¡Hola de Chile!

Sorry for the delay! I've already been in Chile for a week and I'm just now posting in the blog. I've just been so busy! Well I made it to Chile safe and sound. After some tough goodbyes at the airport and some nail-biting delays I finally made it to Santiago around 10:00 AM local time Saturday morning. And as an added bonus my luggage made it too! What a relief...
There were four other volunteers from my program on my flight from Atlanta to Santiago, so I got to know them before boarding and while going through customs. During my drive from the airport to the hostel I got my first real impressions of the Santiago area and Chile in general. The landscape around the city reminds me of somewhere out west. The ground is generally flat, brown, and dry looking, and stretches out in a pretty uninteresting way right to the feet of some impressively massive peaks. As we drove down the highway I found myself comparing the sights to Honduras since Honduras is the only other Latin American country I've visited. The highways are better maintained and much more attractive than those in Honduras and the cars were newer and nicer too, but the good looks do nothing to curb insane driving habits. Luckily I was used to the bobbing and weaving and sudden stops so I focused more on my surroundings. In places, Santiago looks typically Latin American. There are lots of colorful buildings, high fences and barred windows, but in other places it has a distinctive European and colonial vibe. Downtown Santiago is completely modern and metropolitan, and while the tallest skyscrapers are nowhere near as tall as those in New York or other cities, it definitely has the same big city feel.
Our Hostel is located in Barrio Brasil, 15 or 20 minutes from downtown. After getting my bearings and taking a shower at the hostel I decided to go do a little exploring Saturday afternoon. I took a 14 block hike to a stunning park called Cerro Santa Lucia. The park is a labyrinth of terraced gardens and plazas built on top of a colonial military fort, which was built on top of a quarry (I think). Anyway, it was an awesome park which reminded me of some parks in San Francisco. And even though it was pretty steep the view from the top was well worth it. Throughout the day more and more volunteers poured into the hostel until nearly all forty of us had arrived. Some of the volunteers had already been in Chile for a month because of an extended program, but the majority of the volunteers didn't know each other. We spent a good part of the evening getting to know each other and later that night we went to a bar not far from the hostel to see a band that one of the volunteers was familiar with. The bar was cool and the band was awesome, sort of like a Spanish language Red Hot Chili Peppers.
We had orientation sessions all week, usually from 9 to 4:30 or 5. In addition to the crash course in teaching ESL there were classes covering everything from the Chilean educational system to health and safety and Chilean culture. Still, we found plenty of time to try local restaurants and bars, hang out at the hostel, and do A LOT of walking around the city. But one of the highlights was definitely the "private tour" that a couple of us got on Wednesday. One of the volunteers sat next to a Chilean man on the plane and he had offered to show her around Santiago one day whenever she was free. She asked a couple of us to go with her and as sketchy as it sounds I'm glad I went because the guy was genuinely nice and it was an awesome experience. He drove us through a gorgeous part of Santiago called Providencia, then out of town through Las Condes and into the mountains about 25 minutes from town. The views were gorgeous and I'm afraid that the pictures I took from the back seat of his car do it justice. We then had dinner at an awesome downtown restaurant where I tried my first pisco sour, which could be described as the national drink of Chile. It's a cocktail made with pisco, which is sort of like a brandy, and what tasted like sweet and sour mix. And they probably throw in some other alcohol too because those things are strong.
So after spending most of the week in classes, walking around Santiago, and hanging out at the hostel, I finally got on a bus Friday night to head to my new home in Puerto Montt! The bus ride was long (about 12 hours) but surprisingly comfortable. In fact, it was way better than my Delta flight from Atlanta to Santiago. There are typically two types of buses here: cama (which means "bed"), and semicama. A semicama seat will lean back some and maybe have a footrest but a cama pretty much lives up to its name. The seats were pretty big, with plenty of room to lean back and with large footrests. There was also a screen that played a few movies ("Year One" and "Transformers 3" both dubbed in Spanish) and breakfast in the morning. Not bad at all! I slept off and on throughout most of the night and by morning we were in Los Rios region, just north of Los Lagos region. The scenery was spectacular. The country side is very bucolic and incredibly green. As we got further south the mountains in the distance got bigger and bigger until finally we pulled into Puerto Varas and saw lake Llanquihue and Volcano Osorno. The scenery here is incredible. From Puerto Varas it was only another 15 minutes or so until we arrived in Puerto Montt. Although the weather is very gray it's still a beautiful city. My host parents picked me up from the bus station and after a quick tour of the downtown we headed to the house. My family lives in a 3 bed 2 bath house in a neighborhood called Valle Volcán (Volcano Valley) in northeast Puerto Montt. The location is great and I have plenty of room in their guest bedroom. The family consists of Claudia, an English teacher at the same school where I'll be volunteering, Oscar, who teaches and also does social services work in Puerto Montt, and Jorge or Coke who is about my age and is studying at an institute in Puerto Montt. I like my host family a lot. They're funny,  generous, accommodating, and very patient with my Spanish. For the most part we've all been able to hang out and have a conversation, but they have to talk pretty slowly and they pepper their Spanish with some English. There have been a few times (like earlier today when a family friend came to visit) when I had absolutely no idea what was going on though. Chilean Spanish is very, very difficult. They talk fast, their pronunciation is unique, they mumble, and they use words and phrases that no other Spanish speakers use. Aside from that it's pretty easy to cachar.
Sorry if this first post seems a little rushed. A lot has happened in the past week and it's pretty hard to condense it all. Hopefully in the future I'll have time to blog more regularly and I can go into more detail. Pictures to come!