A Gringa in Chile

Before coming to Chile, no one adequately warned me about the language difference. I obviously knew that they spoke Spanish, and knew that they would have some of their own Chilean slang. What I didn't realize, however, is that Chilean Spanish is crazy. Chile is a very isolated country; they've got a desert in the north, Patagonia and glaciers to the south, mountains to the east, and the ocean to the west. This isolation has caused a lot of different environmental and cultural phenomena, notably, creating an interesting Spanish dialect. A Chilean accent is to Spanish how an Irish accent is to English. Really fun to try to understand for a non-native speaker! One of the biggest differences in how Chileans speak is their accent. Now Cony, my host sister, told me that Chileans have a pretty neutral accent and will lose it if they travel out of their country for a week or two, but for me, the accent is very pronounced and strange. I'm used to hearing a Spanish accent, which

Most people start their travel blogs off with their first impressions of the new places they've explored or new cultures they've experienced. Maybe they stick with a list of favorite new restaurants, foods, or places. I thought about starting with those, and maybe I will make those blog posts in the future, but I figured that the best way to start off my blog was to get myself out of my comfort zone. I needed to get some things off of my chest in order to honestly show what my study abroad experience is like.  So I'm starting off my blog with a list of the embarrassing things that have happened to me in the first month of studying abroad in Concepcion, Chile.  1) Speaking Spanish I'm going to be honest here, I thought I would be a pro at Spanish within my first week in Chile. After all, I've studied Spanish for more than seven years, I've always done well in my Spanish classes, and I even had a dream in Spanish before! Everyone knows that the minute