Orientation: Where I Learned Earthquakes Are Terrifying

Two posts in one day. This will never happen again. But I just saw that what I posted wasn't everything I had written! I don't know how to use this.

We had two days of orientation (Wednesday and Thursday) from 9:30am-6:30pm. We had a lot of info thrown at us so it was tiring, but a lot of us can already feel our Spanish improving which is pretty great. Other than that it was a lot of talking about Chilean custom, culture, and "chilenismos" which are words/phrases that are specific to Chile. That was all really helpful but four hours of it each day got a little tiring. ALSO, I have now developed an extreme fear of earthquakes. Apparently, there are "little trembles" in Chile at least once a week, and a little tremble here is anything that's a 5 or below on the Richter scale. A 5 is an earthquake in most places. And any time there's a tremble, the buildings sway a little bit though we were assured that they would never fall. Everyone has told us that if it happens we have to stay calm, but Maddie and I both know that if the ground starts to "tremble" we're going to run around and freak out. At least we're honest. My fave part of orientation was definitely the scavenger hunt we did this morning in small groups. We walked on the main street by the IES center (Ave. Providencia) between two metro stations and looked around for various things. Our group learned that the bakery Castaño is like Chile's Starbucks in that it is on every single corner. We also learned that you can get gelato in almost any store on Ave. Providencia.

Plaza de Andres XXI

Maddie and Claire at Los Leones

I walk to and from the IES center every morning, which is amazing since the metro twice a day would cost a ton. Our scavenger hunt was through part of my walk so it was nice to look at all the stores leisurely instead of while I'm hurrying to class. Santiago's beautiful, but the smog really starts to get to you if you're outside for too long.

View of my walk to the center

The IES center. It's a lot bigger than it looks!

We start Spanish class tomorrow and the seminar that goes with our clinical observation on Monday. We were all hoping the work load wasn't going to be ridiculous but based on the syllabi we got today we're going to have a fair amount to do. Luckily, we only have classes on Friday three or four times the whole time we're here and most of our weekends are either completely free or full of traveling! Speaking of, we're going to Valparaiso on Saturday for a day trip and it's supposed to be beautiful since it's on the coast...plus it'll be exciting to see the "other" Valparaiso!