Santiago: "Noh vamoh a orientar"

Santiago at last! Well actually that's a bit of a belated statement since I've now been here for almost a full week exactly, but my excitement is still running pretty high (perhaps due to the fact that I got to have a little taste of home--Pizza Hut--for lunch). Better to start from the beginning, though.
After waking up pretty early last Morning, stopping at Meme and Papa's house to say goodbye and Walmart to pick up the last necessities (sunscreen, a cover for my kindle, and an alarm clock radio--battery powered), I drove with the folks and Anna Laurie to catch my flight in Birmingham. My Uncle Ken and [cousin] Alex met us at the airport to say goodbye as well, and with plenty of time to spare I said my despedidas (love you guys!) and boarded my connecting flight to Miami.
That flight was pretty uneventful, except for the amazing views of the city as we landed, but once there I was able to meet several of the other students going to Santiago, all of whom are more than nice and fun to be around. After a short delay for the second half of my flight we were greeted in the airport by the director of our exchange program, Lynne, and the coordinator, Ryan, who escorted us to the university where our host mothers were ready to pick us up.
My host mom, Genarina Fernández, is older and lives alone, but always has friends and relatives over, and is super amable. I also have a temporary host sister, Alex, who's here for a few weeks from NYU with a graduate program.
Genarina's house is in a very nice neighborhood called la Zurza, a short walk away from the university, PUCMM (an acronym pronounced "Poo-ka-my-ma") and an even shorter walk from Santiago's most famous landmark, the former monument to the dictator Trujillo and now Monument to the Heroes of the Restoration (a war fought to free the country of Spain's dastardly clutches in the 19th century--here's a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monumento_de_Santiago). Neither my room (nor, I think, does the rest of the house) have air conditioning, even though it's quite a nice place, but this is pretty common. Luckily it isn't really too big a deal because most rooms have really powerful fans to keep out the heat. The other most notable thing about living with Genarina is that she has two outside dogs and three cats that come in and out. Usually I'm deathly allergic to cats, but they haven't really affected me so far, I think because all the open windows and doors keep any allergens from building up. Oh and did I mention that two of the cats were pregnant when I got here, and that they both gave birth today? Yep, the cat population of my house more than tripled in one day.
I'll save the descriptions of the university and the city for another post, to keep this one from getting over-large, but here's a recap on the actual activities up to this point: various tours of the university and the city (including a scavenger hunt), a couple of trips to discotecas at night with the estudiantes de apoyo, Dominican students who volunteer to help with us clueless foreigners, a dance class with said students, and a whole lot more. Sunday we even took a day trip to the capital, Santo Domingo, and toured both the old colonial zone (including cathedrals, the old fort, and the ruins of sugar mills) which is really the first permanent European settlement in the New World. Today gave us a little downtime with a low-key discussion at Lynne's house and then a moving dinner, where all of the foreign students in our area went to each other's host homes for different courses (all muy rico of course). Tomorrow classes start, though, for which I should probably get some sleep! Expect a (perhaps sobering) description of life at PUCMM in the next post. ¡Hasta luego!