Day 1 and Day 2

In my opinion, traveling alone in a foreign country is truly one of the most soul awakening experiences you can have. Since I have left Kona, I have felt so many emotions that are not normally felt in you everyday life. From the empty nauseating pit that I felt in my stomach the morning after leaving my one and only, to complete and utter doubt that I cant actually do this, to inspiring hopefulness within myself. I felt happy people watching and talking to randoms and I felt completely terrified walking among unknown faces. I felt anxious to arrive and scared as anything to get there. This has been all in the first 24 hours...


Spending the morning in Santiago was awesome. I walked about 5 miles from my hostel to the top of Cerro San Cristobal which in the top of a huge mountain and has a beautiful huge statue of the virgin Mary on the top. The view is amazing and the walk was absolutely what I needed to clear my head. If you want to read more about it...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerro_San_Crist%C3%B3bal

Something that I learned today is that being in a different country with a foreign language makes anything you do, no matter how small the task, to be a completely planned out mission.

For example: ordering food. Seems like a simple concept enough, however how innocent to think that. First you have to find somewhere to keep your giant suitcase because all the restaurants in Chile are the size of a bedroom. Second you have to try to figure out what the food is and figure out where and how to pay. Even though I know spanish well enough, a lot of the food names are unlike anything I have heard of. After you decipher the amount of money that it will cost you in your dollars, you wait in line and repeat in your head what you want to say so you don't sound completely ignorant. "Empanada marisco" Empanada marisco." sounds like your saying it perfectly in your mind. Then when it is your turn to order, you repeat it too quickly or too slow and the clerk almost never understands. Who would have known food could be such a high pressure moment.

About to be on my way to Vina and cannot wait to drop off my luggage and not be the girl in hiking shoes carrying the 50lb green duffle.