It has been a crazy couple of weeks, which should explain the fact that I have been so distant since my arrival here in Santiago. I almost don’t know where to begin but the beginning seems as good of a place as any. My flight from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles was uneventful as was my flight to Miami. I got into Miami at 4 and then realized that my next flight didn’t leave until 1130. As such, I had some time to kill. I was walking through the airport and saw a kid who just looked like a world Teacher. A few hours later at the meeting I came to find out that it was Brendan O’Connell and he is the other volunteer in Maipu with me. Luckily, we get along just fine so far. In fact, I am going to go out on a limb and say that there is no one I would rather have living around the corner from me this year.
The flight was uneventful except for the fact that I couldn’t sleep and I was with 20 other gringos headed to South America. We passed through customs without delay and were met at the airport by our new bosses Tomas and Meghan. Both of whom are really fun and enthusiastic. The van ride from the Airport to the Hostel was a half an hour of me and 5 boys singing along to The Police, which I thought was a very good sign.
The next couple of days were jam packed. I am getting to know everyone quite well this time around because we are all staying together in a hostel for the duration of Orientation. The staff is friendly enough, but we had a couple of people walk in from the street and steal from our volunteers. One girl lost her purse/camera and another kid had his room broken into and laptop stolen. As such we were all on edge for the next few days. We still are to a certain extent, but now recognize that there is nothing we can do. Appropriate precautions have been placed, so now it’s no longer up to us. We have to be vigilant while still aware that we can't control everything. Some people in my group are having more trouble with this than others, but I am very PURA VIDA about the whole thing. (At least I will be until something of mine gets stolen.)
As for my so-called life. We have long sessions every day. Usually, class starts at nine and then we don’t finish our day until 7PM. It’s the middle of the summer here so taking the metro in the midst of such overwhelming heat has proven to be a challenge. Still, I must admit, I enjoy taking the Metro everyday. It makes me feel like a real person, from a real city.
Santiago suits me pretty well. I have seen very few Black and dark people.. it seems as though the vast majority of Chilean’s are more European than they are Indian. Chilean Food is unexciting and usually doused in Mayo. A typical meal is a hot dog with avocado, tomato and Mayo. I am still struggling with the appeal, but it seems to be popular. The bread is good here, but as far as I can tell most of the fruit gets shipped out.
Last weekend we had our first beach weekend and headed to Valparaiso and Vina del Mar. It was foggy all Saturday, the sun didn’t come out until about midday on Sunday. Luckily, we know how to have fun in spite of the weather. Saturday night was a blast, 15 of us went out dancing until 4 in the morning. My hair has made me a celebrity and I can’t remember having such fun for a while. I will say that I think that our Costa Rica group was a closer-knit bunch, but it will be nice to have one another as the year goes on, even if we aren’t all instant best friends.
Chilean Spanish is different, but isn’t too hard to understand, so long as you are paying close attention. There are a lot of Chileanisms that I am still trying to wrap my head around. I miss my little Costa Rican expressions, but there is one other girl in the group who studied abroad in Costa Rica and so we share them from time to time. In all fairness, I haven’t had to use a lot of Spanish because we are constantly with other gringos. We have an hour and a half of Spanish class a day, and occasionally go out to dinner or to run an errand, but staying in hostels is a little counter-intuitive to anyone trying to learn the native language. I don’t really get Hostel culture, but that’s just me.
Well, that’s all for now, I am sure that once I get settled my blogs will start coming more regularly. Until then, know that I am happy, healthy and ready for another unpredictable year.
Love Radford
