miel and micros

Classes have begun! My first day on Wed was my fullest, with 4 classes back to back. My first class is at the campus in Sausalito, which is just like the education building at Millersville. Well, not exactly, but it is really far from everything else, just like at MU, except further, like in Viña, where my next class is 45 minutes later is in Casa Central in Valpo. It's an exciting trip though, and I love it. I arrived 15 minutes before my class started. You can tell who the exchange students are because they are the only ones to arrive more than 5 second before the class is about to begin. Once in the classroom, I looked to the other estadounidense and said that I felt very gringa. She did to, but it was not a bad feeling, just observation. I thought that since this was a class with Chileans, that I would have a hard time understanding the professor, but I understood the majority of what he said. I immediately loved the idea of education classes here and can't wait to learn about the education system and get out into schools.

Later, my classes were with other exchange student, almost all gringo. And almost all girls. Very similar to my classes at MU in this regard. My professors are excellent. I think I will add a class to make 5, so some changes are likely to occur. While I am throwing around Chilean words, I should point out that my use of flaite was bad. It is a bad term to use, very degrading. Oops oops oops. Now I know. I enjoy integrating idioms into my life, sípo, yapo, obviopo... (po is just tacked on to the end for who knows why, but it's interesting anyway).

And I get to ride the metro to class! Every day! Normal people would not find this interesting, but all forms of public transportation to me are interesting and fun. I love to watch people, and especially to watch my bag during rush hour. Speaking of, I took a micro to my house yesterday because it was dark when I left the university, and it was packed. Like packed to the point where there were seriously 15 people standing on this bus. I think standing for a micro ride should be an olympic sport. It takes endurance, perfect timing, balance, and a constant vigilance for your bag. And then after the nauseating ride around corners and up impossibly steep hills, you have to get off. This is a task in and of itself. You have to pull the thing and then like 10 people step off or move aside for you to leave, then everyone gets back on. So teamwork is a big component too. It is actually great fun, and I will probably do it fairly often just for the experience, though it is a bit more expensive than the metro. The metro has the best view of the ocean, which I also quite like.

On to miel... aka bee sauce. This unprocessed honey. I ate so much of it today that I felt nauseous (a common theme apparently). I can't get enough, I want to eat it with a spoon. It's apparently hard to get in the US. Between that and the bread, I don't know how I will adjust to American food again. Tea is great also, I drink like 4 cups a day to keep warm and because it is delicious.

Random note that I forgot to add in past blogs... Dani's friends like to use the bathroom of doom as a game. Remember, the one that traps you in without hope of escape without help? Well, they like to do just that, lock themselves in on purpose because it is funny. And it is. I love standing in front of the door and pretending like I don't understand.

And finally, the elusive 1 peso coin. I have been looking forward to getting one of these since I got here. I finally got the correct change. The one peso coin is worth almost nothing... less than 1/5 of a penny. This is part of the reason why I want it I suppose, I think it's funny. Also, it is teenie, like the size of my thumbnail. It is also really light, like it is hard to believe it's metal. But way lighter than the 5 peso coin, which is also adorably small and worth nothing. Yes, I used the word adorable. You would too if you saw how little it was. Maybe not, but it still gave me a full paragraph to write about.