Meeting the Family

When we arrived back at the Hotel Acacias de Vitacura on Saturday, our host families were already waiting for us in the lobby. I gathered my suitcase and two bags, and took off with my host-mom, Ana Maria Silva. On the way over, I learned a little about the family and where they live.

The Paredes-Silva family has been hosting study abroad students for years now,and just recruited the neighbors across the street to do so too. The other host-mom is named Olga, and her home-stay daughter from USAC is Lena. As I prefer to go by Elena as my Spanish name, this may end up being confusing!

The Paredes-Silva family comprises of the mom, Ana Maria Silva, the dad, Jorge Paredes, and two daughters, Anea Silva and Macarena (or Maca for short) Paredes-Silva. Jorge Paredes is an accountant and does a lot of programming. When I saw him using Ubuntu on on of the computers at the house, I asked him about it, and he was amazed, saying I was only the second person out of all the students they have hosted who was familiar with the operating system. Ana Maria is a stay-at-home mom, and used to be an English teacher; now she just does private lessons.

Anea, age 22, is studying music at la Universidad Catolica, and is a choral director. Maca, soon to be 21, studied mathematics at Universidad Catolica for three years, but gave up on it due to a lack of job opportunities. In Hispanic countries, what you study is what you plan on doing for a living, and there was simply nothing that she wanted as a job in pure mathematics. When the assistant director saw my housing application, with my mathematics major and participation in music, she thought immediately of the Paredes-Silva family, because of the common interests that the daughters and I share.

The house in in Nunoa, one of the many neighborhoods in Santiago. To get to my classes from here is an hour-long trip on the metro. Luckily, my classes start at 9:30 AM each day, so I have plenty of time to spare if I leave from 8 to 8:15 with my metro-buddy, Lena.
Nunoa is immediately east of downtown Santiago. The USAC classes are on the west-border of Santiago and Estacion Central.