My first two weeks of school, along with acclimating to my homestay, have definitely been a new experience. The house I’m living in is just my host mom, Diela and me. The other four members of my host family (Paulina, Víctor, Trini and Amelia) live up the staircase in the house right next door, and another student, Emma, lives in a different neighboring house with Arastelli, Diela’s sister. We live with a family that frequently meets together, about three times a week, often including 15 or more people. I’ve had a great time getting to know them, although understanding Chilean accents is still difficult for me. This week, there were four separate birthdays, celebrated in three houses, with hours of eating and celebrating each.

In reference to school, the schedule is very different from any other school I’ve attended. We only go to proper “class” about two or three times a week, with other time spent volunteering, at various museums or traveling with the program. For context, our first week looked like this: on Monday we had class in the morning and explored a community space in the afternoon, Tuesday class was at what used to be a jail for political prisoners and is now a cultural center, Wednesday we did a tour of the graffiti in Valparaíso, Thursday was back at school, and Friday was half at school and half at the Immigration Museum. Our weeks consistently look like this, creating a need for organization both to keep track of what we’re doing and our work.

For me, while I have really enjoyed my study abroad so far, I still need to focus and think things through for most events, including daily interactions. It’s gotten easier but taking the micro (bus) for the first time by myself and shopping alone were such accomplishments for me because while I can navigate conversations with my host family, who are used to international students, talking to locals and moving through the streets is still intimidating. From an independence perspective, I can do whatever I would like, but the challenges that appear for most things have forced me out of my comfort zone in ways that make the transition to college look small. While looking at my maps one day, I realized that I’m about 5,000 miles from my house.

Most of the time, it doesn’t feel quite so different, until I realize that I’ve been traveling through the city every day, the only familiar food I’ve eaten so far is spaghetti, and the only time I speak English in an average day is to text or call people at home. I’ve found many things about Chile that I wish I had at home, like walking to school, eating good bread at least twice a day, using public transportation, saying “chau” all the time, and dedicated family time every day. Overall, they outweigh everything that is a difficult adjustment, even if I’m still perplexed that grocery stores only sell food, and that lunch is the main meal of the day.

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