---> The 2nd most exciting moment for an exchange student . . .

. . . is getting their HOST FAMILY!!!
I suppose the most most exciting moment would be arriving.

I have:
Parents
18 year old brother
16 year old sister
13 year old sister

I got an email from AFS two days ago, a few minutes after I had been worrying about not having a host family. And I went on to check my emails and BAM! It sure put a smile on my dial.

I'm a going to email them today, in Spanish (which should be interesting as it is a long time since I have practiced my spanish, and hopefully should get some more information about them.

The city where I'll be living is in region III (Chile is divided into regions, with region I right at the top) which puts me at the edge of the Atacama desert. It's called Copiapó, and has a population on 129,000 people (about 2 1/2 times the size of New Plymouth). I'm SO glad that I'll be living somewhere, which by the looks of the pictures, is beautiful, different landscape from NZ, and HOT! And of course I'm grateful to my host family, who I can't wait to meet!

(there's a map of Chile with Copiapó on it on my blogger blog - http://anita-oversea.blogger.com )