Bienvenidos de Chile!!!

I write to you from my comfortable bed in my new home in Chile.  I live in the community of Las Condes, which is generally considered to be one of the wealthy neighborhoods in Santiago.  I live with my Chilean mother, father, and sister (who is 24).  The father owns a restaurant, the mother is dueña de casa, the person that takes care of the house and sister works for a large retail store in Chile.  They are quite welcoming.  I spent the first weekend with them in Viña del Mar, which is one of hte most beautiful beach cities I have ever seen with some of the greatest sunsets imaginable.  I have had the opportunity to see lots of awesome things already.  This week we started the program's beginning seminar class called Contemporary Chile.  We basically cover a different subject each day and visit a place or watch a film connected with the subject.  We have been to La Moneda (the Presidential Palace), La Chascona (Pablo Neruda's Santiago home) and la Plaza de la Constitución where you can still see some damage on buildings from the coup in 1973.  I am getting more and more accustomed to Chilean life.  One of the more challenging aspects is learning Chilean spanish which is one of the more challenging forms of Spanish around.  I am learning the Chilean slang (po - which you say at the end of phrases when addressing a friend or family member, cachai? - do you understand?).  Those are a couple of the most common ones.  I am also getting used to the metro, which I take back and forth to class everyday.  It is the most densely packed metro in the world besides Tokyo, I believe it reaches something close to 9 people per square meter during busy hours.  It can be crowded but is incredibly convenient.  My host mother cooks a lot which basically means every meal is a challenge, although quite tasty.  I guess the poor description of Chilean food depends a lot of who you are with because I have only found it to be incredibly tasty.  Tomorrow is a busy day so I am going to cut this message short, I might be going to Valparaíso this weekend, which is Chile's main port so I will have much more to report when I get settled and learn more about the city.