Spanish Language

I took Spanish in high school for a couple years but I am in no way capable of surviving in a Spanish speaking country on my own. Fortunately, we have a program advisor from Santiago who goes basically everywhere with us! I’ve had to use Spanish for basic tasks, like ordering at a restaurant or asking for directions but I know the language well enough to accomplish these things fairly easily. There is definitely a bit of miming involved but I always get my point across! Talking to my host family has been a bit difficult but my Spanish has improved a lot by talking to them every day. The most difficult thing is surviving through dinner parties (which happen a lot here because family is so important). Having five conversations going on around you at once makes it impossible to understand anyone. But the entire family is very understanding and makes a point to ask me questions directly every once in a while. And at the very least I am now able to greet everyone properly when they arrive! Here, everyone you meet you greet with a single kiss on the cheek (except if it’s two men, they shake hands). And I mean everyone. If you walk into a group of 10 people you are supposed to individually kiss each one! There are a few words here that are only used in Chile that I really like. One of these is “pololo” or “polola” which mean boyfriend/girlfriend. It’s just a really cute word that is specific to Chile and is quite fun to say! They also use the word “po”. I’ve been told that it has absolutely no meaning, it’s just a word that people add to other, short words. For example, I’ve heard si po, ya po, and se po. Also, just as a side note, my favorite word in all of the Spanish language is “Tortuga” or tortoise in English. No specific reason why, I just love it.