Welcome to the YMCA!

Hola!

Wow, I have so much to tell! It’s been a jam-packed past few days, and I’m finding it really difficult to put my experiences into words, it’s definitely been a whirlwind and I wish I could tell about every little thing that I’ve experienced! But I was thinking that I should probably give some background to the YMCA and the actual city of Valparaíso before I start telling all my stories! I know that I didn’t know that much about this city before I came here, and I only know about Chile because a big part of my major is studying the culture and history of Latin American countries! So here is my mini introduction.

Before I came, I just thought it was funny that Valpo would have an exchange program with a city in Chile with the same name, and that was really all that I knew about Valparaíso besides that it was by the sea. But this is a main city in Chile, the third largest actually! I was really surprised on the plane when I was reading the guidebook that I’d bought (and saved for the plane, because I was too busy to read it beforehand, ha) listed Valparaíso as a place that you MUST visit in Chile and one of the most beautiful cities in Chile. Que buena suerte para mi! (What good luck!)

And the guidebook certainly wasn’t exaggerating. WOW. Valparaíso for me is kind like the Chilean version of Chicago because it has a main, crazy busy city surrounded by hills that are filled with houses, like the suburbs of Chicago. The actual city of Valparaíso certainly isn’t as big as Chicago, but its big! The YMCA is right in the heart of the city. Looking at pictures of groups in years past, for some reason I thought that the YMCA was really small and that social programs were its main focus, but I was greatly mistaken! This place is huge, and has a million different things going on at every moment! One of the things I really enjoy about Valparaíso is that there’s an interesting mix of very modern things and very old-fashioned, and the YMCA is a great example of that. The first floor is like the lobby of any business in the U.S., and it has great wi-fi which makes me very happy! The 2^nd-4^th floors are filled with gyms, and classrooms for all the different classes that go on here: spinning, aerobics, dancing, and I swear that every single class has BLARING techno music that goes with it, especially in the afternoons! (This was not a grand beginning to my stay here, we were exhausted after the flights and tried to take a nap in the afternoon with this music blaring…not highly successful. I felt like the music was describing how I was feeling at the moment, my head spinning with lack of sleep and all the new things that I was experiencing, yikes!). There is also a youth gathering room for all the youth programs that go on here.

I live on the fifth floor, and there are at least 10 rooms up there that people can rent out to live in. Erica and I share a room, but there are 6 bunk beds in the room, so we have lots of space to spread out J The only sad thing is that our room is directly above the basketball gym, and people like to play until 11 when the Y closes and right when the Y opens…also, our neighbors are obsessed with watching movies until 1 in the morning…I’m becoming an expert at sleeping through anything! Oh, and also, I got all set up on my bunkbed only to find out that  I choose the one that squeaks and wobbles when you move..but I’m to lazy to move all my stuff! We have a kitchen that all the residents of the Y share, and cooked for the first time yesterday. The kitchen is not very modern, no dishwasher or microwave and using a gas stove and oven was quite the experience, I’m still not very used to it! Also, probably burned my finger lighting the stove. Points for me 😉 We use the women’s locker room for our bathrooms, and the best part about that is COMMUNAL SHOWERS, woo! I’ve been really lucky so far, the Y is much more packed during the afternoon and night than the early morning, so its only been me and Erica braving the experience. But it’s only a matter of time…yikes. We also have a little laundry room, which Erica and I tried out yesterday. Disaster. First disaster was a display of my lack of what I like to call “life smarts”. I couldn’t figure out for the life of me where to put the detergent. Did I do it right? Probably not. Then, trying to figure out how to program that thing in Spanish was another good 10 minutes. Did I do it right? Eh, it started spinning and filling with water, so that was good by me. I thought that everything was fine when I started the dryer, but I came back an hour later to find my clothes still soaking. 2 hours later? Wet. 2 hours later? THROWN ON THE LAUNDRY ROOM FLOOR IN A PILE! AND STILL WET! Poor Erica’s clothes were thrown out of the washer and soaking, pobrecita! (poor thing!). So our room has clothes hanging from every possible spot….and they are not drying fast, let me tell you.

Ok, well I guess this turned into more of a tour of the Y instead of Valpo, but I’ll do that next, it’s gonna need a few posts, because we’ve toured a lot of places already! But I did put my pictures on Picasa and Facebook as well, so you should check those out! Besides the fitness programs, the Y sponsors a lot of social programs and youth programs and that is what I am going to be working in. We tour all of the programs tomorrow and Wednesday and then start working on Thursday, so I’ll tell you about those later in the week! Chao! Besos! (Kisses! A common way to say goodbye between friends in Chile :D)