Week 5 in Chile

Since I had no complaints about my bullet points from last week's post, I will continue that format this week. So here's my update on this week's happenings. I mostly worked all week, but had an awesome weekend with friends!

Monday, July 1, 2013

-First morning at Ximena's; she made me breakfast and coffee; she's just the sweetest! Such a lovely women and person and she is taking great care of me!
-6th day at work; kept working on my ppt; first day I had lunch by myself :( but everyone was busy and was eating at their desk so it wasn't a big deal; had my first meeting today with Sebastian and Ricardo, it was conference call meeting and it was all in Spanish so I only understood about half of it and I had ar really big headache afterwards from trying to process everything; I hope I'm getting better at Spanish, conversational spanish at least, business spanish is a whole different beast
-Home for the night to Skype James and just chill

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

-More work; finished my powerpoint; Sebastian said it was really good and he seemed impressed with my work, all good signs; he's making a meeting with Ricardo to go over it tomorrow
-Chilled at home and then some of Keko's friends came over to celebrate her birthday; Keko is Ximena's son Diego's best friend and she lives here too, but is moving to the US in the end of August to live with her boyfriend; Ximena is my new host mom! She is the absolute sweetest and funniest woman ever

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

-More work; no meeting today about the powerpoint; Sebastian is really busy so he didn't have time to look over the numbers I used; he gave me a new project to start; Excel database that we are working on analyzing; very complicated and huge file, but very interesting results
-Came home and hung out with Keko and some more of her friends for her birthday; conversation with Keko about differences between Chilean men and American men (talking about our boyfriends); she is dating an American because she doesn't like Chilean men cause they are skeezy and "liars"; learned about peloláis and flaite (fly-tay); Peloláis is slang for a way of categorizing upperclass teenage girls with long, straight, blond hair- very fashionable, clothes and look-conscious; Flaite is a slang term that describes lower class men in Chile, kind of like loser or low life; Keko is becoming a pretty good friend here; she is so nice and gives me lots of great advice about living in Chile and how to be safe here, which is obviously something I need to know about

OBSERVATION: braces are very common here among adults and people around my age... I wonder why

Thursday, July 4, 2013

-Happy 4th of July!!
-Work all day today; still working on the database, but also started doing my e-learning things which are about ethics, independence policy and other functions of the company as well as important rules and regulations to know about how to conduct business; of course it's all in Spanish so it takes me about twice as long to complete each one, and there are 7; I am learning a lot of business vocabulary words though, so that is super helpful
-Went to lunch with Sebastian and Francisco; tried sopapillas with chancaca sauce; didn't like the sauce but the sopapillas were really good; realized that I had tried them before from a street vendor a few weeks back; also tried Mankeke which are like cupcakes filled with manjar, which is dulce de leche, but they call it manjar in Chile
-Went home for dinner and then met up with some Ecela friends later that night; always good to hang out with some people my own age

Friday, July 5, 2013

-Work all day today; Sebastian hadn't looked over the numbers on the Excel spreadsheet or on my powerpoint yet, so I didnt have anything to do except work on e-learning things all day; because of that they let me leave early so I could enjoy my friend instead of having me sit at work for 2 more hours without anything to do
-BBQ for the 4th of July with Ecela people; then to Mito for a fun night out; its the last weekend for a lot of my good friends, which is really sad :( But the good news is that the Tufts in Chile people get here in a week and one of my best friends is on that program, so I am looking forward to seeing her really soon! Then my program starts in 2 weeks! I can't wait!!!

Saturday, July 6, 2013

-Caught up on a lot of sleep today, which I seriously needed to do
-Went to the grocery store because I was craving some good ol' American food, so I bought a lot of food that I like and that reminds me of home; fortunately they sell a lot of American brands of food and pretty much everything here in Chile, it's just more expensive because of importation; when I got home I made lunch with Keko and she showed me how to turn the plain pasta sauce into something a lot nicer, by adding vegetables! Yum! I still can't get a hang of the stove here though because it is gas so you have to light it first before it will work
-After lunch, I met Kris and his parents (they are in Santiago for the week visiting) at their hotel and then we all headed to Ski Total to rent skis because we are going skiing at Valle Nevado tomorrow! I am so excited! After we rented our skis, I headed back to my house to get ready for dinner and then met them back at their hotel for a nice dinner out in Bellavista; Bellavista is a beautiful neighborhood with lots of cute restaurants and cafes along winding streets; one of Pablo Neruda's houses is in Bellavista as well; hopefully I will get a chance to go tour it along with his other houses in Chile
-After dinner, I met up with my friends Juliette and Kevin at a Thai restaurant to briefly say good bye to Juliette because she heads back to England in the morning; what was supposed to be a quick good bye turned into a 2 hour reminiscence of our time here in Chile and how much fun we've all had and how good of friends we have all become; I'm really gonna miss her! Fortunately, she and her sister are going traveling around Australia and the US, and Juliette has made a promise to come visit me in Boston, so I will be seeing her again very soon I hope!

Sunday, July 7, 2013
-Today I woke up bright and early to meet up with Kris and his parents to go skiing at Valle Nevado in the Andes Mountains! It was awesome and very beautiful. Ski resorts are relatively new here, so they are quite small and not very built up. Valle Nevado is the more touristy of the 3-4 that are close to Santiago. The high speed lift is new this year, in the past they mostly had rope tows everywhere. I bet the ski resorts will become very profitable for Chile in the future.

Until next time! Peace. Love. Chile.