Buenos dias!

Hoooooonk. Beeeeeeep. HOOOOOOOOOONK. BEEEEEEEEEEEEP.

Ah, yes, the morning sounds of the city. I am sitting in my apartment/hotel room waiting for one of my roommates to go to breakfast, and smiling at each impatient automotive noise that is blasting through my fourth floor window. It's hilarious!

Last night, our group went out to a tapas restaurant (for Spain Spanish food). It was phenomenal! The food was never ending (literally), and we all had a chance to sample pisco sour - the national drink of Chile (kinda like a brandy). Let's just say I probably won't be having one of those again for a while. We also had a chance to try some Chilean Camenere wine. Very dry, but still pretty good (especially after the pisco).

But, so you all don't think that all I'm doing is eating and drinking, I'll give you a brief list of my activities for the rest of today:

We have a workshop on safety, followed by one on gender and minorities in Chile. After lunch, we have a question and answer session with our staff, and then a workshop on housing and living with our host families. We will actually learn our host families' names at this point (and hopefully something about where they live, etc.). I will let you know about that tonight. Oh, and all these are in Spanish (yay!!).

It's raining right now, which is pretty much what it does in the winter time here. Hector, our director, says that it snowed last year, but that it's very rare for that to happen in Santiago. Yay! No snow! I've definitely had enough of that during Iowa's winter.

Well, that's about it for today. I hope everyone is doing well. Love you and miss you all!

Love,
Juliana

P.S. Yes, Christina, the water does swirl the other direction...CRAZY!!