Living in Chile

First off I would like to apologize for the delay in starting my blog for this trip! Multiple times I sat down to write and ending up doing everything but. I arrived in Chile on March 25 after a beautiful two weeks in Guanacaste, Costa Rica. In CR I was enjoying 35˚ weather, too hot to even wear a t-shirt day or night. My first day in Valparaíso (Valpo) , Paula, a Chilean girl who had done an exchange at U of L in 2008 and offered to rent a room out to me, showed me around the city. The sun didn't go down until around 8:30ish (which had me soo confused) and when it got dark it got cold too! Of course it wasn't actually cold but it was at least a 15˚ difference to the nightly temperature I had experienced just the day before! So of course, my first thought was, "shit, I definitely don't have enough warm clothes...".

The realization that 24˚ on the Pacific coast is not the same as 24˚ in Calgary was a tough one... Even though I can still wear shorts and a t-shirt during the day, I wouldn't be uncomfortable in jeans and a long sleeve either. That being said, I'm hoping my kind friends Courtney and Scott will take some of my summer clothes home so I have more room in my bags to take home warmer clothes that I will have to buy here. It's pretty strange that I left Canadian winter, went to Costa Rican summer, arrived in Chilean fall, will leave in Chilean winter to go back home to Canadian summer. Talk about season confusion, not to mention the extreme confusion that causes in terms of hours of daylight. It probably took me 2 weeks just to get used to the sun going down so late (the 4 hour time different didn't help either!)

As some of you may have known, I had planned to live with Paula and her boyfriend (and their cat, Lana) during my semester here. Plans changed a little bit when they let me know that they had found a house they really liked and were thinking about buying. They had offered for me to move with them to the new house if I was interested, but knew it was quite far from the university and where most of my exchange friends would be living. I mentioned to a few of my friends from school that I would have to look for a new place at some point. Emma, an American girl who goes to school in McGill called me about a week and a half ago to tell me she had found a pretty sweet apartment and there were two rooms available if I was interested in moving into it with her. We checked it out with her boyfriend's mom (a nice Chilean lady who was extremely helpful and kind) and Emma moved in the next day. I talked to Paula and her boyfriend that night and assured them that it was nothing personal. They understood which was a relief because I felt pretty bad about leaving them so soon.

Route to the PUCV (My university here)

The apartment that I'm living in now is in Viña del Mar, the neighbouring city to Valparaíso (where the Uni is). Door to door the 7km trip to the Uni on Tues/Wed/Thurs takes no longer than 10min and costs a mere $400 (in CAD = 86¢). On top of being easy to get to class, it is also super easy to catch a bus to any of the nearby beach towns or to the mall straight north from the apartment. All in all I'm loving the location and the company of my roommates, Emma and Stephanie (form Australia). My rent is similar to what I was paying in Lethbridge and includes weekly cleaning service, access to a sauna and a 24-hour doorman, who is great to have to ask for directions or advice on the city! The biggest downside to the apartment is not having a washer which means having to use the laundry room downstairs which is super expensive, or go to a nearby laundry service.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with the way things worked out here.. finally able to settle in and start exploring the two cities more!