My new sister

Hola!!
It's Saturday, I've known about my new family for approximately 36 hours. In that time I sent my host mom an email (based on the email provided) and later in the day I had an email "HOLA ... de Chile!" but not from my mom as I had expected but from my sister! Her email was all in spanish (obviously) and I was excited to see that i could get the jist of it without looking things up!! (although in the end I did, just to make sure I was responding appropriately). She sounds really nice! Included a picture of her family, told me she is one of three children and had asked about what I like to eat and what would I like them to cook for me! So anyway, we have emailed a few times and then I looked her up on Facebook, just to see, and sure enough there she was! She accepted my friend request instantly (turns out we were online at the same time...) and then started a facebook chat with me! That was somewhat petrifying. Again, I could pretty much understand everything she was saying, but then I started to doubt myself and started looking things up. She was patient with my slow, limited spanish and said that its okay, "es normal" hahahaha (or should I say jajaja).
I am sooooo excited now!!! (still really nervous to actually speak face to face...) It should be soo awesome!!! (noticing a theme?)
Thats all for now, just wanted to let you know I am in contact with my host family!! Wahoo!
adios!

I have a family!

I woke up this morning and discovered I have a family when I get to Chile!!!!
That was soo exciting!!! I didn't think I would find out who they were until I got there! The email that the information was sent in gave sort of a disclosure... majority of the host families are single women or widows a smaller percentage are couples without children and though the most popular request by Americans is a family with college age kids the reality is that they just do not have the time or space to host an international student.
So anyway with that in mind I opened the attachment with the information and I've got a couple with kids! I am soo fortunate because not only do they have kids, but kids close to my age!!! I've got 2 older brothers, one is 27 and the other is 24 and a younger sister who is 17!! Almost a complete role reversal for me!! I am sooo excited!!! My host dad is a teacher at La Universidad de Vina del Mar and my mom works in an international pastry/bakery shop. (at least from what I understand from their descriptions...). This should be such an incredible experience. I cant wait!!!
12 days!!!!!

VISA IS READY

HELLO!
After reading Paige's blogs from the DR I decided to give this blogging thing a shot. In an ideal world I will blog about my time in Chile on a semi-regular basis and even post some pictures... We'll see what really happens.
I leave in 2 weeks and one day from today!!! And even better, I got the email today saying that my visa is ready!!! WOO!!! So I will be off to LA to pick it up from the consulate at the end of this week or next week. I think now everything will hit and I'll start freaking out more about being gone for 5 months.
Let me back-track a little, I am going to Chile to study abroad for the semester. I'm leaving August 6th and will return mid December. There are 20-40 Americans in my program (we'll say 30 for now as a nice round number) and I think about 5 from DU (don't hold me to that number). We will each be staying with a host family, but do not know anything about our families until we get there... Talk about suspenseful! I'm taking 5 classes down there, cultural/historical type classes and they are taught by Chilean professors all in Spanish (my classmates will be the people in my program). Needless to say I will be learning a LOT of Spanish VERY quickly. hahaha.

ADIOS!