moving day

hurray! in a few minutes, i'm packing up my bags and moving to a new apartment. the hostel has been nice, but it will be great to unpack my suitcase. two weeks out of a suitcase is not okay. i'm living with three other chilenos in a nice part of santiago - and they only speak spanish. wish me luck. usually, i try speaking spanish to people, and they end up trying out their english on me. i stopped in a university the other day to ask about a student housing board, and the security guard took me to the english department. :)

my first week of work went pretty well. i was scheduled to be at two institutions on mondays and wednesdays, and unfortunately, ended up lost in the worst neighborhood in santiago between the two on wednesday afternoon. it was hot, i was tired, my toe hurt and i felt really sorry for myself and cried. then i finally found the institution and cried again when i told everybody what happened. so we made a couple of schedule changes and now i'm going to one institution to work with older girls on the computer on one day, and staying at the baby house the rest of the week.

the baby house is good - everyone in the neighborhood knows where it is, which is cool. the organization itself doesn't seem to be struggling, although i know they can always use extra hands and disinfectant for toys (the kids are always sick!). this week i worked with christy, another ve volunteer, and a couple of chilenos came in on different days to help out as well. the kids love everybody. when things get a little out of control, we watch barney and other kiddie videos. i'm learning a lot.

a chilean word of the day for you: bacan (with an accent on the second "a") it means cool...