La Serena, Chile!

I finally found out my host city, family, and school!! I will be living in...drum roll please... La Serena! It is a gorgeous city of about 200,000 people and it is right on the beach. I have an 18 year old host brother, a 16 year old host sister, and my host parents! They are so nice and are (hopefully) as excited to meet me as I am to meet them. I'll be attending a small Catholic school with about 30 kids in each grade. That will definitely be different than what I'm used to here in Portland (where each grade has 450 kids - the same size of the whole Pre-K through 12th grade school I will be attending!) but it will be an interesting experience to say the least. I am so happy that I was assigned La Serena. It was the city that I really wanted, because the girl that went to Chile last year (the one that convinced me to pick Chile as my first choice at the country fair!) lived in La Serena and had such an incredible experience. I really can't wait to go. I've been hard at work preparing to leave; getting fingerprinted for my Visa, studying for the SAT, learning as much conversational Spanish as possible! I know that all of the preparation will soon pay off though. 3 and a half more months!!

Not too horrible

The beach is a 10 minute drive from my home

SO GORGEOUS

My school - Colegio Santo Tomas La Serena. a 3-5 minute drive from my house!