9 días

Hello! So I finally decided to give in and make a blog to let everyone know what I'm up to.

In 9 days I’m leaving for my 10 month exchange to Chile! I’ll be living with a Chilean family, going to a Chilean school, learning Chilean spanish, and trying to be a Chilean as possible for a year. 

I FINALLY received my plane ticket. I fly out of Indianapolis next Saturday the 20th at 5:30, then have a 3 hour layover in Atlanta, fly out of Atlanta at 10:00 p.m. and arrive in Santiago bright and early 8:30 a.m. Sunday morning. Officially having a plane ticket has made my exchange finally sink in. I’m so ready to go, but I have so much left to do before I leave.

The first city I’ll be staying in is San Bernardo, which is a part of the Santiago Metropolitan area. Here is a lovely map showing exactly where it it is (it's in the dark green one)

My first host family has been incredibly welcoming already! I’ve been in contact with them through email and facebook and it makes me feel so much better knowing who I will be living with for the first 5 months of my exchange. I’ll have 5 host siblings, a 13 year old sister and 4 brothers, ages 17, 19, 20, and 21, however the 17 year old will be on exchange in Germany while I am there. I’ll be attending Colegio Campanario, a private catholic school with only 600 students for grades k-12, which will be a massive change from Carmel’s 4,600. Here's a link to the website http://www.colegiocampanario.cl/ (you can attempt to read it in spanish) Best of all I finally get to wear a school uniform, which I am ridiculously excited about. 

Special thanks to Ashley and Heather for throwing an amazing surprise going away party;  to Tines and Beth for their awesome surprise present; and to my favorite past exchangers Morgan Duca, Fernanda Rivas, Ria Struharikova, and Säde Kanervisto for teaching me youth exchange in high school isn’t that crazy. And most of all to Rotary and my family for making this all possible!

Only 9 days left, AHH!! So much too do, so little time.