Apr 11, 2017
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Better
Q buen 4 de noviembre :)
Packing is so done! I think.....
It can’t just be me right? We all get that feeling where we’re so SURE we’ve packed every last little thing, but also so very sure we MUST have forgotten something because we’re simply not that fortunate or organised to have everything the first time around...I have packed and repacked my case at least 18 times, with more warm clothes, less warm clothes, more scarves, less scarves etc.. I’m sure I will be fine either way but it’s such a stress! Today We also picked our activities for when we’re out there, and I decided to grab the bull by the horns and sign up for surfing, sand dune boarding and kayaking..because when else will I get chances like this!?
Not long to go now...
To be honest, at this point I’m terrified. I’ve just come back from Germany, where I found the language barrier exhausting and the alternative culture difficult to deal with, and now I have a day at home before I go again, and it’s freaking me out. The flight will be long, and with people I barely know...I’m not sure what to pack, I’m not sure if I’ll like it...
But everyone is being pretty supportive, we’re all talking. Everyone is a bit nervous and you can tell, and that’s understandable. But I’m confident we can get through it together and I’m sure I will at least make some good friends in this adventure...
Tomorrow I will finish my packing, or at least attempt to get 99% of the way there....I have no doubt I’ll forget something as always!
Would you believe me if I told you that there are wild cows living in the mountains of Chile? Okay, I’ve been on a good number of hikes in a few different countries, and this was only the trial hike for my time in Chile, but I can honestly say that this was the worst hike that I’ve ever been on. I’m accustomed to going on spectacular hikes that are nothing more than nature with a beautifully kept trail to accompany the beautiful landscape. And what’s even better is that they are typically free! Cerro La Campana, once climbed by Charles Darwin (he has a very inconveniently placed plaque commemorating his visit that I climbed to go see), was not free. Which wouldn’t have even been a huge deal! But it was also not well kept and it lacked a lot of safety. What was perhaps most surprising was a park ranger parked at the halfway point of the mountain whose sole purpose was to collect the names of those advancing to the 6,170 foot summit and check them off as they came back down to assure that everyone made it safely... that and the cow I discovered in the woods. I was trippin’ for a second until I saw six more right where the park ranger was and realized they were very docile.
To start, the first half of the mountain was at steep-ish incline on a clear walking path, probably mild to medium difficulty. Along the way, the view was excellent wherever there was a lookout. You reach the halfway point and continue on a similar path and a while later, the final checkpoint “Placa Darwin” (right by his plaque). Immediately after passing this sign, you come upon a warning sign about loose rocks. I was told by friends that completed this trail that “you will have to climb rocks and it’s hard”. What would a hike be without climbing a few rocks? What they should have said, perhaps, was “half of the trail is loose rocks that fell from the top of the mountain at some point. You have to climb these on a trail that is neither clear, nor marked well for about two hours and try not to step in the wrong place and fall down the entire mountain.” While this is a little dramatic... It’s not that dramatic. The view from the top, from the Pacific Ocean to the Andes Mountains, was spectacular. Was it worth the climb?
Moving on I don’t usually complain or write about bad things, but this is a part of travel, too. And hopefully this is the only time I’ll address this. I tell you about the amazing experiences and show you the beautiful pictures. You know, the things that make you jealous of where I am and what I’m doing. Moving to somewhere different for six moths will have challenges. Obviously my biggest challenge here is not knowing the language. I knew this would be challenging, I knew this would be frustrating. What I did not consider was that people from here would tell me how quiet I am. Anyone that knows me will tell you that I am not quiet. The issue at hand is that I don’t know what to say in a conversation that I don’t understand, and in the parts that I do pick up on, I don’t know how to form the sentence that I would want to say. So then you beat yourself up for making people think that you are one way when you typically wouldn’t be. My brain is constantly working to try to communicate to the point that it is confusing. I had a girl ask, in English, if she could use my phone. I told her “no hablo español” and walked away. I later realized that I had just mistaken my own language for Spanish and gave up too quickly. I also have a reputation around the house of saying “buenos noches” (good night) in the morning and “buenos dias” (good morning) before bed. Baby steps.
(but replace “Spanish” with “English”)
I’ve traveled a lot, including to other places that have foreign languages, but it’s never been a huge issue, as I know that in a week I will pick up and leave. Here, in a week, I’ll have another 13 weeks. Before, if I didn’t understand, I’d whip out my phone and translate to what I have to say and hold it out for them to read. Here, I know five students that have had their phones stolen for making it known that they have them! I always considered Africa and Asia to be the places that weren’t the “western world” and everywhere I’ve gone had fit that classification. Perhaps I was naïve to think that Latin America had a “western” way of living. Things are different here!
And then comes not knowing where you are at certain times. Typically you’re supposed to travel in packs, but one night on my way home, I was alone after a party at 3am. I got off the bus in the wrong place, but said it was fine and started off on-foot to my destination with the help of my trusty iPhone. Until it died at 17% and dumped me at the top of a hill I didn’t recognize around houses and buildings that looked more or less abandoned or run-down. Luckily, a collectivo picked me up and drove me off-route to my home, which he also could not find. He pulled over other collectivos to ask where the hell I should be. I arrived home at 5:30am in a drunken stupor.
As much as study abroad and travel is fun and games, it is not ALL fun and games. And that is part of the experience! I wouldn’t trade where I am for another place, because that is the loss of an experience. To be worldly you have to see all of it. I am happy here. It’s been just over a month and it just takes some time to adjust.
Chilean fun fact of the day I was asked why I only have one last name. “Why would I have more than one last name?” Well, everyone here has two last names. That of their father comes first, and that of their mother comes second. When women get married, they never take their husbands name. Everyone’s name remains the same from birth until death.
March 28, 2016
"I’m still wrapping up my time at home before heading abroad, but I only have a week. I’m basically trying to gather all of my things and mentally prepare myself for the trip, all while seeing everyone that I can before I go. Here’s a little video blog I put together about some of my preparations and plans!" My first blog post for ISEP Voices. It's outdated compared to what I put on this blog, but worth sharing. For more, visit isepstudyabroad.wordpress.com!
Three Weeks Down!
My iPhone was nearly stolen by the ocean On the first day of a strange cycle of dangerous waves last Tuesday to Saturday, myself and many others decided to spend our last official day of “summer” at a beach called Reñaca. Being the morning of the first day, we hadn’t heard anything about these waves prior to going. I set up my towel about 15 feet from the shoreline and was laying out in the sun for about 20 minutes when I suddenly heard water nearby. I looked up and saw a wave quickly approaching us. I was able to scoop up everything except for my phone, which I had to dig out of the wet sand after frantically crawling around on my hands and knees trying to find it. My speaker and earpiece immediately weren’t working, but everything else seemed okay. Later, my screen dimmed to black on one side. All of these things repaired themselves in the coming days, but my volume and lock buttons no longer work and neither does my flash. Thankfully, it is still usable, so I can tough it out until August and then get it repaired. It was going to be about $50 to send home, where I’d then have to pay another $79 for repairs with Apple.
Later in the week, as the waves got bigger, a main avenue was closed as the waves splashed over the barriers and flooded the street. Apparently a large truck was washed into the ocean at some point in the week, as well. One of these mornings I was awoken at 5am by a tsunami alarm on my phone, but apparently it was just a test. -_-
Speaking of dangerous waves, tsunamis, and all things regarding tectonic plates in the earths core, there is a specialty Chilean "cocktail” that is popular around their independence day in November called a terremoto (Spanish for earthquake). I heard from many Chileans about how I MUST try this drink because it is so strong that when you stand, you feel like the ground is shaking, as with a terremoto. I looked far and wide for one of these, awaiting the challenge, “knowing” that one drink could not make me feel THAT drunk. I went to a bar called Ston that had them for roughly USD$4. The four of us that went all ordered one and they were served in a one liter jug. It’s a type of wine flavored with curaçao and pineapple ice cream. The reason they make you feel this way is because it is ONE LITRE OF WINE and added liquor. Let’s just say I was wrong.
I survived my first two weeks of Spanish classes It’s not really stress-free. Two of the three teachers refuse to speak any English... in the classes designed for people with 0-2 semesters of Spanish experience. So when I don’t catch something, they look at me and ask a question in Spanish which I also don’t understand, so it’s ultimately a stare-off between myself and the professor. It’s not so bad, though. I think I will learn a lot and it’s only two days per week for 4.5 hours straight. It gets a little exhausting by the time the last class rolls around, as the last teacher is also the least interesting. I also have a Latin American films class taught in English. We watch Spanish movies with subtitles. I’m not sure how I feel about it yet.
I’ve fallen victim to the metric system again I finally got around to signing up for a gym here a few days back. I went to three different ones with Edith and they were all pretty terrible, to be honest. By my American standards, anyway. I picked the nicest (and conveniently cheapest) of the three. The equipment is all old and worn. Most of the weights don’t have their weight written on them because they’ve been rubbed off, which is particularly inconvenient when I already have to figure out how many pounds that x amount of kilograms is for the ones that ARE marked. What can I say, the United States set me up for failure once again, but at least I saw that one coming. The gym also allows men to workout with their shirts off, it is very cramped (despite being the most spacious of the three), there’s only one of everything so it is hard to come by the equipment you want when you want it. They merely wrote my name on a piece of paper upon registration, but the best of all of these differences is that they sell brownies and cookies at the front counter and they also have a cat living inside the gym that is free to roam.
Last thoughts I don’t recall if I’ve mentioned the giant hill that I have to climb to come home. It’s about 20 minutes total of steep inclines, the latter half of it being stairs. I’m usually DRIPPING by the time I arrive home. Many people keep asking me where I live and I don’t know the specific neighborhood, so I just tell them at the top of a hill. The common response is “everyone lives at the top of a hill!” No, everyone lives ON a hill, I live at the top of one. Anyone that has visited me can attest to that and say that it really is much higher than they thought. And then I have to wrestle with three locks and two keys to get into the condo. I don’t know what it is about the locks here, but I cannot handle them. I stood at the door for five minutes one day trying to get the lock to turn.
Also, I’m making dog friends everywhere I go. I met a dog in town yesterday and he literally followed me for a half hour up the hill and only stopped following me because I had to close the gate on him. :(
LASTLY, I just found out that if you search for flights in Spanish that they are WAY cheaper. I just booked a flight to Patagonia in the VERY south of Chile for USD$102, when before it was looking like $230-400+.
March 11, 2016