Fido and my holding pattern

Today was the day I decided it would be a good idea to hop (literally) on a horse. We took an hour-long ride around Olmue, which is quite pretty and mist-covered. I needed a bit of help getting on and off the thing, and I think trotting is significantly more painful when you can only put one foot in the stirrups, but I was more or less successful. My horse, who was named Fido (Fee-do in Spanish), was kind of slow--the guides had to keep pushing him along--but I think we bonded...especially while he was trotting. My coccyx is sore. We also took a slew of placement tests for our program-run grammar class, and began getting oriented on the inner-workings of the university we'll be attending. Being here is kind of strange; I don't feel like it's quite hit me that I'm actually in Chile--it feels more like a holding pattern stuffed with strange food. There's a lot of down time here, and no one really knows what to do with themselves. We're all waiting for our Chilean experience to kick-start itself, and I suppose it has, but right now it just feels like 40 Americans hanging out in a mountain resort where some people speak Spanish. Luckily, the kids all seem pretty cool, and it's fun to get to know them. Still, I think I'll be happy to move in with my family come Saturday. It's strange to think I'll be here for the next five months; when you actually sit down and think about the number it sounds like a whole lot of time--especially when you take the holding pattern environment into account. Everyone's super nice, though, especially to those of us confined to immobilizing boots, so it's hard to feel too uneasy. Although waking up early in the morning and not realizing where you are can be difficult no matter how nice people are. Well, I'm off to see a Chilean-slang-laden film, and then possibly out to a karaoke bar... On a sidenote, some random stranger is taking a series of photos of us (about a dozen kids from the program) as we type away on our laptops in the hotel restaurant. We're all clustered around small tables, intently staring at our individual screens, clearly American students, and clearly disturbed by the fact that, for a change, we're the ones being photographed by people we don't know. It's like we've taken our native environment in our carry-on bags...a new form of globalization?