i'm here!!

hooray i'm here!! well, i'm in santiago anyway! flew from seattle to new york and then to santiago. still have to fly to puerto montt and then to punta arenas and then i take a bus to puerto natales and then i'm home!! 10 hours and i'll be there, woop woop!!

flight to santiago was way cool - pretty spacious and each seat had it's own tv and you could watch any movie or tv show you wanted! i'm reading the third stupid vampire book so i didn't use the tv much but it was nice to have the option to watch a movie if you wanted. they even had office space and garden state!! got to santiago and was shocked to find that just about all of the signs in the airport were in spanish and english! didn't think i'd see much english but i was wrong! figured out where to pay the entry fee (thanks owen and jenny!!), got through the police checkpoint, found my luggage, didn't get stopped by the adorable agriculture dogs (three labs, so cute!), made it through customs (had to stop after i went through because no one even asked me a question when i went through and i thought maybe i'd missed it...but that was really it), figured out where to get my tickets for the next two flights (not easy....), didn't get charged for the extra luggage (wasn't able to get it down to 50 pounds....more like 80....), and got really confused trying to find the gate for my next flight. gave up after searching for a while (there's only like 10 gates so it shouldn't be that hard.....) and changed into clean clothes, brushed my teeth, and found a little cafe with a WI FI ZONA. figured out how to get online and now all is well! still have no clue where the gate is but we don't board for an hour so i'll figure it out at some point......

interesting things so far:

• there is an awful lot of english around. a lot of the advertisements are only in english which is really odd. but very helpful if you're not fluent....
• the first place i found to eat was......Dunkin' Doughnuts. for reals. like i said before, the airport isn't very big and i've already found not just 1, but 2 dunkin' doughnuts. apparently chileans really like doughnuts.
• when i logged online, my computer suddenly spoke spanish. everything was en espanol and it took me ages to figure out how to change it back to english.... the computer didn't automatically change the time to the new time zone but it somehow decided to start speaking a foreign language.....
• when you have a blue tooth mouse in your bag, it's a good idea to have it turned off. every time i stopped typing and went digging in my bag, the curser started moving around and i thought someone had hacked into my computer. drove me nuts until i realized that the mouse was still turned on and i was the one moving the curser......
  
• the soap operas on television here are even worse than they are in the US.
  
• the mountains here are AMAZING. i've seen a mountain or two in my time and these just took my breath away. flying into santiago was amazing. the airport is surrounded by green agriculture fields, tin shacks, and scattered buildings. it's totally flat and the Andes mountains rise up out of nowhere and beckon. it's almost like salt lake city, only the mountains are much closer and they stretch out in a line as far as you can see. they're incredible. i can't wait to get back in a plane so i can see more!!
  
• as long as you're willing to take a few risks, everything will work out just fine!

alrighty it's time to resume the hunt for the gate. wish me luck!! i'm going to attempt to put a video on the blog - OR gave me a really wicked ipod as a going away present and it has a video camera on it!!! thank you OR!!!!! i don't have any video of chile yet but i took a video of my dog owen (aka toof) so let's start with that one. sweet!! :)