WHAT A DAY.

Its only the... lets see, yesterday was the third day? Well it was only the third day and I got SO LOST. It was pretty scary, I mean we had our phones and stuff but we were all nervous about asking our families for the huge favor of asking them to drive downtown and find us!

Okay, So I'll get to that later. Let me start with the beginning of the day. So I woke up at 7:40ish to get ready for a meeting with the other study abroad students from St Cloud at 9:00AM. Well I took a while getting ready because every day when I open my closet, I realize that NOTHING I own will allow me to blend in. I suppose my blonde hair is to blame for that as well. People dress dark here, dark and bland. Its rare to see bright colors or anything besides a black or brown purse (good thing my purse is hot pink tye-dye... yeah I don't use it.) Whatever, I didn't know how to dress or what to bring so I was staring, dumbfounded, at my belongings for quite some time. Oh and i want to mention freezing because I was wet from my shower and its SO COLDDD here, especially in the mornings. Another thing: EVERYONE HERE WEARS SKINNY JEANS. Good thing I lost a ton of weight before leaving and managed to buy two pairs before I left because apparently they've switched over entirely unlike the US where some people do, some people dont.

So I manage to make it to the correct building, apparently the building where they teach all the gringos (for all you people who don't know what gringos means, its the chilean word for white people and not offensive at all). Hayley, Jess and I all got a ride from my host mom becuase it was our first day to the university, so that was nice. We make it to this building and see about 10 to 14 of the rest of us and grow a little concerned that the others won't make it. We are so under informed here! Its not the fault of my professor though, I guess Chileans do everything last minute. Well they give us a planner and some informational stuff in a folder and Triana (the director from St. Cloud shows up). As much as I kind of don't get along with her, it was good to see a familiar face. The Concepcion director was there as well and talked to us for a little bit. Oh and he, Omar, is the brother of my host mom, so I guess that makes him my uncle. His spanish is SO hard to understand though! He has the thickest Chilean accent I've heard so far! My host dads accent is pretty tough too, but the more I talk to him, the more I can understand.

So we sit in a circle, like Triana always makes us do when we're having a chat, and tell about our host families. I learned some of us have brothers and sisters, some of us have grandparents as host parents, and some live quite far, and some live quite close. It was interesting and nice to hear about other people's experiences so far.
After that we eat some cake becuase it was Triana's and Brad's birthday. We looked like gringos idiotas because we were in the hallway eating cake cuz we couldn't in the classroom. We sang in spanish and english and mingled for a while before leaving the building and touring the campus with two estudiantes chilenas.
It was hilarious touring the campus becuase EVERYone pointed, laughed, and or stared because we were this giant group of "gringos!!!". haha

So I got pretty pissed off hanging out with Triana, just becuase we don't get along very well, but everything ended up okay. On the tour, theres this crest we saw on the ground that has a legend. If you're a student and you step on it, you'll never graduate.

Well after the tour we wall go to this Pub Quebec place for almuerzo becuase the tour lasted so long none of us were able to go home for lunch. I had a Sandwich Chileno and it was DELICIOUS. I also ordered my first beer but the waitress got confused and gave me two, haha, everyone made fun of me. It was a Cristal. After that we all walked around downtown with our profe and Hayley and I kept getting mad because we're speed walkers and our profe can't walk that fast. So a bunch of us really have to pee and of course we can't find any bathrooms. We found one in this underground supermarket and there was a HUGE line. And also, there was a stand outside the bathroom giving toilet paper and we couldn't quite tell if they were making us pay for TP or merely rationing our pieces!

Whatever. So I stuck with Hayley, Jess, and Lindsay because we wall live very close. Well. Half of us remember some way of getting home, half of us are confused, half of us don't know where we are. We get on some Micro (bus) and its the one I was sure Vlado told me to take, but it ends up being the wrong one. We get on another one, wrong one. Oh but for some reason we never paid. THEN someone told us to grab a 7 or 14 Colectivo (taxi on fixed route kinda thing).
Well we waited on this one street for EVER and never saw a 7 or 14. I was convinced I knew where the university was, so we were going to walk back in that direction to figure out where we were. We even successfully asked someone for directions! "Seis o siete cuadros mas en esa direccion"

Oh no, I've gotta get going now..... To be continued again!