Things I’ve Learned About Chile/Chileans, Part 2

I’ve just been working. My mood/patience have improved since I last wrote, for anyone who was worried. It has been sunny and warm here, which means basically nothing for the temperature of my office, and has made the smog worse. I spent all day Friday out in the streets- yes, like walking between cars and trucks- collecting money for my office. And when I came home, I had a headache, probably from inhaling exhaust all day.

But, any faith that I had lost in Chileans (which really wasn’t that much) was restored that day. They are givers, those Chileans. They may have only contributed a little individually, but they were actually really receptive to us walking around and asking for change. I would even dare to say that I had a better experience collecting money from Chileans than I’ve seen with Americans. And I include myself in that! It’s really not that often that I give to the Salvation Army at Christmas. I fail at the whole rice bowl thing for Lent. So to see all the people who had change ready to go, who rolled down their windows and waved me over if I didn’t see them, or who were wearing stickers telling us that they’d already given, was quite encouraging.

Last year I wrote this post, which was inspired by this post. (Side note: if you are traveling or living abroad, you MUST read that blog! Ms. Liv is a great writer and has a lot of wisdom to share about what it’s like to live in other languages and other cultures.) Considering that I have no earth-shattering revelations about life or work this week, I figured I’d have a little fun adding to my own list about what I know about living here in Chile:

The dairy products are not as good. Yeah, I’m biased because I live in Wisconsin. But it all just tastes funny, and anything “light” is loaded up with very strong artificial sweeteners. I would love a big, cold glass of Wisconsin skim milk right now. I’m confused as to how more pasteurization makes their milk and butter smell more like the cow. Also, I can’t get behind the idea of milk sitting in boxes, unrefrigerated. Which is how they sell it and store it here.

You can buy things in individual units here. You know how we usually buy yogurts in packs of six or whatever, and the price is for that many yogurts? Not here. They price yogurt per unit. You can do the same thing with juice boxes, chocolate milk boxes, all kinds of things that Americans usually buy in multiples.

Child rearing is a little different. Okay, I’m obviously not saying that Americans have one way of disciplining and forming their children, and Chileans have another way. What I want to say is that overall, children stay younger, for longer. I’m usually referred to as a niña. Which, when I learned Spanish, meant “little” or “young” girl. I thought that by now I’d at least be a muchacha, if not a full-fledged mujer. Not here. I wonder if that’s a cultural-linguistic thing. Language and culture are very closely linked. Could the fact that they’re still referring to girls my age as “niñitas” or “chiquillas” reflect how young they think we are, or how young they should treat us? Then again, people wonder why a girl of my age- aka, marriageable and child-bearing- is not pololeando (in a relationship).

But seriously. Americans, if you don’t like the idea of dating people who still live with their parents, good luck avoiding that in Santiago. If the person is from Santiago and unmarried, chances are, he or she lives at home, even well into their twenties or thirties. Sometimes there’s a push to get married, but there is no rush for people to get out of the house and start living independently while they’re single. None at all.

The taxi drivers almost never talk to you. This is the opposite of the New York cabbie stereotype, where they want to tell you everything about themselves and want to learn everything about you. They are silent here. Which is why I was shocked a couple of weeks ago when my cab driver complimented me on my Spanish and proceeded to talk to me over the course of a twenty minute cab ride. He was also probably the only cab driver who didn’t overcharge me!

This country is low on immigration in general, although more and more immigrants are arriving from Colombia, Bolivia, and Peru. Because there are so few immigrants, they are easy to spot, and the Chileans are the best at knowing who’s a Chilean and who’s not. They can also probably pick out the person’s nationality. I’m working on another post about how to spot a Chilean versus a foreigner. How could you mix them up, you ask? Because Chileans, especially in certain parts of Santiago, are really quite European compared to other Latin Americans. When I get on the metro in the morning, most of my fellow passengers would fit right in in the States, and we would never guess that they don’t speak English. Stay tuned! It’s actually a pretty fun game.

A favorite pastime of young Chilean couples is to make out on public transportation. And when I say make out, I am not exaggerating. In the US, we tend to groan if people even sneak a kiss or hold hands on the sidewalk. I would be grateful if I could see a couple limit themselves to that. Nary a day goes by where I don’t see a couple making out so hard that they’re not even coming up for air. The other day, I was standing in one end of the car, and all the way at the other end, I could see a guy basically digging for clams in his girlfriend’s mouth. Yes, I am modest, but seriously! No one wants to see that! Not even the other Chileans! (Until they’re the ones doing it…)

They’re really into brushing their teeth. Which is good considering all of the tea and soda they drink.

Girls have a thing about washing their hair. Like, it’s gotta be washed and clean before they can go out, even if they’ve already showered that day. I don’t understand it.

The cookies are really not that good. Which is why when my host mom asked if I wanted to grab a bag of Betty Crocker chocolate chip cookie mix, I absolutely said yes.

Proof that there is a God who loves us.

I can make better ones from scratch. But they were still delicious, and this was cheaper than buying chocolate chips.

Carbs and wine make for a good, chill Saturday night.

My NGO constructs houses. So for our fundraising campaign, we collected money in little houses!

We had black bananas. Of course I made muffins. With cinnamon sugar topping.

That’s life right now, guys! Keep an eye out for another post soon. Oh, and if anyone would like to contribute to the “Things I Know About Chileans” list, please comment!

With love,

Gaby

I am not on vacation

I think the honeymoon is over.

There are several phases to culture shock. The same phases apply during a return trip. The first phase is the honeymoon. You’re thrilled to be back, everything is awesome, you only see all of the good things that you missed so much while you were gone. The past couple of weeks, I was up to my ears in palta and tea and I still loved the metro and I was pretty much euphoric to be back.

Then it rained and got cold. And I was like, okay, this is kind of a bummer. But it’s winter. What did I expect? I knew that was coming. And I dealt with it.

Then I wasn’t sleeping great. And when I don’t sleep well, I lack the energy to exert myself and keep talking and thinking in Spanish. It’s also more difficult for me to understand Spanish. In general, lack of sleep makes my life here even more difficult than it does at home.

Then the little things started to get to me. Like how the metro station only had ONE cashier available to reload metro cards…during rush hour. And then the self-service machine wouldn’t work for me. So then I had to get back in the long line AGAIN. And then I got stuck behind slow people when I got off the metro, and I was already running late. That lack of efficiency is actually pretty standard. I don’t meant for that to be an indictment of this country or its culture. But on that morning in particular, it was infuriating. In my head I was yelling, Come on, people! It’s Monday morning! We’ve got places to be and things to do! Let’s GO! Yup. I was one of those gringas that day. I was not proud of it. And so I entered the second stage of culture shock: irritability and hostility.

Lessons learned that morning: 1) Gringas stand out on their own. A gringa on a tear, like I was that day, stands out even more. 2) This is real life. This is not vacation. And not every day is going to be wonderful and perfect and easy.

I knew this day was coming, of course. I tried to prepare myself for it. No place is perfect, and there are always bad days and good days. It’s important to acknowledge that when you go abroad, and even more important if you’re returning somewhere that you really loved, and maybe idealized a little bit while you were away.

I’m still enjoying being back, though. That was just a rough couple of days, like any I would have at home in the States. My job is great and keeping me very busy. I’ve seen plenty of my friends recently and am ready for quieter, more restful weekend. It’s hard when you have so little time and feel pushed to take advantage of absolutely everything and say no to nothing…but I’ve learned that I can’t really enjoy it if I’m beat, and I know how to respect my limits.

Things I’ve noticed, or maybe have just remembered:

I need to read, talk, think, and listen more in Spanish. I have to be better immersed. It’s difficult because my work day usually involves some time spent reading and writing in English. But three weeks in now (well that was fast), I need  to do a lot more reading and listening besides emails and work stuff, and besides the occasional Spanish-language song that pops up on the radio station I listen to at work all day. That’s the thing with a second language- it’s your second language, so it’s not permanently ingrained into your brain, and it takes work to activate it and keep it activated. You do lose it if you don’t use it!

I will say, though, that my Salvadoran coworker asked me why I talk like a Chilean. And a taxi driver complemented me on my Spanish and asked how I got so good.

There is a significant and noticeable demographic shift between my home metro station and where I get off for work. I am largely surrounded by professionals and upper-middle, upper-class students when I get on the train. When I change trains halfway, the station is packed with a mix of the entire city- suits, school uniforms, university students, push-up jeans and big earrings, moms in sweatpants carrying their babies wrapped up in blankets. When I get off my second train and get on the bus, it’s largely a working and lower-middle class crowd. It’s a population that obviously has stronger indigenous roots than the people who got on the train with me at the beginning. At the top of the trip, there really aren’t that many people you can look at and identify as “Latino,” as we think of it in the US. At the end of it, chances are much higher that anyone with light hair and light eyes is a foreigner. Very few people from my part of town work out where I do, and vice versa. This is a cosmopolitan city in certain parts, but anyone who tells you that it’s well-integrated is flat out lying.

You can’t put a limit on Chileans’ time. In the States we apologize for taking up too much of someone’s time. I have still not figured out how to translate that correctly in Spanish. Probably because the concept really doesn’t exist. This is not to say that they don’t value your time. On the contrary- I think they value it so much that they will take up as much of it as they can! Besides, there isn’t too much of a schedule here. Work starts out pretty slowly. Most everyone arrives by 9:30, and even then people will drop off their things and go to the supermarket to get breakfast and snacks. Lunch starts at 1, and most people aren’t really working again until about 3. This isn’t to say that they don’t work hard- the Chilean economy wouldn’t be what it is if they were lazy!- but it’s certainly more relaxed.

Also, their cookies aren’t as good. Toddy brand cookies are all right. But the other ones…they’re kind of just crunchy things are vaguely reminiscent of chocolate and other flavors. That’s really irrelevant. But it does mean that I think it’s finally time for me to introduce real, homemade chocolate chip cookies to my host family and my Chilean friends.

Santiago looks like:

Las Condes from above on a Saturday night.

Bellas Artes on a Sunday night.

Santiago Centro on a Monday morning.

Breakfast in bed on a Saturday morning. This is the usual. Yeah, I’m spoiled.

Life is real. Thanks for listening.

Love,

Gaby

Allá al fondo

The title doesn’t really have anything to do with this post. I don’t think. It is, however, one of my favorite phrases, because it is so typically Chilean. Ask a Chilean where something is, and they will likely point you in that direction by saying “allá al fondo,” which means “over there and a little further down.” It is probably the least helpful direction, but I love it anyways.

Language reacquisition continues. My team at work consists of two Spaniards and two French girls. I have more trouble understanding their Spanish sometimes than Chilean Spanish- that’s not a joke! I realized that I became so used to Chilean Spanish that it’s actually the accent I understand the most easily. Which is funny, considering that anyone who has traveled anywhere else in the Spanish speaking world will tell you that Chilean Spanish is possibly the worst pronounced and most slang-filled of all of the dialects. I’m also learning a lot of new vocabulary, and various Chilean phrases are coming back to me in bits and pieces.

Most of the people working in my office are from other countries in Latin America- Argentina, El Salvador, Ecuador, and Mexico, for example. It’s been interesting listening to all of the different accents and realizing just how particular the Chilean accent is. I have never traveled anywhere else in Latin America, so I have a very narrow and specific language experience. The other Latin Americans all think it’s hilarious that I say things like, “¿Cómo estai?” instead of “¿Cómo estás?”, or “¿Cachai?” or “bakán.” And I try to explain to them that this is where I learned to speak Spanish! This is the Spanish I know!

Working life is fun. My dad asked me the other day which I like more, work or class…and I think I like work more. Granted, rush hour on the metro and bus is not my favorite thing. Going to work isn’t too crowded. Going home from work is absolutely packed until about the last ten minutes on the metro. It really helps to have people riding with you, at least part way. But the nice thing about work is that I can leave it at the office, and I can do whatever I’d like and go to bed early when I get home. Not like at school, where I have class all day, and then homework all night. There’s something freeing about letting home just be home and not a workspace. But like my dad said, work is for the rest of your life. So I should be careful before I get too excited about it.

As I’ve said before, winter is for real. Last week was especially rough. We had very heavy rain for two days solid last week, and the city flooded. All of the schools in Santiago were closed for a day. For rain. They had a rain day, guys. You would think that in a mountainous area the streets would run off water, but nope. For whatever reason, maybe poor engineering, it rains heavily for about an hour and the streets flood. You inevitably get wet. Combine that with temperatures around 50 and no central heating, and that means you get cold. Very cold. Have I felt colder in my life? I guess in absolute terms, yes. But this is a kind of cold you can’t shake off. One day I drank about five or six cups of tea- regular, caffeinated black tea- just to keep myself warm. I have now taken to bringing my own herbal teas with me to substitute for normal tea, since I just can’t consume that much caffeine and sugar every day. I’m also getting pretty good at layering, and I even brought a small blanket with me to work. I bought a poncho this weekend, and maybe with a couple more turtlenecks, I’ll be set!

This was my bus stop for two days last week.

It was so cold outside that our windows steamed up.

As a side note: you know you’ve been spoiled with central heat when the revelation that people actually use hot water bottles to keep themselves warm is a huge deal.

I have been enjoying my weekend days with my family, hanging around, relaxing, going to the mall. And I have been living up my weekend nights with my friends, going out dancing and enjoying the fact that I never have homework to look forward to on Sundays. The first weekend, my friend N. invited me out with another girl from our school and a Chilean classmate of theirs from their salsa class. We ended up at a small club separated from all of the extranjero craziness of Bellavista, packed with just Chileans and playing only cumbia (the second national dance of Chile, after la cueca). It was an excellent time. We were lucky to have the Chilean with us, because otherwise we never would have gone to this place. Having a Chilean guy with you also decreases the likelihood that men will jotear you- jotear basically means “to creep on” or “to hit on” in English. Going to a place that has a dearth of foreigners also decreases the number of jotes (literally, buzzard…colloquially, creep) present. Why? Because the jotes want the gringas! Jotes know not to go to places like this cumbia club, because their “prey” isn’t there. All in all, it was a good choice.

A mural inside the cumbia club.

Speaking of extranjeros (foreigners), I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on being a foreigner since I’ve come here. As I mentioned, my office is mostly made up of non-Chilean Latin Americans, and a couple of Europeans. I am the only gringa. What we all have in common is that we are foreigners here. We are different. We’re all making the same language adjustments- yes, even those who are native Spanish speakers! We are all living in a culture that is not our own. And the thing is, Chileans notice. They do. Chileans can spot a foreigner like that, with wicked accuracy. You don’t even have to be blonde. I confuse the heck out of them once I start talking, but it only takes a look to know that I’m not from here. My Spanish coworker says it’s because of the way the rest of us dress. It’s not that there’s anything particular strange or different about our clothes, or even about their clothes, but they just know it. It’s little things, like your backpack or your shoes or if you carry a water bottle (a reusable water bottle in the side of a backpack is a dead ringer for Americans!). It’s probably in the way we react to staring. We’re highly aware of our differentness, and therefore extra-sensitive to when people recognize it. Staring back at them gives you away. The Chileans don’t look back. Even the blonde ones.

One last quirk about being blonde and foreign: if you’re blonde, and you catch yourself and another blonde on the metro staring at each other, trying to figure out who’s Chilean and who’s not, trust me. Neither of you are. Chilean blondes don’t stare at other blondes trying to figure out their nationality. Only the foreigners do.

This is what life looks like lately:

This is the reward for two days of rain: beautiful, snowy, powerful mountains.

“It’s not enough to get mad. You have to mobilize.”

I went to Pomaire for a day. Pretty spectacular for winter, and a 180 from a few days before.

That’s all I’ve got, friends! Hope you are enjoying good weather, whatever season you’re in.

With love,

Gaby

Asentándome

Two posts in one day. I feel like writing today.

As I mentioned previously, I’m back. And I am loving it. LOVING it. I had a wonderful week at home, don’t get me wrong. I certainly had my moments where I wondered if I just shouldn’t stay at home all summer and relax, enjoy the good weather, bake. And I’m sure there will be moments in the next ten weeks where I’ll get homesick, and frustrated with the metro, and livid with the micro (the bus), and be absolutely done with rain and cold and 5:00 PM sunsets.

But for now, I am living up this honeymoon phase. I’m eating palta with almost everything. Every cup of tea and even Nescafé is delicious. I love the hubbub and the smell of the centro. It’s so exciting to be walking around everywhere and know where things are. I walked to and from the metro yesterday almost without thinking (don’t worry, I was aware of my surroundings, I was not being unsafe). I remembered how to get to the mall from the metro! I even went to the park to work out yesterday! Certain words and phrases are coming back to me, so I’m sounding a little more Chilean as I get settled back in. All right, so I kind of sound like a gringa who’s seeing everything for the first time and anything that’s not United States means it’s AWESOME. But that’s not how I feel. I feel like someone who is really excited to be home.

There were moments during the first day that were surreal. One second I was in Milwaukee. The next I was on a plane. The next thing I knew, I was walking out of customs with my bags, I turned the corner, and there was my host mom! Then I was in the car and we’re flying down the carretera, and the sun wasn’t even up yet. Then we got home, and it blew my mind how everything smelled exactly the same, most everything was in the same place, and here I was, eating breakfast at the table, in the same seat I sat in at every meal. The sameness has been mind-boggling, but also incredibly comforting. I get to come back knowing everything I learned over five months! There’s almost no awkwardness this time. I’ve come home, to my other house, my other family.

I was making sandwiches last night for dinner, and my host mom suddenly looked up from her work and said, you know, it’s like no time has passed at all. It’s true! It is just like coming home from college at the end of a semester. And I’ve done it twice now, in two weeks. You know you belong somewhere when you can come back and it’s like you’ve never been gone at all. And I am blessed enough to be able to do that in two places.

Here is what the first couple of days have looked like. (I am sorry for the lack of gorgeous food photos. I have mostly been eating with my family, and my best, prettiest meal was shared with our extended family. I didn’t want to be the rude gringa photographing her meal.)

Guys! Look! MOUNTAINS! The world is not flat!

I wonder how many times the neighbors have seen me taking this picture…

One of my favorite things about this house: laying around in bed all morning.

It is fall here. Which makes me want all things pumpkin and cinnamon. And Thanksgiving.

Can I just say that I missed out on fall last year, so the sight of fall leaves is pretty dang great.

And yet, the roses are still in bloom. Makes up for missing the start of rose season at home.

I start my internship tomorrow- yes, my job, which is the real reason why I am here. I hope you are all having fabulous weeks, and thanks for following along so far!

With love,

Gaby

Things I’m Learning about Traveling

I’M BACK.

It was all so easy! I got all of my things packed into two bags, and one was just slightly over the limit- and they didn’t charge me for it. My airline printed my boarding pass for me when I checked my luggage, even though I was taking another airline to Santiago.

I made the smart decision of eating a salad for lunch before I got on my first flight. Trust me on this: do not eat a huge fast food meal before getting on a plane. And drink a lot of water. Yeah, you’ll probably have to get up and use the bathroom on the plane. But you need to move around anyways, and hydration is key. Plane air is so dehydrating. If you add salt to that, you’ll feel icky. Travel tip #1.

Travel tip #2: be good to the couple with the screaming baby. I was eating my lunch in the terminal and there was a 1-year-old throwing a pretty monumental tantrum. You could just tell that everyone was praying that that baby would not be on their flight. But listen. My parents flew me everywhere when I was that little. I flew from Milwaukee to LA at that age. Then they took me to the UK about a year later. I don’t know if I was a screamer, but when you are tempted to glare at those parents for even daring to take their baby on a trip, remember that a) those parents could have been your parents, and b) those parents could be you someday!

Travel tip #3: you can live without Wi-Fi for a day. It’s okay. Try to save the battery on your electronics, because docking stations may be hard to find, and you don’t want to arrive at your destination with dead gadgets in case you need them. Take advantage of in-flight entertainment options and save your money on the shoddy Wi-Fi. Use that money to buy magazines or newspapers instead.

Tip #4: if you’re on an overnight flight, don’t caffeinate. Caffeine is dehydrating, and I’ve already discussed how uncomfortable dehydration can be. It will also keep you awake. You do not want to be awake for an entire overnight flight, especially if you’re changing time zones. I wasn’t. But. That brings me to tip #5:

Sleep! Oh good gracious, I hope you can sleep on planes. I can’t. And it drives me nuts. And I refuse to take anything to help me sleep. I didn’t even have a seat partner this time, and I still couldn’t get comfortable. The people sitting behind me probably hated me for how many times I moved around and tried to settle in. Thank goodness my airline had tons of movies and TV shows available on personal screens (in economy!), because that is what I did all night long. I dozed off for maybe half an hour in total. Oy.

Even if you’re not changing time zones, you need to sleep. If you don’t, your clock will still be messed up. I had conveniently forgotten just how tired I was after my first day in Chile last time. I think maybe I thought that since I already knew the language and would just be with my family all day, it’d be nothing. I’d be tired, but not beat. I was BEAT. I got off the plane, flew through customs, and was suddenly in the car with my host mother and on the way home. It wasn’t even light out yet! It was wonderful, don’t get me wrong, but then it was 10 AM and it felt like it was 1 PM. That is what happens with sleep deprivation, my friends. So I took a two-hour nap and then forced myself to get up, because otherwise I could have slept all day and not slept at all that night, thus repeating the cycle.

Tip #6: don’t drink if you’re tired! Frankly, that’s a life tip, not just a travel tip. But alcohol + no sleep = whoa. I had half of a pisco sour at lunch, and it felt like the world was rocking a little bit. It went away as I kept eating, but man. I knew I should have said no to that drink. But when you’ve been five months without something as great as the pisco sour, how could I say no? (P.S. I never fell over. I always walked straight. I was fine.)

Tip #7: make yourself stay awake until a reasonable bedtime. Unless you are a champion sleeper and can sleep for nine or more hours solid,  don’t go to bed earlier than you usually would. Trust me on this. I cannot sleep more than eight hours at a time. If I had gone to bed at 9 o’ clock, as I so desperately wanted to, I would have been up at 5 in the morning. Not a good idea. Host mom and I went to the mall to drop my sister off at a movie, and we walked around for a while. It was hard, but it was necessary. I slept great that night and woke up at a decent hour the next morning, and my cycle was reset.

Tip #8: this is for returning travelers. Just because you’ve done it before doesn’t mean it will be easy the second time around! I’m really talking about language reacquisition and readjustment here. At about 5:30 the day I arrived, I couldn’t find my Spanish words anymore. I was done talking for the day. I had probably run most of the day on pure excitement and the little bit of rest I managed to sneak in here and there. But once everything was quiet again, my brain was done. I had totally forgotten about the effort it takes to live in another language and culture. Granted, I wasn’t thrown into the culture quite yet, since I was just with la familia all day, but I was definitely in the language. I am happy to report that the next day, after a good night’s sleep, it was a lot easier.

Tip #9: keep drinking water. If you have safe tap water, it’s still probably different from your water at home. Drink it up, mix it with bottled water if you have to, so your body gets used to it. It will also help your body cope with any lack of rest, and any new foods you may be encountering.

Tip #10: last one! Take it easy with exotic foods your first couple of days, even if you’re a returning traveler. This might seem obvious- if you’ve never eaten goat or guinea pig or squid before, your body might not be ready to handle it. We went out for a buffet lunch the first day. I wasn’t that hungry. So I didn’t eat too much. The next day, we celebrated host dad’s birthday with a big lunch. It consisted of pan con pebre; a massive seafood salad packed with shrimp, scallops, clams, crab legs, and topped with avocado and lettuce, plus homemade mayonnaise on the side (I SO wish I had taken a picture of it! It was BEAUTIFUL.); and two desserts. That lunch was a risk, friends. Not because I don’t love seafood, not because I didn’t trust how fresh it was or how it was prepared. But I rarely eat a pound of cold shellfish in one sitting. I’ve never tried homemade mayo before. As big of a sweet tooth as I have, I almost never eat two full desserts. Had this not been a special family event, trust me- I would not have eaten like that, and I’m glad I didn’t finish my plate.

Well that was longer than I expected! Another post about settling back in will be coming soon.

With love,

Gaby

A la vuelta

And I’m off again, friends! My bags are packed, my passport and boarding passes are ready, and my backpack is loaded up with lots of things to keep me occupied over 11 hours of flights and a three hour layover.

I am so blessed to have the chance to go back. Stay tuned for all of my new adventures!

Chau chau, cuídense mucho!

Much love,

Gaby

Here we go again

Guys. Guys. GUYYYYSSSSS.

I’m going back to Chile in four days. That’s like no time at all. That’s so little time that they need to overnight ship your contact lenses to get them in time (that happened today). That’s so little time that if it turns out I’m missing any paperwork…I’m absolutely out of luck.

I’m like 99.9999% sure that all I need is my passport and my boarding passes. Let’s hope.

Four days out and I’ve already got some clothes in my suitcase. There’s some shopping that needs to be done. I’d like new jeans and I need some toiletry stuff to at least get started, so I’m not running to the store my first day there. I also need ot finish up gift buying for the host family. But the fact that I have things organized and even some stuff packed is a huge improvement over last July, when I didn’t have anything packed until the night before. That was a horrible decision. There were tears. Not this time around! I’m gonna get it done by Thursday night, so I can sleep well and not be stressing out Friday morning as I get ready to go to the airport. Good news of today: my airline now allows you to check TWO bags to Chile for free!

It is indeed winter in Chile, and the weather has warmed up enough here that I can actually put away my winter clothes. It was cool for a few days, and it runs a little cool in my house, so I’ve been learning to love layers and hot food and beverages again. It will be summery here right up through my departure. And rainy and cool in Santiago when I arrive!

I’ve spent a decent amount of time thinking, writing, and reading in Spanish lately. Re-immersion is critical. I’ve had a couple of chances to speak it recently, too, and I’m pretty happy with how I’ve done. But it’s one thing to speak Spanish during a Skype conversation with your host family when you know that you can switch into English any time you want, and it’s another thing entirely to be working full-time in your second language. I just need to trust that I’ve done it before, and know that I don’t need to do as much work this time around to get there.

Even if I’m totally packed the night before, Friday will still be a long day. I have to get through security and check my bags first. Then I have my domestic flight. Then I’ve got a few hours to hang out and wander at my connecting airport. Then it’s on the plane for my third eight-hour flight. I will cry when I say goodbye to my parents again. I just will. It’s just how I am. I’ll be done by the time I’m close to security, and then before they even serve dinner on my Santiago flight (which is only about an hour into it), I’ll be sick of the plane and be ready to be in Chile.

So besides all of the travel preparations, I’ve been doing some baking and catching up on sleep. My body loves sleep. Who knew?

These went into a delicious cake. I could have eaten them on their own.

This is that cake.

This was pretty great.

Mother’s Day breakfast. I could eat this every day. Unfortunately, I don’t want to run five miles every day.

On a food-related note: this was supposed to be a reset week before I go back to the land of empanadas and carbs on carbs. Instead, this has been the week of eating ALL the things! (For those of you who don’t know, that phrase comes from this awesome blog. If you don’t like your comedy a little dark and absurd, though, I wouldn’t recommend it.) I mean, at least I won’t be wearing a swimsuit any time soon.

Going back will not be the same as my first time there. My host family has welcomed another gringa into the house. I’ll be in a different room. Work is a lot different from school. I’ll be busy all day long but then I won’t have work to do at night. I’m going to be there with a new group of people. The weather will be worse and daylight hours will be getting shorter. A repeated piece of advice has been to keep my expectations low- not to expect things to be bad, of course, but not to create incredible, specific hopes about what my experience will be like. Nothing ever goes as planned. I love my expectations, of course, but instead I’m trying to remember that this experience will be unique. It will not be like the last time. It will be something new- just in a lot of the same places and with some of the same wonderful people as before.

¡Nos vemos en el camino, po!

Besos,

Gaby