Counting down...

A week from tomorrow, los padres and I head down to Miami to hit some clubs and hang out with Will Smith. Can you believe it?!?
Actually, we're going to Miami because that's where my flight to Santiago leaves from bright 'n early the next morning (call time inside the airport: 4 a.m.). After all these months of applying and waiting and filling out paperwork and getting shots and waiting some more...it's finally time to actually put things in suitcases and get ready to go! The flight will be long and the nightmares on the eve of departure will be scary (kidding) but I am so excited to finally get the semester started. After a few days of orientation, I'll move in with my host family and start seven weeks of classes at the SIT building. Then I'll have an excursion in either Temuco or Aymara and then the time (a month, I believe) to do my independent research project.
I should be able to update this blog fairly regularly and I hope that I can also use it to keep in touch with people studying in other countries/programs, at Occidental, and at home.
If there's one thing I love more than words, it's photos (maybe's it's a tie) and I definitely want to share many photos on this blog as well. To start, here's a photo from my recent trip to Washington, D.C. (funded by an Anderson Grant from Oxy) during which I had the fantastic opportunity to interview Ambassador Mariano Fernandez from Chile:


Hasta luego!