And so the adventure begins. . .

First off, sorry to all of you who may have been waiting to hear if I'm alive or not. It's been a busy first week with not much time for internet, but we're definitely off to a good start.

I left the States last Tuesday on an overnight flight to Santiago, Chile with Caryn, the other wonderful volunteer that I live and work with. After a very long flight, we arrived in Chile with the normal fun times of paying customs fees and getting our passports stamped. Bridget, the HM volunteer for the past year who will be here until December, picked us up with a Maryknoller named Judy who lives in the city. From there we headed to Judy's house for a good long nap and some wonderful empanadas (meat-filled pastry things that Chileans love!). It was quite cold in the evenings, but everyone assures us that it is currently spring and that it's actually getting warmer right now.

After a few days of rest and relaxation at Judy's, Bridget, Caryn, Sarah (a young lay Maryknoll volunteer who arrived only a few months ago), and I headed out to Los Farellones, a sort of ski resort area up in the mountains. When I get a chance I'll post some pictures of the beautiful scenery that we encountered there. After much confusion about when we would actually be leaving for the mountains and where we were staying, a friend of a friend of Bridget's picked us up and drove us to our home for the weekend. For those of you who know me quite well, you know that a one and a half hour ride up a mountain is not exactly the easiest thing for my motion-sick stomach, but somehow I survived the at least forty or so hairpin curves. When we got to the top (about 2800 meters), I experienced a little bit of altitude sickness, but nothing too terrible. We stayed at Bridget's friend's house, who is actually a cop in Los Farellones (which means he skis a heck of a lot). He left us to ourselves most of the time, so we basically just hung out and got to know each other better. After much deliberation, we didn't end up going skiing at one of the beautiful resorts, but we did go sledding down the side of what appeared to be some sort of random mountain that the cop took us to. It was quite the adventure, which involved the other building a jump while I rested at the top of the hill, exhausted from just a few rides down. Overall we had a great time hanging out and getting to know each other in such a gorgeous place, and we all made it out without broken bones!

Yesterday we arrived in Chillan, our home for the next fifteen months. After a four and a half hour train ride south of Santiago, we were greeted here by about twenty of the women who are most involved in the women's center. They were very welcoming and excited to meet us, but it was quite overwhelming to enter the crazy world of Chilean Spanish (with lots of missing syllables and strange slang) with a regularly scheduled meeting of so many people. We unpacked last night and just got settled, learning how to use hot water bottles to make our beds warm or figure out which of the billion cats around here actually belong to the house. Caryn and I actually live where we work with a nun from Kentucky named Mimi. She's been wonderful in helping us get accustomed to our new surroundings. Today we saw how the house functions on a normal day--errands and things in the mornings followed by a huge lunch and classes in the afternoon. Many of the women here are involved with weaving and crocheting and even spinning wool, so we have plenty of things to learn how to do and watch with awe. They all seem like great people. . .once I can better understand what they're saying!

So basically, Chile is somewhat cold right now, the women are all very nice, the Spanish is difficult to understand, the food is good, and I've got a warm water bottle waiting for me in my bed!