Christina Travels: Chile: A Long Journey

It's been a week since I left home and so much has happened its unbelievable. First off, I left home Tuesday evening last week in order to stay at a hotel in Hartford with my mom. (My flight to Miami left too early for us to drive straight there in the morning.) In the morning, we got up and took a shuttle to the airport. I checked in and went right through security without a problem. That flight went off without a hitch, although the flight attendant making the announcements kept throwing in little jokes like "please return your seats to their upright most uncomfortable position. Please make sure you have all your belongings before editing the plane. If you leave anything and still really want it tomorrow morning, you will find it on eBay." In Atlanta, I luckily did not have to change terminals, but I did have to walk from the very end of the terminal I was in to the very beginning. Waiting for the plane, I saw some AFS tags on some girls' bags. I walked over to say hi and discovered that one of them was going to Chile too! We all had different seats on the plane, but we regrouped after the flight and collected our baggage. Then we had the interesting experience of flagging down a shuttle to the hotel. First, we flagged down a shuttle to the wrong Marriott hotel (apparently there are a bunch of them, which is confusing) and then when we found the right shuttle there were too many cars in-between us and the shuttle and it almost drove right past without noticing us.

After we arrived at the hotel, we had free time until 5 when the true orientation stuff would begin. There were 27-ish kids there-- 8 to Chile, 2 to Paraguay, 1 to Panama, 1 to Uruguay, and 15 to Argentina. It was a really nice hotel with a beautiful palm tree and pool courtyard. The orientation stuff was all about AFS and safety and policies. None of it was really anything I think would be absolutely vital to a successful trip, but talking to all the other kids was really great.

The flight to Santiago, Chile left at 11:35 but we were at the airport at 7:30. We met a junior pro tennis player (she's a senior in high school but she travels all around the world for nine months of the year to compete) and she brought us cookies and hot chocolate from the lounge for first class flyers. We flew into Santiago around 10 in the morning (there's only a 2 hour time difference).

Going through customs was an interesting experience... First for going through the immigration line we had to split up into two groups because half of the Americans going to Chile didn't have student visas since they hadn't received certain papers from their Chilean schools in time. So the four of us who did have our student visas went through faster and met two AFSers in the line- Rannveig from Iceland and Natalia from Russia. When I got up to the immigration officer, he stamped my visa and did a whole bunch of official looking stuff then rattled off a bunch of instructions in Spanish and wrote down an address on a sheet of paper. Hoping that someone from AFS would know what to do with it (I understand I needed to register my visa, but other than that caught nothing), I moved on with the other students to get our baggage and go through customs. The line was really long but it moved quickly. The customs people let everyone else pass through without searching their bags, but stopped me. The guy opened my bag, took out the half gallon of maple syrup and started speaking rapid fire Spanish with the other customs guy. He came to me and asked "¿Qué es esto?" I told him maple syrup and tried to explain that it's a sweet syrup that you put on food, but he didn't get it. Eventually, the girl from Iceland helped me out by saying that it's a type of sugar and he let me pass through. For a while though, he definitely thought I was trying to blow up his country or something.

Then, the exchange students from Japan, Russia, Iceland, Norway, Finland, USA, and probably other countries that I'm forgetting took a bus to the place we were having our orientation. Santiago is very dry compared to New England. There's dirt everywhere and the greenest things are the palm trees.

We stayed at religious retreat for nuns which was beautiful. There were wonderful gardens and delicious ripe grapes and lots of little rooms. The showers were finicky, not always producing hot water (in Chile, you have to turn on the water heater in order to have hot water) and the toilet in my room kept having issues (the chain connecting the handle to the flushy-thingy kept detaching). The rest of Friday was spent hanging out with all the other exchange students. English was the common language, but everyone except the Americans, Austrailians, and Kiwis (New Zealand) spoke at least one other language. The Japanese and Thai students didn't really speak English so they spent most of their time with the kids from their own country. Surprisingly, a ton of students spoke German (there were large numbers of students from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland). There was one guy who is fluent in German, English and Portuguese because his family is Brazilian, he lives in either Switzerland or Austria and he goes to an international school.

Saturday was dedicated to actual orientation stuff and everyone was super helpful. The sessions were actually really informative and gave us a lot of information that was really helpful as well as another run down of the rules of AFS.

Sunday morning, those of us going way south to Punta Arenas or Puerto Natales as well as the students going way north, got on a bus around 10:30 to go to the airport. Other students had to leave at 5:30 and 7:00 to catch their flights and bus rides. The AFS guy put me in charge of the three other students on my flight saying that I looked the most awake (I'd slept for maybe four hours) and sent us through security. I found the gate we were supposed to be at and we waited there for awhile until we heard a bunch of announcements where the only thing I caught was that they were saying our flight number and Punta Arenas (our destination). Because I had no idea what else they said, I looked at the computer screen and found that we had a new gate. Luckily, we got to the new gate in time to board and we were off to Punta Arenas.

When I arrived, my host brothers and father picked me up at the airport. We drove to Puerto Natales from there, me in the back seat with my little brother who likes talk a lot and doesn't really understand that I don't speak Spanish.

It's very flat in Punta Arenas, though here in Puerto Natales the flatness turns abruptly into mountains around the edge of town. There are lots of sheep (we were driving by a field full of rocks and from experience, I thought, man that pasture must be really hard to maintain with all those rocks. Then one of the rocks moved and I realized they were very dusty sheep.) and almost all trees are bent over from the wind.
Sunday night, after arriving in Puerto Natales, I ate dinner (pollo, or chicken, arroz, or rice, and ensalada, lettuce and avocado) and then the teenagers played Monopoly. There are four teenagers in the house right now- me, Carlos (my 16 year old brother), Constanza (my 13 year old sister) and Max (my cousin... I'm not really sure if he lives here all the time or just right now). Their Monopoly game is the typical American version though it says avenida instead of avenue and they use plastic credit cards and a machine instead of paper money. We ended up having to stop after a couple hours before anyone won because the machine stopped working and we couldn't tell how much money anyone had.
Monday, I slept until 2 o'clock (a personal record for me, but normal for people here) and when I woke up we had lunch and Cony, Carlos, Max, and I went for a walk around town. I don't have many pictures from that walk because Max mostly took them on Carlos's camera. They showed me around the town and I've got to say, it's beautiful here. Very different from home, but very beautiful. There are lots of little shops everywhere and everything is very colorful. There's also a plaza every couple streets.
Today, I woke up slightly earlier, at 12. We had spaghetti for lunch and then one of my classmates/Carlos's friend came over. Another girl, also a classmate, came over with her exchange sister Aim from Thailand (she arrived with me Sunday). We went to a cafe in downtown Puerto Natales. I had strawberry juice, yummmy. The owner of the cafe is an AFS volunteer who speaks a little English and we sat and talked with him for awhile. I had to do a lot of translating because he didn't speak much English and Aim speaks no Spanish and just a little English. It's very difficult to communicate with someone who basically only speaks Thai when everyone else in the room speaks Spanish or English. Oh well. When we got back to our house, we had onces, which is the Chilean version of tea time. We had crepes, absolutely delicious. As we were eating, my host dad was dropped off by the army vehicle (he works for the army) and he joined us. He proceded to try to learn English. Their pronunciations always make me laugh, but it's not like my spanish is any better. (Note to Dad: thank goodness you don't speak Spanish, you and my host dad would get along too well and I would be doomed. He's just as crazy as you.)

Differences between Chile and the US
-greeting... it's always, always a kiss on the cheek for girls, guys greeting each other do the classic guy-hug-thing. It's really hard to get used to kissing strangers on the cheek.
-driving... if there's no one driving towards you, you can just drive in the middle of the road. If you're about to turn left, you drive on the left. Seatbelts are only put on when you're about to pass by los carabineros (the police)
-identity... here everyone has an ID card (except me, haven't gotten that yet) that they have to carry around all the time. If a police officer stops you, and they can whenever they want, and you don't have your ID card, they can take you to jail where you have to wait for someone to bring you your ID
-speaking... anyone who thinks that people from Spain speak quickly think again. Chileans speak so quickly I'm surprised they don't wear out their tongues. they only pronounce a tiny bit of each word, never ever say any 's' and often just skip over some words they consider unneccessary
-bedtimes... my 5 year old brother is up until the early hours of the morning each night and no one in the house wakes up until something like noon.
-food.... Dad, you would love the food here. The only meal I've had that isn't centered on meat is onces. And that's more a snack than a meal.
-There are dogs everywhere. They all belong to someone, but no one keeps their dogs in their houses or their yards, so they just kind of wander the streets. Somehow, they don't die in all the crazy traffic.

-bebida... When a Chilean says "¿Quieres una bebida?" he means would you like coca cola. It's served with every meal and is the default beverage. My family must drink several liters every day because all seven of us drink at least one glass at every meal. The exception is onces where you either drink tea or instant coffee.

-shoes are worn everywhere. Inside the house you can wear sandals and slippers as well as normal shoes, but sneaker-like shoes are a requirement when leaving the house. Yesterday, when we were getting ready to leave the house, I had flip flops on (it's still summertime here, mind you) and my host mom asked me if I was planning on putting on shoes. It hadn't even occurred to me that flip flops didn't count but I put on my sneakers anyway.
-Fingers are not for eating. I had french fries for onces today (and for dinner last night, mixed with egg and meat) and you use a fork. My host brother looked at me funny when I said that in the US we always use our fingers. Also, for every meal, the food is put in the middle of the table in big dishes. You use your silverware, even if you've already eaten off of it, to take from the dishes and put onto your plate. Occasionally, you can eat directly from the dishes, but that's often considered rude.

There's definitely more, but I can't remember what. I haven't said anything embarrassing yet, but that's probably because most of the time the words coming out of my mouth are "sí", "no", "¿qué?", and "no entiendo".

(Note: I forgot to mention that not only am I the tallest in my family, I also have the largest feet. Jajaja.)