So....I´m in Chile now. Oh, and excuse the backwardness of the ´sign. Becuase I can´t really figure out this keyboard yet.

My plane from Boston to Miami was delayed 2.5 hours, and the one from Miami to Santiago was delayed about the same. But I got there okay. From Boston, I sat next to a man from Santiago....he was really nice, but we didn´t talk much. When I got to Santiago, I met up with all the other exchangers...and met another girl going to La Serena, but not to my school. I slept on the plane to Santiago...the flight was SO LONG. And uncomfortable to sleep on. I got to see the Andes when we landed!!! It was a clear day, which apparently is kind of rare for Santiago.

Immigration was scary.....the woman didn´t speak spanish, but said something about police in La Serena, so I looked confused and someone translated for her. Customs was a breeze....they just pushed our bags through x-ray machines. Then we turned some corner, and there was this clear glass giant window thing, we walked by, with people all against it...we had to walk through all the taxi drivers, which was scary. They were all staring at us...and I heard someone say, "United States come to Chile". I guess he saw my US flag patch thing. And then some guy put his hand on my suitcase and said something that sounded like something about a leg. It was weird. The Rotary people pulled us to the side, we waited for the other people coming from Dallas...and then we went out to the parking lot and got into vans.

They took us to Villa Alemana for the orientation...it´s about an hour away from Santiago. We stayed in cabañas. Three girls came from Finland, two girls and a guy came from Denmark. A Finnish girl, Jenny(pronounced Yenu) is in La Serena too, and a Danish girl, Freja is going to my school.

The orientation was cool....lots of talking. And sitting. We had a carrete en cabaña seis our last night...so I only got like, 3 hours of sleep, but whatever.

We almost had to pay a reaaaallll lot of money for overweight bags, but the Rotary people helped us out. Thanks a lot, Bokof Kaplan, for letting us all know that LAN has completely different baggage rules.

We left Santiago and landed in La Serena(Maureen, Freja, y yo) at around 7 pm las night. my family here picked me up and brought me to their home. it was really overwhelming. lots of pictures, i got flowers. too much Spanish.

They call me "La Kelsey" here. I feel like they´ve slowed down a bit....but I think I´m just understanding them better. It´s hard to understand them...they speak quickly and don´t pronounce their s´s . And have different words for everything. They try to make me eat a lot, but I´m never hungry anymore. Every time I tell them I´m not hungry they gasp and say something I can´t understand. It´s very strange. I get really tired quickly...and my head really hurts...but other than that I´m fine. Everything´s just slightly off, but I´d like to think I´m adapting. When I speak English now with Gabi, i have a little bit of an accent. I can´t seem to spell anything anymore, and when my parents called last night, I wasn´t sure what language to speak in. It´s really weird.

Anywho. I´ll try to update mañana..but my head hurts and if I tried to put down everything that´s happened, this would be way too long.

Miss and love you all
kelsey