Time for another update. Its halfway through my second week and things are going well so far. I signed a contract on the apartment I am staying in yesterday, of course it was in Spanish. The apartment will fine be for my time here. Its quite small but relatively cheap and a nice location. There is a Starbucks around the corner, I don't normally go to Starbucks but it is surprisingly difficult to find good coffee here. Nescafe seem to have a monopoly on instant coffee here. There is one good place, cafe de roma one metro stop away that I know from previous visits. Its a real Italian style espresso bar, you can either stand and read the paper inside or sit outside on the pavement and watch the world go by. I also joined a gym last night, it is 2 minutes up my road, which incidentally has the rather grand sounding name Napoleon. Its quite small, split over 3 levels with machines, loose weights, cardio machines. I'll probably try some classes as well, they do spin and something called Body Power which I understood to be interval training with weights, then again with my spanish it could be ballet dancing! I normally do bootcamps and boxing in the botanic gardens at lunchtimes in Brisbane which I'll miss, we have a good little group of regulars.
This is the first week of semester, I gave my first lecture on Monday, the second is later today. There are six students on the course, three of whom I know from the summer schools I have taught on the last few years. They only wanted to take six in the first year as they don't have the resources initially to supervise them for their research projects. If we could find some funding then I would like one or two of them to spend time doing some research project time at QUT (Julia Gillard, if you're reading and still prime minister, we would like some funding for a good cause).
I have to mention the weather. Since I have been here, there has hardly been a cloud in the sky and 30C every day. The nice thing about the climate in Santiago is the low humidity which makes it feel extremely pleasant. There is a constant haze hanging over the city due to the pollution I think, it does make for some beautiful sunsets over the Andes each night though.   I have been reading about all the rain they have been having back in the 'sunshine state', crazy.

till next time
Andrew