Chile, Chile Lindo

I've just been informed that my dedicated fans are clamoring for more news of my Chilean adventures. Before I start telling you about last few weeks, let me take a moment to extoll the virtues of this country. I am under the distinct impression that Chile is the most beautiful place on Earth. I haven't seen enough to say this for certain, but the few places I have been can best be described as awe-inspiring. The Elqui Valey in La Serena is idyllic. The mountains around Santiago are gorgeous. The Atacama desert is other-worldy. Did you know they filmed the moon landing here? That's what my host brother says anyways. My host-family spent the day at the beach the other day and among the few photos I took, aboiut half are worthy of national geographic (a slight exageration). This is not due, as much as I may wish it were, to my photografic talent, but to the mind-staggering beauty of Chile. Before I begin to bore (is it too late?) let me tell you about what I've been up to these last few weeks.
After we got back from La Serena we went to the AFS asado to celebrate the 18. There I got to talk to the other exchange students scattered around Copiapó, and we got to know eachother a little better on our excursion to Santiago for our first AFS orientation. The exchange students from the middle part of Chile all met up in Santiago to talk about how our experiences have been going. Although we've all been living disrtinct experiences, we had so many things in common! I feel like I made some life-time friends there in the space of four days. I also got a chance to practice my English and catch up with two of the other Americans who were at my Miami orientation. Rosemary ws telling me about a friend she has in the US who's interested in coming to Chile next year who had actually read my blog. I'm not going to lie to you, I felt very important! A thing that really surprised me at the orientation though was how many people were still more comfortable speaking English than Spanish. I think the US really needs to come up with a new method for teaching languages because frankly, after five years of taking it in school, my German still sucks! And don't even get me started on how bad my Spanish was when I got here!
Speaking of my Spanish, its been improving fairly steadily. I recently discovered that I can read books in Spanish. Or book anyways, I just finished "the Lost Symbol" by Dan Brown. Yeah, I felt prettyu good about myself after that. I even walked to the plza the other day and signed up at the library. Let me tell you, that was an adventure in itself. I had to figure out where to get things photocopied! OK, so not that exciting, but its these little Chilean things that I still haven't gotten figured out. I suppose I still have nine months to work on that.
Hmmm, so other news. My host-mom left for a mining exposition in Shanghai today. That's right, we sent her off to China for two weeks. I might be more jealous if I wasn't currently in Chile! I¿ll try to keep the updates more frequent in the future! (On a side note, comments are always nice).