My first week

So now I've been in Santiago for 1 week!
It was a tiring first week, taking in so many new sights, experiences an especially taking in the language.
But I will start off with some descriptions/impressions that will give you guys an image of what it's like:
- People in Santiago are very friendly and polite, open to helping you when practicing your Spanish and also men being polite to women etc.
- People are very affectionate, everywhere you look you see couples kissing, hugging
- Santiago is very clean, many many cleaners and gardeners day in day out
- Santiago has a very large metro system, in which at rush hour, you squash yourself between all the people and when the doors close not one extra person would have fitted, just lovely...
- Santiago feels overall safe, but at night it's not known to be as safe so I have a metro station around the corner which means I don't have to walk very far at night which is nice
- Santiago is in between high mountains and therefore especially in the winter, smog starts to gather throughout the week, in the weekend due to fewer cars it slowly disappears again
- What I absolutely love is that Chilean people are very very proud of their country
- Not many people smoke!

Sunday I ended up mainly cleaning the house as it hadn't been cleaned in quite a while I think, very very dusty, so that made me feel a bit better when that was all a bit cleaner. Monday I decided to go upto Cerro San Cristobal, which is a high mountain in Santiago, which provides you with a really nice view over the entire city which was really pretty! (see below) I got a taxi upto the top with a German girl and we ended up spending the day together and walking down, resulting in muscle ache the next couple of days.
Tuesday I got to start at my placement, and the people are all really friendly and welcoming. My supervisor, is the healthcare manager and speaks good English is which is nice as well, but everyone insists on speaking Spanish to me, which is good but very very tiring as that means concentrating a lot. I definitely don't understand everything they say, however I mostly get the gist of what they are saying, but sometimes not even that. So if something important is being said I usually repeat it in English to make sure what I heard is correct.

The whole week at placement was overall quite boring as I haven't been given my task yet, so time goes slow at work but hopefully I will get it on Monday! Everyone assures me that every placement starts that way and that after 2 weeks you usually have more things to do and my supervisor assures me that I will get tasks as well. He shortly explained to me that I will be doing market research in Spanish, which scared me, but he said that mainy includes looking up numbers and statistics, not writing a full report in Spanish. So we'll see! The company's website is:www.hofmann.cl

Wednesday night at the youth group at church was really nice. There were about 15 people my age until their late 20s who join these wednesday nights regularly and they all have so much bible knowledge which is very motivating, so looking foward to getting to know them! They are a mix of nationalities, Chilean, Finnish, American etc.

Overall how I'm feeling is a bit of a mix, I often have moments throughout my day when for example when messaging with people at home that I have to blink back my tears because it just reminds me of home and how this really isn't my home yet. So that's hard and that in combination of getting very tired listening to all the Spanish can be exhausting. But I have already had many moments where of course I have good chats with people or a good laugh with people and hopefully the feelings of missing home will slowly go more to the background and me enjoying myself here will be more dominant. Germaine, my colleague, is so great to have around and to work with, that helps me a lot! I have started to look for a different room as I don't really feel at home and comfortable in the place I'm currently staying, and visited a room last night where the Finnish girl from church lives, in which I just felt straight away at home, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed for that one, but otherwise I'm sure I'll find something else!

This weekend I will be skyping with some people as throughout the week the time difference doesn't let me, which I think is probably for the best as I don't want to just be doing that either, and watching the world cup games in a hostel and meeting with some people for a drink. Ah and what I'm really looking forward to which I will be doing straight after posting this blog is going for a run! Throughout the week I cannot go for a run as before and after work it's dark, so yes looking forward to that.

12 weeks until Philip comes and visits me! Not that I'm counting down or anything haha.....