Arrival

I have now arrived in Chile. The day that I have been waiting for. Here is a picture of the plane descending into Santiago and the moon is shining onto the mountains with some small cities below.

I have some great stories from the flights here.

We all met at the airport to leave and of course we did our crying and stuff and blah blah blah. I got my toothpaste taken away, great, but everything else went quite well. On the way to the flight I was seated in an isle seat. A woman next to me looked a little stressed and I asked her what was wrong. Turns out she was claustrophobic, so I let her have my seat. We talked and I filled her in on my travels. She was amazed and such a lovely lady. She got me some treats for letting me have her seat. The best part comes next. When we were descending, she offered to all of us to bring us to the Sky Lounge. It was fantastic. We got free drinks and delicious cookies. Mandy: Thank you again and again.
We went to the gate and frantically were searching for blazer. "Blazer? Blazer? Is that a blazer? ..." And then, we saw them. We went to meet with them and learned their: Ricky, Stacey, and Peter. They were from Oregon. I learned that Stacey and I are both going to La Serena and the same school! She plays the violin and I play the piano. Duet maybe?

Moving on.

The plane to Chile was fun too. I sat next to a guy from London. He was into extreme sports and said he was going sand surfing, snowboarding, and some other crazy stuff.
There were two movies shown. 17 Again and Startrek. I hadn't seen either of these movies so I was totally glued to them. It was great. We got dinner: it was gross. I think it was suppose to be like a lasagna but the noodles stuck together and turned into a noodle log. But the brownie, which I thought would be dry, was actually like it had come out of the oven but wasn't hot. Can you imagine that?
I got about 4 hours of sleep on the flight and woke up an hour before landing which was perfect to watch us fly in. (picture above)
Walking through the hallway to the gate, we could all see our breath. It is pretty cold here, but then again, it is winter. We were all not expecting it to be this cold though.
We went though multiply wrong line and finally ended up in a short cut in the right line. We all got through fine. We met the students from Germany and Denmark. Their English is great. We just have to make sure to talk slowly. We finally all got into a van, our luggage in a different van. We drove to a fast food/truck stop place to get some food and I had an empanada with cheese and a hot dog in it. It was good. We then moved on and took a side trip to a near by town. I forgot the name. I decided to take a nap till we got there and told people to wake me up if anything interesting went down. Well, I ended up sleeping till we got there and they left to play with some school kids and visit a church and I was left sleeping in the car with our driver in the front. I was sort of disappointed I didn't get to play with the kids but that nap was nice. I made sure I stayed awake for the rest of the trip. We saw lots of vineyards and amazing snow capped mountains. We finally ended up at the conference center/motel we were staying at. It has no heat and lots of dogs. We had chicken and fries for lunch, and a beef and cheese sandwich for dinner with tea. The food was simple but delicious.

Everyone is very nice and welcoming. The families that I have met are wonderful and I'm excited to meet mine on Sunday. The trip so far is a success. Not that I would let it be anything else than that.

Buenas Noches
Ill write when I can.
Love to all,
Serena