So Monday turned out to be quite the bust. I had thought that we were starting on Tuesday (well, we were), but when I got back into wi-fi mode on Monday after all our errands, I had a message from the other student working at our office. It said, "Hey, where are you? I've already gotten my security credentials and sat through like three presentations." It was something out of a nightmare that you wake up, sweating profusely and glad that it's not true - I forgot to go to work on the first day of my job. My roommate asked me what I was going to do and I responded, "Well, I guess I'm going to have to change my pants." Not that I soiled myself or anything, but I had to get out of jeans.
I threw on some dress pants and nicer shoes and ran to the metro. The whole ride there I was just panicked, thinking about what I was going to say. I show up, and the man at the reception needed to know who I was and where I was going. Fortunately, both of the numbers that I had for people to contact were out of their offices. Of course. And considering my state of mind at that point, my Spanish was not coming out so hot. Through some miracle, the director of security answered his phone, and they let me up. They snapped my picture, gave me a Power-Point presentation, and told me to show up to a course in another city in the morning. I literally did not know what hit me. And apparently we were supposed to start the next morning, they hadn't been expecting us until then. Oh god, and a hot mess of gringaness shows up, apologizing and sweating profusely, and asking where Vina del Mar is.
And that was my entrance into my new job in Chile.
