Hay que acostumbrarse

Things about Chile I may never get used to…

Milk comes in a box and yogurt in a bag.

The aisles in the super market are dedicated to specific meals…there is a whole aisle filled with vegetable oil, mayonnaise, salt, and lemon juice. Chileans skip the Hidden Valley Ranch and throw these babies on their salads.

Avoiding cold at all cost. Everybody worries about you getting sick if you aren’t bundled up. My poor friend Lisa gets chewed out every morning for not drying her hair. I can’t walk around the house barefoot without somebody in my family telling me that I’ll catch a cold if I keep up such risky behavior. Maybe if they all got a chance to experience a Spokane winter they would chill out about the 40 degree weather.

I still haven’t figured out the greetings here in Chile. Girls kiss on the cheek while the hombres exchange manly handshakes. But here’s the catch…I think you’re supposed to kiss EVERYBODY hello and goodbye EVERYTIME you come and go. A wave to the group just doesn’t cut it.

The lack of toilet paper. Almost all the girls carry toilet paper in their purses. Even if there is toilet paper in the bathroom, you have to grab a bunch before going into the stall. Avoid awkward situations and examine what the facilities have to offer before you sit down!

Fleas! I blame the stray dogs and crowded public transportation. It really grossed me out at first but now I realize it’s about as common as mosquito bites during the summer. Sometimes you just get bit.

Smoke everywhere. Everybody, and their dog, and the stray dogs smoke. I haven’t been to a single restaurant or pub with a “NO FUMAR” sign.

Not being able to use a credit card. You know those commercials that show everybody happy and dancing in the supermarket until some idiot tries to pay with cash and messes up the whole flow of things. Yeah…it´s like that, only backwards. I try to use my credit card and everybody has to wait as the manager of the supermarket comes to verify the purchase for the dumb gringa. ¡Qué vergüenza!

Welp. That´s all for now folks. As always LOVE LOVE LOVE!

Long Time no Blog

Long time…no blog. Sorry about that folks.

Things have been a little bit rough lately. And I’m referring only to Spanish here. Everything else is fabulous…I have great friends, a wonderful family, and I’m passing my Calculus class. But lately I’ve been in sort of a rut when it comes to the language.

It’s really frustrating to go so long without actually expressing my true personality. I’m sure that my family and friends are getting glimpses of the real Lindsay, but it’s so hard to move from using the language in a purely functional way (“Hola, me llamo Lindsay…” etc.) to expressing emotion, humor, and SARCASM…wow I miss sarcasm.

I also feel painfully unoriginal in Spanish. I have to run to wordreference.com to translate what I want to say. I have to wait until other people use certain phrases until I feel secure using them myself. It’s like everything that I say has already been said. In English I obviously feel comfortable enough to play around with the language until it fits my mood. I can use different accents and different voices without confusing everyone.

Thanks to my Psychology minor, I’ve analyzed the way I’m feeling from all different angles. I think that what gets me down is the fact that I’m dependent on the patience of pretty much everybody around me. It’s tough feeling helpless and being unable to repay the favor. I know that it doesn’t bother my Chilean friends to explain everything to the Gringa but no matter how much I tell myself that, I still feel a little annoying.

Now I know that this seems very negative but I’m hoping that by the end of my time here it will serve as a contrast to a blog posted by very-fluent-and-confident-Lindsay. The truth is that I understand the Spanish here way better than I did at the beginning. I’m finding myself catching bits and pieces of conversations on the bus and when I’m walking through the crowds of people downtown—conversations that would have just been white noise when I arrived in February.

Buenas Noticias

Hello everybody!

This is going to be a lot more of a general/personal sort of blog because there’s just been a lot going on in my life over the past two weeks. Here’s an overview…

I went to the international exchange student office and asked to be moved to a new house because it just wasn’t working with the lady that I was living with. I was super depressed, spending way too much time in my room, and not enjoying Chile the slightest bit.

The man in charge of housing for the exchange students went with me, Lisa, and Juanito to look at two houses. Seconds after we left the first house Lisa, Juanito, and I were asking if we really had to go to the second one because we already knew that the first was the house for me.

The next day I said a quick, surprisingly not very awkward goodbye to my mamá chilena and I moved into my new house.

I’ve been spending lots of time with my brothers and sister. They all study hard and are very athletic. Javi (16) is great to watch soccer and The Simpsons with, shares his reggaeton music with me, and does typical little brother things like hiding my toast. Carol (almost 19) and I have spent the most time actually talking and getting to know each other. We also dance a ton together—in the living room, at dance class, we’ve gone out salsa dancing—she’s great! Pipe (it’s pronounced pee-pay, short for Felipe) (20) is the super serious triathlete and I probably see him the least. However, he’s been indirectly teaching me how to use sarcasm in Spanish and he spends a little bit each night teaching me Chilean slang in the kitchen. Andres (22) was the first to really take me in and make me feel like part of the family. He has included me whenever his friends from his ju dit su class get together (that sounds really weird but it’s the truth.) The mom, Viviana, is the best kind of crazy. She laughs all the time and jokes around with us kids. She’s really laid back and has made sure that I’m as comfortable as possible here.

Classes are going pretty well. I passed my first Calc quiz and hopefully I will pass the second one. That’s the only class that I’m a little worried about. I’m not used to having to teach myself the bulk of the material outside of class and I think that’s how the system works here. We shall see.

I will keep you all posted and continue to put pictures up on facebook. I miss you all a ton!

Very surprising Chile...

Before I get too used to the Chilean culture I’m going to let you all in on some of the things that caught me by surprise.

I didn’t expect:

To like the food. There is a great mix of fresh fruits, veggies, breads, and meat. I can’t get enough of the super strong tea made with hot milk.

The mullets and the long rat tails. Some guys have a single skinny 2-foot-long braid. “Trenzas” with colored thread and beads tied in are also quite fashionable. I expected more of the suave, slicked back style but I’ve seen my fair share of dreadlocks. It seems that the beach-bum-hippie style is universal.

Shameless nose-picking.

So many people running and going to the gym. I guess I thought that was sort of an American luxury. However, I have lots of friends that have gym memberships and the beach is full of people running and doing yoga.

Graffiti. It caught me off-guard at first. Anything within arms-reach is fair game. I’m pretty used to it now and I know that graffiti-adorned walls don’t necessarily imply gang-ridden, shady parts of town.

The subdued colors. I definitely stick out when I wear light jeans and my cream-colored fleece. It might have a lot to do with the darker hair and skin-color but I feel like there definitely is a lack of variety in color here when it comes to attire.

English. I can’t escape it. Everybody’s wearing, everybody’s singing it, and everybody’s listening to it.

T.V. during meals. Don’t they know that it breaks down the family unit and causes most children to flunk out of school?!! Apparently not.

T.V. content. National news is a strange mix of celebrity gossip and what I would consider local news-worthy stories. They spend about 30 seconds talking about what’s going on in Tibet and then a good half-hour every day following the family of a little boy waiting for a heart transplant as they attend prayer services. Hmm.

To feel so safe. Granted, I try not to walk alone at night but I can walk all over town by myself during the day and I feel completely secure.

There. I’ll end on a good one. I gave you some conversation starters people, so I expect some emails! Sorry for the attitude, I just miss you all a ton!

Bienvenidos a Chile

Hello to everyone! I’ll have you all know that I’m safe and sound at mi casa in Vina del Mar. I’ll give you the low down on what I’ve been doing since I last posted…

My compañera Lisa and I met up at Seatac airport and made the flight together to Dallas where we met up with our travel buddy and body guard “Juanito.” We spent the night on the plane headed towards Chile and said “Adios” to English upon touchdown in Santiago.

We were chauffeured from the airport about an hour and a half away to our separate houses in Viña del Mar and spent the next day and a half with our host families, or in my case a host abuelita (grandma) that never stops talking—and that’s the nice way of putting it. Anyways, I can see myself spending a lot of time over at Lisa’s house playing cards with her little host brother and sister.

The next day we took a 15 hour-long bus ride south from Vina to Puerto Montt. There we stayed for two nights at a really beautiful, homey hostel (Hostal de los Navegantes). We made a day trip to Puerto Varas and found that the freest thing to do was to hike in Parque Phillipi. We followed that with a not-so-free trip to the island of Chiloe the next day. We forked out the pesos to take a three hour tour of Ancud and fulfill Lisa’s dream of seeing penguins in Chile.

From Puerto Montt we took the most gorgeous busride through the Andes to Bariloche, Argentina. If any of you were following my Facebook posts, it was here that we spent two nights in the Bob Marlyesque Greenhouse Hostel. Bariloche is set right on a huge beautiful lake and we arrived during the last week of South American summer vacation so the city itself was just packed with tourists. Lisa, Juanito, and I ended up hanging out with the hostel owners, spending the day on the “plajya” (Argentine for beach), and enjoying the slower-paced Spanish.

We crossed back into Chile instead of making the more expensive trip to Mendoza in Northern Argentina and we spent the next two nights in Valdivia, Chile which Juanito lovingly renamed “Fomelandia” (“fome” is Chilean for “lame”). The hostel we stayed at was beautiful (Albergue Latino) and we met people from all over. We shared a room with a guy from Spain, a chica from Sweden, and an older guy from Brazil. There were also girls from Austrailia and three guys from Israel. It was very cool to have people from everywhere coming together in broken Spanish. Beautiful, buena onda.

Being very much ready to leave Valdivia we hopped on the nastiest bus we had been on during the whole trip and 13 hours later ended up back at home in Viña. Since then, I’ve spent my time listening to my mama Chilena, avoiding mi casa, getting to know my way around the city, crying (I miss you guys! Se lo juro), somehow deleting all of my pictures from the trip, and getting ice cream with mis amigos. Tomorrow, gringo orientation starts and hopefully I’ll have dependable internet access.

Keep sending me emails and updates my friends! Hopefully the posts from here on out will be shorter and not so scattered. Besos a todos!

¡Vamos a Chile!

It's really happening! Tomorrow I'll be on a plane headed for Santiago, Chile. I will be spending the next 5 months as an exchange student at a Catholic university taking math classes in Spanish. Sounds like a dream come true, huh?

I'm new at this blogging business so I hope you'll allow me a grace period to get things figured out. The goal here is to post every once in a while to let you all know what's going on with me on the other side of the equator. I'd like to put up videos as well, for those of you who aren't into reading, but I'm not exactly sure what sort of Internet connection will be available. Hopefully this isn't my last video post. The goal is to make the first half of the video in English and the second half in Spanish. The whole reason I'm going down there is to eat, breath, dream, and live in Spanish and I see this as a way to sort of record my progress. Plus, I'll be able to share Chilean slang with anybody who's interested.

The day after I get into Santiago I will hop on a bus with my friends Lisa and Jon. A 14 hour bus ride south will just about put us in Patagonia. We'll be staying in hostels, crossing over into Argentina, drinking wine, and hiking around a bit. I'm not sure when I'll be able to get online during this part of my trip so, if you're not my mom, I don't guarantee you any communication! In March I'll be starting classes and I'll for sure have access to the Internet.

Please, please, please send me e-mails, Facebook messages, letters, and singing telegrams...at least twice a week. I really want to stay in contact with you. I sent YOU the link to my blog for a reason. I'm going to miss you a ton!

Okay...ya me voy. ¡Abrazos a todos!



Cool face huh?