Random musings (title borrowed from Beth)

Sorry for my infrequent posting. Chile is freaking exhausting! We are in trainings all day, and even with breaks, by the end I am fried and in no mood to reflect on the daily tripe. Also, the last class of the day is nearly two hours of Spanish class...the other day we debated euthanasia in Spanish! I never thought I would be able to do something like that--and in truth, I can´t really, although I tried.

There have been some bright spots in my communication, however. Like on Saturday night. I came out of a club, ¨Blondie,¨at about 4 a.m. by myself and tried to catch a cab to my hostel. The cabbie obviously knew I was a foreigner and was trying to rip me off by charging me 4 mil for a taxi home, when my hostel was right around the corner. I told him it was too expensive and walked a block and hailed a different taxi. The driver was SO NICE! We chatted all the way home in Spanish, and he told me my Spanish was very good. I even understood some complex questions, like ¨How does your family feel about you leaving?¨I was pretty proud of myself!

Unfortunately, I came home from the club and threw up the entire contents of my stomach. The culprit, I have come to believe, was a (delicious) empanada I had consumed from street vendor earlier that day after a visit to Pablo Neruda´s house in BellaVista. Sidebar: Neruda´s house was really cool. It´s amazing to think of the life he led, the company he kept. There was this amazing painting of his mistress done by Diego Rivera. In the painting, she had two heads because she was his mistress from years and thus led two lives. In her hair, Rivera painted the profile of Neruda. Very cool.

So yes, I spent Sunday in bed, recovering, being pissed that I was stuck inside on a bright Sunday, my last free day in Santiago. So it goes.

Last Thursday we visited schools and English classes in small groups. I went with this kid in my program who is something like 6´5¨, which was amazing. The kids were fascinated, by him and all of us in general. We were waiting outside the classroom and they were released on a break, and they came out and just stopped right in front of us. Pretty soon they swarmed and a huge crowd gathered. When we observed the second grade class, this little girl came up to me and said, ¨Me llamo Malen. Tengo seven years.¨You could tell she was really working on thinking about how to speak to me in English, and she sort of got fidgety and looked at her shoes and started babbling in Spanish. It was an amazing encounter. The kids practiced saying ¨hello¨and ¨bye bye¨to us, which was precious, and I taught this one boy what the word ¨draw¨means by demonstrating. They had so much energy! It was a cool experience, and made me really excited to get to my placement and start teaching.

This morning in class we did a training about how to coach debate teams, which is one of our responsibilities here. I´m pretty excited about that, too! It seems like I´m going to have so much to do this year, so many responsibilities, and I am ready to meet them. I feel very well prepared by the training I received when I first arrived, and I just want to get to Chillan and get started. Santiago is an incredible city and I am sad to leave it, especially the friends I have made here. I have been very impressed with the Chilean people. Everyone is very helpful and wants to take you around, show you things to do. I have been invited to dinner, shopping, clubs, by people that barely knew me! I would never do that for a foreigner! So far, it is amazing being an American here.

However, there are moments of loneliness. I got two emails yesterday that really made me miss home, and just the feeling of history I have with my friends and family there. I was pensive all day yesterday, feeling like no one here will ever be close to me or understand me fundamentally. I am trying to be patient and understanding that friendships take time. This girl in my program, Steph, is prettymuch on the same page as me in a lot of ways, and I think we will grow to be great pals. She´s going to Chillan too, so I´m glad I will have someone to lean on there that I feel tight with.

If anyone is interested in Chilean cinema, you must see the film Machuca. We watched it for my Spanish class, and it was beautiful. It shows the tensions of the 1973 coup through the friendship of two boys. Netflix it, immediately!

On Thursday I take a six hour bus ride to Chillan and meet my host family! I´m ready to be settled and find a routine. It´s time to say goodbye to Santiago.