Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Host Family Switch

So about a week and a half ago I switched host families. I now live with Cristian and Cristina Sepulveda, a really nice couple who live only one street away from my old house. I was so relieved when I found out that they lived in the same neighborhood because my neighborhood is so convenient--I am within walking distance to school, running distance to my gym, and right on the public transportation line.

Cristian is an engineer for a major phone company in Chile, Entel, and Cristina is the co-owner of a local café. Although they work a lot, they are very social. We always eat lunch and dinner together and stay for an hour to two hours at the table, talking. The Sepulvedas are also very active Rotarians, and Cristina is president of the Women's Rotary Club (here the Rotary clubs are segregated by sex). They used to be very active in their church and even though they aren't so involved anymore, they still go regularly and always get together with their group of church friends (sound familiar?).

I was a little nervous on Moving Day because first of all, they changed my moving date about five times because the Sepulvedas were visiting their children in Santiago (their two kids, Tamara and Mati, are 30 and 22 and live in Santiago) and weren't sure of their return date. I finally ended up moving in at 11:30 PM on Sunday, March 8th and was greeted by Cristian. Cristina was still in Santiago, but Cristian made me feel right at home. We ended up talking until 1 AM until I said that I needed to go to sleep since I had school the next day.

But I have settled into life in my new house--their lifestyle really suits me a lot better than my old house, just because they interact a lot more with each other and have a much broader social life. And not much else has changed because I still go to the same school and still have the same activities--only now I get to practice Spanish a lot more because I easily get 2 more hours of Spanish conversation in a day.