Lessons learned....

Having been in the city for a full week now ( 7 whole days!), I have learned a few things in my days in Santiago....

1. Chileans do not say adios, they say ciao.

2. Chileans kiss everyone on the cheek when they say hello and goodbye. So if you enter a room of 18 Chileans then you go around the room and literally give everyone a kiss on the cheek. It can be a long process....

3.Chileans also makeout in public EVERYWHERE. Everywhere we have been there are people making out on the subway, in the park, on the streets, at national monuments. It's a crazy PDA city.

4. They put mayonaise on EVERYTHING. And not just like a little, a lot. It's gross. They also randomly put eggs on lots of things. Not in them, but for example. I have seen quite a few sandwiches, pizzas, pastas, etc. that have a random eggs served sunny side up just placed on top. And since I don't like mayo or eggs I am having to be very clear when ordering food.

5. Chileans speak very, VERY FAST. Like they are known throughout South America as mumblers and the fastest speakers in the country.

No major hilarious miscommunications just yet. However, we did have an interesting little journey to the hardware store to understand how to buy things in Chile.  We were getting adapters and we had to talk to the guy behind the counter to make sure we had the right thing and see them to confirm that is what we wanted, then he gave us a ticket and we went to a line to pay for it. Then we got another ticket and went to another line to get the actual adapter. It was seriously so silly to do all of that, but apparently that is pretty much how a lot of stores work.

Overall though.... everyone has been super friendly. It's very, very obvious that I am a "gringa", but whenever we ask for directions or anything everyone is super helpful.

I'm off to our volunteer dinner for the weekend! Ciao!