When I first got here I slept almost a whole day, I had a shower and went to bed when I first arrived and ended up waking at around 4:30am Santiago time so I tried to go back to sleep but I just couldn't, I knew then it was going to be hard for me to adjust as I write this its 5am NZ time which is 2pm Chilean time more than just a couple of hours difference not only my sleeping patterns are messed up but my eating patterns as well.

When I got up for breakfast the guy that had checked me in sat down and had a bit of a chat to me, Maik is from Germany, speaks English Spanish and German fluently and has travelled over Europe, Australia, new Zealand, USA and most of south America and has settled in Santiago for around 7 months, talking to him was awesome knowing that he was once in the same boat as me at one point, he helped me out with a map and showed me where the local supermarket and the mall were as well as explained the metro system to me which as it turns out is simple as.

So my first mourning in a new country armed with my map I walked to the metro station and went to the atm with it being in Spanish it took me a while to figure out how to use my foreign card and the I proceeded to walk around the metro station looking lost as hell luckily one of the officers spoke some English and helped me out, and explained it all to me the people here have no problem helping you if you look lost even if they don't speak English all I've had to do is point to it on the map and they point me in the right direction.

I ended up going to the mall to get and adapter for the adapter that I bought at Auckland airport which was too big......and when I saw the building I was gob smacked with how big it was, the first the I saw when I walked in was a CAT store and I was like what the hell? The place that makes trucks and diggers has a store? and as I walked from floor to floor doing full loops around each one there was more and more awesome stores a full store dedicated to Lego, big brands like Adidas and Nike all had their own stores, and then the massive food court with everything from pizza hut to taco bell I'm yet to attempt to order something but I imagine it wouldn't be too hard. You could literally walk around this place for hours and not get through all the stores on the 6 floors of the place.

Because of the weather on the first day which was cloudy I choose to go to the mall rather than a bit of sightseeing so I was happy to wake up the next day to sunshine, I went for a walk to Santa Lucia Hill a monument on a hill where they used to defend the city from, it looks almost out of place, Santiago isn't exactly a "pretty" city but this place looks amazing and breaks up the concrete jungle that is Santiago. On the way there I took heaps of photos on the 20min walk there only to have my camera go flat one I walked in the gate...So I'm going to have to go back but oh well. I guess it was sort of good cause I just took my time and wondered around and took everything in without having to worry about documenting it all, at the top of the hill it almost looks like a castle and at the tower at the top you can see the city in a full 360 I never realised how big Santiago was until I went up there, hate to sound like English class but it made me feel so small in the city it was just massive buildings as far as the eye can see coming from Oamaru were nothing is over 2 stories to going to a city of skyscrapers is insane but with the people being so nice I almost feel at home, I'm by no means being complacent I know with these types of cities there are people here that would steal with no problem so I still keep my guard up while enjoying meeting some of the people that have been kind enough to help me out.