Home!

I’ve officially moved into my new home here in Santiago! I’m living with a woman named Mercedes, who is in her sixties, in her apartment in Santiago Central (downtown Santiago.) Mercedes is absolutely wonderful. For the past two days, we’ve been walking around Santiago and she’s been showing me interesting places and how to get around the city. I am her eleventh homestay chica, so I think she has this whole first-few-days thing down.

Mercedes is a really incredible person—besides being a wonderful homestay mom, she is a writer (she has written a novel, a memoir, and a lot of unpublished poetry (although one of her poems is in an anthology), a mother of four and grandmother of nine, and a political and human rights activist. She has an amazing story, although I don’t know all of it—I do know a bit about her husband, Ivan. Ivan was a socialist, and was assassinated by the government in 1973, about ten days after Pinochet took over. Mercedes was left alone with three young children, and was still pregnant with her youngest son at the time (or he had just been born). This is the subject of her memoir, and I really look forward to reading it one day when my Spanish is good enough. (I’ve been looking for a link to the book, but I can’t find one. I will post when I do.) I know that she’s still very politically involved, which is exciting because there’s a big presidential election coming up in December, and I’m very excited to learn a lot about the political situation here. Even with this background, Mercedes is very upbeat and happy—she laughs a lot, and is very kind and patient with me and my poor Spanish skills.

Yesterday, when we were walking around, we saw a wedding and sat in on the ceremony…I felt a bit like I was in Wedding Crashers, but in a completely benevolent way. It was a really beautiful ceremony, and I understood bits and pieces…and the bride and groom were very happy. This was the first first wedding I’ve been to—the rest have been second weddings—so it was really exciting. Mercedes kept joking that we should put on party dresses and follow the guests to the after party!

Today we walked around for a bit and saw one of Pablo Neruda’s other houses—turns out he has three: Isla Negra, the one we saw as a group a few days ago, Las Caschona, here in Santiago, and Sebastiana, which is in Valparaiso, a bit north of here. (As a side note, Las Chascona was the nickname of Neruda’s third wife, Matilda, and it has something to do with her crazy curly hair…I’ve finally found a word to describe the texture of my hair! It doesn’t translate very well, though, I don’t think.)

I had my first big Spanish challenge today—trying to buy a phone card to call home. I still have no idea what happened in that exchange, or how to use the card, but I do know that I can’t use it to call the States and that it cost 5,000 pesos (a bit less than $10.) Thank goodness Mercedes was there to help out with that one. I have my Spanish placement test tomorrow morning, and I’m a bit nervous…but I figure that whatever level I wind up placing in I’m going to improve a whole lot. Even over the past two days I felt strong improvement, and I’ve been learning a lot of vocabulary.

That's all for now! I have internet in the apartment (it was less challenging to get WiFi internet for my computer than a phone card) so I will probably be posting more frequently than I thought! Buenos noches!