Filling in the holes

Things are starting to move more quickly, although the 12 days I have left until I leave for Miami seem like an eternity. As it turns out, there will be ten of us in the program. Nine of us will meet in Miami, and one of the dudes is traveling independently and will meet us in Santiago. I'm super excited because there are several people coming from the Pacific Northwest, which I find particularly comforting. There's even another girl coming from Seattle!

The night we get to Miami, there will be some sort of meeting with a returned volunteer to orient us to the program. Once we arrive in Santiago, we will have about ten days of training as a unit of ten, and then on March 22 we will begin training with the Ministry of Education. At that point, we will be joined by other Ministry volunteers that have been recruited through other programs or are traveling independently.

I'm so anxious to meet these people, who will essentially be my "family" in Chile and a main connection to home. I hate the waiting; the not knowing. Who are these people? One of the guys just got his degree in Conflict Management, so I'm looking forward to talking to him about graduate school in international studies and his take on the job market.

It also troubles me to not know where my placement is yet. I really hope they put me in a high school. The Ministry said that most likely, we will be placed in one of two cities: Chillan and Los Angeles, in Region 8. A friend of mine went to Chillan, and said it was his favorite city in Chile, so I'm secretly hoping for a placement there. Successive earthquakes have destroyed its colonial architecture, but it's said to be pretty nontheless. Los Angeles is apparently an industrial and agricultural processing center. It's also a sort of base city for a lot of outdoors activities in the nearby mountains (and volcanos!) and a national park, so it could be pretty great. I can't imagine being disappointed with either place. Both cities are about the size of Tacoma in terms of population, which feels pretty manageable.

In other Chile-related news, my mom just called me this morning with the best news ever! My Uncle Paul and my cousin Andy will be taking a fishing trip to Chile in April, and they want to hook up with me while I'm down there! Andy's wife is from Santiago, and he travels there for work a lot (he is some sort of project-manager engineer for a whole system of mining companies there, or something). Uncle Paul has visited Chile several times also. The timing couldn't be better, as I will have been there for about a month and will probably be ready to see some people from home. My cousin is pretty great. His family grew up in Idaho, and he's probably about eight years older than me, but I feel like we're kind of kindred spirits. Since we weren't around each other much as children, our time together has been limited, but I always look forward to seeing him and his wife, Daniela, and their cute little daughter Stella. They're really cool people. One time I went to their place in Boise with my mom and they showed us pictures of the time Andy went to Machu Picchu. It got me all riled up. Uncle Paul is great, too. He's a newspaper editor, and really smart and funny. We like a lot of the same things, like classic rock and baseball. It would be so fucking fantastic to spend some time with them in Chile. I really hope it all works out!

This news came at a good time, because I had a minor breakdown last night. Things have been slowing down lately, in terms of work and trip preparations. Saturday is my last shift at Anthro, and while I'm ready to be less busy, I still haven't worked out what to do with my free time. I tend to try to sleep a lot to avoid thinking about everything, because I'm pretty scared, but this strategy tends to blow up on me. Like last night, I was driving to Seattle to have martinis with Smashley (which was pretty great by the way), and I just started sobbing in my car. I don't really know why because I'm trying not to think about how difficult leaving is going to be, but I think it's because I had just come from my mom's house. I'm really going to miss popping in on her, raiding her cupboards, teasing Dave. That's going to suck. I don't know how I'm supposed to just not see all these people I love for so long. But bleu cheese filled, gin-soaked olives and giggling with Smash elevated my mood, at least momentarily. Maybe I'll just have to be drunk for the whole year...

Just joking!