Running with the dogs

So I met a bunch of really cool people last night in my program at dinner and what not. I split like 4 liters of Escudo, the Chilean national beer, with this kid from Tennessee named Evan at dinner. He is really funny and actually has more energy than me, surprisingly. The hostel gives us free breakfast and dinner and it is pretty good too. We all hung out and talked after dinner in the common room and got to know everyone. There are three other people going to my region and they are hilarious. One guys from Luxembourg named Dermit is really funny and already wants to go skiing when we get down there. I also found out that it rains like all the time where we are going but it is beautiful and green forest.

Anyways after some time all drinking together some of us decided to go to a bar and get the Chile's own alcohol they make called pisco, it was gross, sugary margarita type thing. We just hung out there until the placed closed and lets just say I was feelin pretty comfortable. Oh, I forgot to mention that there are tons of stray dogs in Santiago and they all look really cute and healthy cause everyone feeds them a little something on the streets. But they are extremely dirty and probably all have fleas or lice so they tell us never to touch them. So as I was saying I was feeling very comfortable with the people I was hanging out with and decided to do my usual drunken trademark and started wolf howling (yea hamilton) and to my surprise everyone started as well. While we were waking up probably half the city 3 or 4 stray dogs started running toward us. We decided it would be best to run back to our hostel howling with the dogs by our side, they even tried to follow us inside the hostel. We got back and hung out for a little more then went to sleep, this was like 3 in the morning and we had to be at our orientation at 930 and my roommates woke up at like 730am because they wanted to get an early shower in or something. I would have killed someone for two drops of visine. Orientation was a struggle but it was helpful. I ran today and on the way back I could see the mountains behind the city and it was gorgeous, it didn't look real. But the smog is so bad that it felt like I just smoked a cigarette after my run. Well it's about dinner time, hope everyone is well. Miss you all.

Sleep is deaths cousin.

Love Franke

Post 2

Got to Santiago this morning at like 8am and when I went to the transportation bus I was suppose to go on they didn't have my name so I was a little worried but after some broken Spanish I found out where I was suppose to be and away I went to the Hostel Internacional. It is a nice hostel, very clean and the people are nice and speak some English. I met some other people in my program and we walked around Santiago today. The town is pretty cool but the landscape surrounding it is amazing. The enormous Andes mountains surround the city and there is a shit load of snow on the tops of them, would be sick to ski them but would probably fall and die. We walked around some more and got something to eat and I quickly learned how bad my Spanish is and how dumb I sound, it is going to be interesting with my host family and los ninos. It is becoming winter here and I think I may need some more warm clothes (Ma you were right). But it was really warm and sunny today, something that the people say doesn't happen often because there is always smog. We start orientation tomorrow so we will see how things go. I will try and put pictures up as soon as I can but my camera ran out of battery.

Yesterday's history, tomorrow's a mystery, that's why they call it the present baby!

Love,

Franke

1st Post

I leave for Chile today to teach the english to the children.