Just a little different

I knew that being in a world of Spanish would be a challenge. I knew that being in a different culture on a different continent, in a different country would also lend its challenges. However what has really effected me the most, even more so then the language, the culture, is being in a city of five million people. Iowa City's population seems like a tiny little down compared to Santiago. The constant roar of the micros, the non-stop flux of strange and different faces, the smog, the intensity dominates my daily experience. Leaving Santiago this weekend to go to Valparaiso, which only has 270,000 people living there (normally, new years is a bit difference) has a much different feel to it. It is a different world from Santiago, being a port town with a view of the ocean. In the next few weeks I will get a chance to explore Chile, and Argentina, and get a sense of the rest of the country. Right now I'm the same as someone who only has seen New York, who has never crossed the rest of the US. I wonder what I will find in those smaller communities. How will the reaction to foreigners be different? How about prices? Do people think of time in the same way that they think of time in Santiago? Is everybody as late to everything as they are in Santiago? It could possible be even more extreme. Just from the glances I have gotten in my short jaunts out of the city, I can tell that the rest of Chile is a much different world than this crazy loud city.