understand anything (too good nothing embarrassing came up!), until Dagoverto (or just Dago, the dad) came home. What happened was that I, never having seen the man before, greeted him with a whisper in Spanish asking not to say anything to me for some minutes. That must've been the strangest first impression I could've possibly made.
My hostfamily is awesome. Camila studies art, so our rooms are.. awesome!
This is the first thing I saw. No comments here, just pure excitement.
That's me. The first thing I said was something about how much I love the turquoise. And I do! The windowsill is big enough to sit and read a book, immerse in Facebook, write a post for blog, spy on neighbors or marvel at the cordillera just round the corner.
The Andes in the background. One really can see the mountains from pretty much every point in the city. Since they are awesome and definitely worth mentioning, I have decided to introduce AIB as an abbreviation for it, articles aside.
So, AIB.
Apart from spending some hours in the AFS office (which is what I am supposed to do here) I was given the nicest city tour by Camila and her two uni mates Sebastián and Juan Pablo who seem to know everything about everything! Which is a lot, given how I sometimes ask the why-is-the-sky-blue type of questions. Did you know that the border between Chile and Argentina over the Andes was determined by the line beyond which it rains either to the left or to the right? I was also given some 1st grade level class on Santiago climate.
The reason why Santiago has such air contamination is that it is not only locked by the Andes, but also a smaller cordillera on the ocean side, and the only precipitation the city gets comes from either south or north.
Science aside. Santiago is so beautiful! It perfectly fits my image of the mixture between la arquitectura conquistadora, contemporary glass skyscrapers, old-fashioned apartment buildings and palm trees everywhere. Even though socially divided by the general income level, the people seem to be enjoying the lives. I've promised myself to start using the bike once I can distinguish between south and north.
What I enjoy the most, though, is watching my Chilean family in action. Being so open, friendly and talkative, the discussion of whether to legalize marijuana or not (despite the predictable opinions the parents and the children took) turned out to be a good dose of laughter, much needed at times when I miss the Latvian spring.
Much writing for tonight!
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