Day One: The (attempted) Departure

Mar 2, 2018
2 min read

Hello! My name is Karlie Kohler and I am one of eleven students who are lucky enough to be embarking on a study abroad experience in Santiago, Chile this week. We are a collection of eleven students from the BFA Acting program at Montclair State University and we are traveling to Chile to study theatre with the amazing students at the Universidad Mayor.

For the next seven days I will be documenting our adventures on this blog!

Our first day began with our departure from Montclair via shuttle to JFK. We departed at 1:30pm amidst sleet and rain. We were all thrilled to be traveling to warmer temperatures. After sitting in about five hours of the worst traffic any of us had ever seen, we arrived at the airport and were miraculously on time for our flight. We ran through the airport only to find out that our flight was in fact delayed. After hours of sitting, one food voucher, great conversation, lots of games, and a few hours exploring the airport, we finally boarded our flight at 11:30pm and we were in the air by 12:45am. Our flight to Santiago was eleven hours but the movie selection on the flight was top notch which made the time go by pretty quick! Cameron, one of the eleven of us, slept the entire time, mostly on Mary Grace’s shoulder. Andrew, also one of us, sobbed while watching The Notebook, and I mastered the art of contorting my body into comfortable positions to attempt to sleep! After eleven hours we finally arrived in beautiful beautiful Santiago to begin our first official day in Chile!