So, one of my biggest fears about coming to Chile was that I would fail to make meaningful and lasting friendships with people. It has been hard to accomplish, especially with the language barrier, and how do you fill people in on enough of your personal history to feel close to them in the short time you have in Chile?
The one person it has happened naturally with is Felipe. I am so thankful that he is in my life. It is through him that we have made other attempts at friendship here. He is my constant companion on weekends, and has taught us the ins and outs of Chilean nightlife. He is funny, sweet, and deeply cares about other people. Again, I can't believe my luck to be placed with this family.
I remember a few weeks into my stay in Chillan, I still felt really awkward around the house with Felipe. He was pretty quiet and shy, and spent most of his days on the computer. We didn't say much to each other, because his Spanish is difficult to understand because he talks fast and doesn't enunciate certain sounds, and at that point my Spanish was almost nonexistant. Plus, it is a pretty odd and uncomfortable experience to, in the midst of thousands of new experiences, be given a complete stranger close to your age and live with him as a brother. I have a real brother the same age as Felipe, so I had certain expectations of him, and hope that we would have a close enough relationship that when I began missing my real brother, my host brother could help fill in the gap a little bit. However, as I am finding more and more, I am not a patient person, and I distinctly remember having the thought one day, after awkward silence at the dinner table with Felipe, "I am just not going to try. I don't have to be best friends with my host brother. I am just going to let go fo that dream."
However, as I came to find out, Felipe is just so damn loveable that even if I had given up (which I didn't), it would have been impossible not to love him. One night we went out together and had a blast, and since then it is not even a question of me inviting him or him inviting me, it is just like, "What are we doing this weekend?" One night, I was telling someone something and I directed the phrase, "Your house," to Felipe and he grabbed my arm, looked me in the eyes, and said, "No, it is your house too." I really appreciate how he accepts me, welcomes me into his family and home, shares the computer with me all the time. I think of how hard it would be for me to do...look at how much I struggled having roommates! But it seems so easy for him. One night, I asked him if his mom ever even asked him if it was okay with him that a foreigner would be coming to live with him, and he said no. I asked him if it was strange or hard for him, and again he said no. I was stunned, because it would be very hard for me if the roles were reversed.
The amazing thing about Felipe is that he always understands what I am trying to say. Obviously, my Spanish is far from perfect, and I make ridiculous mistakes all the time, and Felipe always laughs with me at them, but always gets the point. When other people ask, "What did she just say?" he always knows the answer. It used to irritate me that other people couldn't understand me because of my accent or whatever, and Felipe would repeat exactly what I said, and then they would be like, "Ohhhh..." but now, it is kind of like a joke with us, and I am so grateful that he is always around to help me communicate. It goes both ways, too, because some Chileans...well, it is just impossible for me to understand them, and so all I have to do is look at Felipe, and he will put it much more slowly and simply for me. I have trouble with verb endings in the past tense, and I am always mixing up the first person and third person endings. So when I am talking and telling a story in the past tense, I tend to drag out the verbs while I am thinking of the proper ending. For example, "Hoy dia, trabaaaaaaa.....je" (Today, I worked...). One night, we were out at a pub with some of Felipe's friends, and I was calculating the ending of a verb, and he filled it in for me, knowing what I was thinking and getting at, and at that moment, I knew that I just loved this kid.
One night, we went out to a pub in the middle of the week, drank a lot of beer together, and whined about our love interests. Felipe is interested in an American friend of mine, and I am interested in a Chilean acquaintance of his, and it was really great to bond over our cross-cultural relationship woes. Neither of us have ever dated a foreigner before, and it is quite confusing. Since that night, we have become so close it is sort of unbelievable that I have only known him for two and a half months, or that I usually only see him on the weekends.
For the last two weeks, we have both been out of school because the students are on strike (an event that deserves a post of its own), and so we have had a lot of extra time to hang out. During the day, we watch movies, play with the dog, run errands together, and chat online with our Chilean friends. And at night, of course, we go out. In the last two weeks, though, it is not unusal that after getting home at five in the morning, the two of us will stay up two more hours, talking. (Btw, mostly because of him I think, my Spanish is getting awesome!) When we got home on Saturday, we were having a heart-to-heart, a really sad conversation about family separations, and he started crying and I honestly felt my heart breaking as I hugged him and let him cry. It was the same way I feel when my real brother is struggling with something. I just wanted to protect him and make it better in any possible way, even though it is totally his deal. After he pulled himself together, he told me, "I can't believe how much I tell you about my life. We haven't even known each other that long." I told him that I know, he is my best friend in Chile. And he said that I am his best girlfriend in Chile, because all of his other girlfriends have abandoned him out of pissiness that he hangs out with gringas all the time--another theme that deserves a post of its own. It makes me feel really good that we have bonded and that he feels comfortable with me and I with him. I love waking up after a night out, giggling and gossiping with him about everything that happened the night before. And all of this happened, it feels, largely without me having to try very hard to make it happen.
A few more Felipe moments that I must share, because I feel they reveal the kind of relationship I have with him: on the night of my birthday, our mom was out visiting someone, and Felipe did not want us to have a normal onces by ourselves, so he took me out for pizza! (Incidentally, that kid loves pizza.) It was just so damn cute, I didn't even know what to say. The night we went out to celebrate my birthday with all our friends, I got in a fight with our cousin Nacho, and in the car on the way home at seven thirty in the morning, Felipe knew I was really upset, and kept asking me if I was okay, said that he didn't want anything to be bad for me, and then said that he loves me. It was so sweet and precious, and really did make me feel a lot better about being screamed at. Also, on Saturday, we had a grandma of some sort over for a huge lunch for her 89 birthday, and at the table, it was Felipe, me, and four old ladies. Cute, but seriously, after a lunch on Chilean time (meaning piles of food and an endless stretch of time), I had my fill of both food and old lady chatter. Knowing I am terrified of being rude or seeming ungrateful, Felipe excused himself, grinned at me, and said under his breath in English, "Come on!" and we made our escape. One of my favorite things is when he speaks English at random to me. His favorite phrases are "Thank you very much," which with his accent comes out as "Sank you," and nearly kills me every time because it is so cute, and "Relax!", which has become a running joke with us because he always tells me to relax when I am getting too excited, ranting, or yelling about something--all frequent occurrences with me!
I am grateful for his companionship. I would probably be a lot more lonely without him here. I look forward to weekends when he comes home, because things are always more lively with him around! We share similar opinions about a lot of places and people in Chillan, and it is so easy to be around him. He is nothing close to a replacement for my real brother, but I do love him in the way you love a family member, and every time I think about the fact that one day I will leave him, leave Chile, and my weekends will not be filled with the craziness of our nights out, heart-to-hearts, gossip, movies...my heart constricts and I have to stop thinking about it. Sometimes, I cannot avoid the knowledge that I am going to spend the rest of my life missing Chile. And now, missing my host brother, my companion, the person who has made me feel most welcome here, my first real Chilean friend.
I had to include this photo, because it is so terrible. It is evidence of a running joke between us, because somehow, no matter what the circumstances are, we always manage to take the WORST pictures together. And this one is, by far, the worst! Haha!
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