¡Hola mis amigos!
Its been a busy couple of days since I left from Canada, so I'll try and keep this short and sweet. My first flight, to Minneapolis, left Saskatoon at 5:45am, Sunday June 2nd. In Minneapolis, I had breakfast with my classmate Sam and her friend Sarah who were on the same flight en route to Thailand! I had a long layover in Minneapolis so I killed some time by getting a pedicure then walking around the airport in those super cool disposable sandals they give you. Definitely a head-turning fashion statement. Next I flew to Atlanta, where I learned that in Georgia if you try and order something healthy like a spinach salad, that really means they bring you a massive container of cold green fettuccini noodles in cream sauce.
My overnight flight to Santiago was relatively uneventful, slept on and off for most of the 10 hour flight. But when we were almost in Santiago I woke up just in time to see the sunrise over the Andes mountains and knew it would be an amazing day!
We landed in Santiago and it took nearly 3 hours to go through customs... I consider myself a fairly experienced traveller and I've never seen an immigration situation quite like that... There must have been 3000 people pushing to get towards the booths, and nothing that even slightly resembled a line. If anyone out there is claustrophobic, I'm pretty sure it would have been your worst nightmare! After surviving customs I had a few hours before my short (40min) flight to La Serena. During this time, I attempted to get some food and a coffee, and even though I'd only been in South America a few hours i was getting many opportunities to practice my spanish.... In particular phrases such as "¿Puede repetir eso por favor más lento?"/ "yo sólo hablo un poco de español"/"Lo siento, No lo entiendo"... For those of you who speak about as much Spanish as i do, those phrases roughly mean "Can you repeat that slower please?"/"I only speak a little Spanish"/ and "I'm sorry, but I don't understand."...
Consuelo, my contact in Chile, was at the airport in La Serena to pick me up and drive me a few km south to Coquimbo, which is where I will be for the month. When we arrived I met some of her friends, and my new friend Alvaro took me for a walk to show me the university, la universidad Católica del Norte. The campus is beautiful and is right on the ocean, Alvaro told me that students often take study breaks to sit on the beach! In the evening, I was taken to my host family's house. They are a lovely family, and they all live in their second house in a nearby city except the daughter, Aly, who is attending the university here. She is a very nice girl, and things are going well so far.... The only slight problem is that she speaks even less English than I do Spanish, so communicating has been interresting. Google Translate has come in handy. I'm attempting to improve my Spanish, so I usually try and ask her a question en español, and she will attempt to reply in English, and then we'll have no idea what the other is trying to say and start madly miming, before giving up and staring blankly at eachother. I may try and secretly videotape our conversations sometime, as I'm pretty sure the whole situation is pretty hilarious.
Today, I went to the university in the morning and spent some time in the lab where I will be working this month! My supervisor, Lilliana, is super awesome and friendly. She spent a lot of the morning explaining her research and the background information to me (all of which is SUPER interesting!!) and then let me spend the rest of her morning help her start an experiment (we're running a COMET assay on eukaryotic lymphocytes to look for DNA damage). I was weirdly excited to be back in a lab, pipette in hand, madly calculating dilutions and making solutions. I think this year I missed Biochemistry and lab work more than I realized!!! After work I left the lab and walked around the city for awhile before making my way home. Aly has night classes on Martes (which is Tuesday in Spanish, I'm totally improving already), so I'm here alone. I managed to walk around and find a local market and buy some fresh produce to cook up some supper, and now I'm currently just finishing unpacking before heading to bed (I think I'm still a bit jet lagged).
That's about all of the excitement so far! I am so happy with my living and work situation, and am really looking forward to this next month!
Hasta pronto, ¡Adiós!
