next level of immersion

i'm moving today. i'll be living with a peruvian family in las condes (a very nice area) - apparently they wanted me from the beginning, but they had family guests up to this point. so off i go - i still know almost nothing about them, except they don't speak any english. and out comes my crutch. i've basically been speaking english at mireya's, so i'm going to have to take a deep breath and really kick into espanol gear in my brain.  i think the trickiest part will actually be reorienting myself to getting places, as i'm going to have to learn whole new areas of the micro (bus) system, which brings out whole new levels of self-doubt that i never knew i had. i took a couple new buses to get to a friend's house yesterday and my thought process is this: check my note, yes, this is for sure the bus i am looking for. check it again. yes. oh! that's the bus. isn't it?! yes. for sure, yes, get on! (sit down) did i get on the right bus? (look for confirmation somewhere inside) begin double checking landmarks as i go. okay. i'm on the right bus for sure. now where do i get off? ok. i know where that is. try to gauge how close i am. realize i have no idea. glue face to window and check sign name at every street. silently curse the old man who has fallen asleep at the window, blocking the majority of my view. for 30 minutes. feel doubt as to whether i've missed the stop and am now looping back around the entire route. there's the stop! i knew it. now what bus am i looking for....   

the only thing that makes me smile when i think about transantiago at the moment is that soon (fingers crossed) i will be getting a student discount on my bip card, which is like 75% off, which will be amazing, since my biggest expense right now is definitely transportation. why did i not get this before, you might be asking... well, because i was a bit illegal. yes - i had my visa and everything, but what no one told me was that i had to register myself with the international police and then get fingerprinted and get an official chilean id, called a cedula. now that i have completed the kafka-esque task of threading my way through the chilean bureaucracy (about 7 hours of line-waiting and attempting to explain my ignorance in spanish) i will soon be rewarded with my cedula, with which i can apply for a "bip escolar." yay.