the million dollar answer: región V - quilpué!

When I was packing for this trip (and by packing I mean throw a bunch of stuff in a suitcase the night before my flight), I couldn't figure out exactly what kind of clothing to bring because I had no idea where my placement would be yet.  Chile, being the long country that it is, is home to incredible climate variations so the decision was to bring not much, but a little bit of everything.

Well, that decision worked out and I can finally answer all of you who have been asking me where I'm going to live and teach for the next 8 months.  My host town will be Quilpué in Region V (Valparaiso).  All 51 of our placements were unveiled today at training via a very neatly put-together powerpoint so that everyone knew where everyone else was going as well.  All of the WT crew is going to region V as well as one other Ingles Abres Puertas (IAP) volunteer, AnnaMarie from South Africa.  The rest are going to regions as far up as Antofagasta (II), as far south as Magallenes (XII) in Patagonia, and everywhere in between.  I'm hoping to get to visit a lot of them!

As for Quilpué, I don't know too much about it yet and Google hasn't really given too much to work with besides its population of about 120,000.  GoogleMaps also shows that it's a little inland, surrounded by hills and close to the coastal mountain range.  I do know that Valparaiso Region is just north of Santiago metropolitan and has the port city of Valparaiso and beach resort city of Viña del Mar.  I think my town is close to Viña and I'll be able to visit there easily by metro.  It's still in the central valley so the weather won't be too extreme in either direction--colder in the winter and warmer in the summer.

I'll report about it more when I get there!