First week done: result-interesting.
Hey you guys,
I just thought that I would sit down and write a little something about my first week here. Its been a lot of finding my way around and setteling in at my new home. I, well Mandy and me, moved into our new home on Friday and its great. I have a small room to myself with a little balcony and I can even see the ocean (although for that I have to look through the tree and over a few other houses) I don't have a chair, just my bed, so I spend most of my time on my bed, in front of the computer.
Mandy found this online Spanish learning thing, it's not bad, but I haven't actualy done that much with it. Right now my Spanish is still a lot of just smiling and saying Sí all the time when my house mom talks to me. It only gets a little funny when she has this look on her face...the I just asked you something look... and then I have to ask her to repeat what she just said so that I can answer.
Ok, so to what we did. I have been sick over the past few days. Not dying sick, just not really feeling very well kinda sick. So I wasn't really up too to much but Mandy and I did do quite a lot of walking around. Everyday in a new direction, so that we can see a little more of Vina every day. We even found a Dunkin Donut's (a very happy moment for Mandy).
The city, or area, can be broken into three areas. There's Valparieso, which is too the south. Its the biggest city but also the poorest. It has the country's largest port and is actualy quite nice, although it's obvious that many poor people live there. Then there's Vina del Mar, that's where we live. It's the middle rich city. It's nice, and in the summer its the main touristy spot in the area. All the rich people in Santiago have summer homes here and come down in the summer. The last city is called....blast don't remember. It's more of a city part of Vina then an actual city. But it's the nicest of the three and also the smallest.
It's actualy qutie crazy, right now there are about 1,000,000 people here and in two months there will only be 300,000. Most of the buildings in Vina are empty during the year, just not in summer. I did make an interesting discovery yesterday. You see, people told me that the water in the ocean here was cold, and I was just like, yea yea sure. I put my feet in the ocean yesterday. The water isn't cold. It's freezing. It is really really really cold. I was shocked. It was such a nice day and the water was cold.
So that was fun and thats really all from me. I know it wasn't a very detailed report of what I did, I guess you can read Mandy's and together you can figure out what happend.
All in all my life is slowely setteling down into something normal. Hopefully by the time Uni starts here the Spanish thing will be history ;) Lots of love from Chile to all of you ;)
p.s. If you have any special requests for future blogs, ie pictures or the like, do hesitate to ask :D
Dienstag, 27. Januar 2009
Mittwoch, 21. Januar 2009
2 days gone... lots to come
Alright, hey you guys.
Day 1
So, where to begin. Oh, our trip here. Let me try and put it into a very short sentence: 4 train stops, 3 airports, 2 bus stations, and 1 taxi ride. Combine all of that with a distance of about 12,000 km and a traveling time of 32 hours and you can imagine what we looked like. The train ride was about as usual as you can expect, we were late. Aperently a car was burning in the train station up ahead and due to the "EXTREME DANGER" involved for the fire-fighters they had to switch off the electricity. Throughout this traumatizing experience of not know if the fire-fighters where going to be alright, our train just chilled for about half an hour before it went on its way.
Suprisingly enough we made it to Frankfurt just as fast as if there hadn't been a delay. Don't ask how that works, once again, DB. In Frankfurt we were just in time for bording and decided that having our bags checked in would be ok. Sounds easy...right. Aperently you can only have 7kg in your hand lugage and 32 kg in your normal. So without undue delay Mandy and I had to repack all of our things. Somehow my hand lugauge was 14kg heavy, stupid finance book.
We got through all of that alright and we even got to see Mazen, which was cool, but it did mean that I didn't get to eat before the flight...sigh, life is hard.
The flight itself....normal. Long, loud, crowded, Portuguess, cramped, and I already knew all the movies. Sao Paulo is interesting enough, although all we did see was the airport(which isn't nice) and a bit from above. The flight from Brazil to Chile was ok, although the airplane did do this rathering interesting shaking and growinling and howling thing and took a really long time to take off, but I think the captain said that it was alright. We did see Iguazu, theoreticaly, and the Andes, which was awesome, and finaly we landed.
Santiago de Chile. We had an intersting start. Lets say I had a crash course in Spanish.. something along the lines of "yo busco un autobus para Vina del Mar" That went ok, the answer is what I had some dificulty with, and the fact that everybody was talking at once. But, Mandy and I made it to the middle of Santiago and onto a bus to Vina.
The country is truly beautiful. A lot like Kenya actualy, just Spanish, and not quite as crazy, but almost. So after two hours we made it to Vina, which is quite interesting. Finaly managed to get to our hostel, and called it a day. Mandy and I did a short walk through some of the city. It's nice, a lot bigger then I thought, but still I think its gona be a lot of fun.
Day 2
Breakfeast, very nice, fresh fruit and the likes, although I already miss the german bread. Then Mandy and I went on our first adventure, or second if you count just getting here. The goal: find our universtiy and then find a place to stay. I figured the first would be easy and the second hard. Mmmmm, not really. Vina is a city on the beach. No, Vina is a city on a cliff thats by the beach. There is no such thing as a strait road, you either go up or down, and when your looking for something up is bad and down is good, but you can't have one without the other. Lets just say that Mandy and I spent at least 2 hours just walking up and down hills looking for the uni.
We had a map, but that didn't help, since there isn't a map of Vina with the street names on it, or all the streets anyway. We did meet this funny little guy though, looked like Danni Devito. I saw him, wanted to ask for directions but didn't. Then we saw him again, this time I asked (he said a lot of things but we did get the direction) and then we met him again (and this time he showed us the last few streets to take) and then we met him again downtown. What a crazy weird little guy, but he helped out a lot.
The uni is nice and small and they helped us out a lot with finding a place to stay. We are now gona stay with this nice lady and her husband in a house not 50 meters from the Uni. Thats gona make sleeping and being on time easier. She doesn't speak english so it makes learning spanish easier. I acutaly had a somewhat civilized converstation with her(yea-right) but it should be lots of fun.
So thats all from me right now. Sorry that this was so long but things do seem to add up. I promise to write again soon, and tell more then.
Lots of crazy greatings from Vina del Mar
Day 1
So, where to begin. Oh, our trip here. Let me try and put it into a very short sentence: 4 train stops, 3 airports, 2 bus stations, and 1 taxi ride. Combine all of that with a distance of about 12,000 km and a traveling time of 32 hours and you can imagine what we looked like. The train ride was about as usual as you can expect, we were late. Aperently a car was burning in the train station up ahead and due to the "EXTREME DANGER" involved for the fire-fighters they had to switch off the electricity. Throughout this traumatizing experience of not know if the fire-fighters where going to be alright, our train just chilled for about half an hour before it went on its way.
Suprisingly enough we made it to Frankfurt just as fast as if there hadn't been a delay. Don't ask how that works, once again, DB. In Frankfurt we were just in time for bording and decided that having our bags checked in would be ok. Sounds easy...right. Aperently you can only have 7kg in your hand lugage and 32 kg in your normal. So without undue delay Mandy and I had to repack all of our things. Somehow my hand lugauge was 14kg heavy, stupid finance book.
We got through all of that alright and we even got to see Mazen, which was cool, but it did mean that I didn't get to eat before the flight...sigh, life is hard.
The flight itself....normal. Long, loud, crowded, Portuguess, cramped, and I already knew all the movies. Sao Paulo is interesting enough, although all we did see was the airport(which isn't nice) and a bit from above. The flight from Brazil to Chile was ok, although the airplane did do this rathering interesting shaking and growinling and howling thing and took a really long time to take off, but I think the captain said that it was alright. We did see Iguazu, theoreticaly, and the Andes, which was awesome, and finaly we landed.
Santiago de Chile. We had an intersting start. Lets say I had a crash course in Spanish.. something along the lines of "yo busco un autobus para Vina del Mar" That went ok, the answer is what I had some dificulty with, and the fact that everybody was talking at once. But, Mandy and I made it to the middle of Santiago and onto a bus to Vina.
The country is truly beautiful. A lot like Kenya actualy, just Spanish, and not quite as crazy, but almost. So after two hours we made it to Vina, which is quite interesting. Finaly managed to get to our hostel, and called it a day. Mandy and I did a short walk through some of the city. It's nice, a lot bigger then I thought, but still I think its gona be a lot of fun.
Day 2
Breakfeast, very nice, fresh fruit and the likes, although I already miss the german bread. Then Mandy and I went on our first adventure, or second if you count just getting here. The goal: find our universtiy and then find a place to stay. I figured the first would be easy and the second hard. Mmmmm, not really. Vina is a city on the beach. No, Vina is a city on a cliff thats by the beach. There is no such thing as a strait road, you either go up or down, and when your looking for something up is bad and down is good, but you can't have one without the other. Lets just say that Mandy and I spent at least 2 hours just walking up and down hills looking for the uni.
We had a map, but that didn't help, since there isn't a map of Vina with the street names on it, or all the streets anyway. We did meet this funny little guy though, looked like Danni Devito. I saw him, wanted to ask for directions but didn't. Then we saw him again, this time I asked (he said a lot of things but we did get the direction) and then we met him again (and this time he showed us the last few streets to take) and then we met him again downtown. What a crazy weird little guy, but he helped out a lot.
The uni is nice and small and they helped us out a lot with finding a place to stay. We are now gona stay with this nice lady and her husband in a house not 50 meters from the Uni. Thats gona make sleeping and being on time easier. She doesn't speak english so it makes learning spanish easier. I acutaly had a somewhat civilized converstation with her(yea-right) but it should be lots of fun.
So thats all from me right now. Sorry that this was so long but things do seem to add up. I promise to write again soon, and tell more then.
Lots of crazy greatings from Vina del Mar
Abonnieren
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