First Impressions

June 12, 2011
12:24 PM

Second day in Santiago… right now I’m sitting waiting for my host mom and sister to get ready to go on a grocery shopping trip, so I’ll try to make a little headway on another entry.

My flights and everything went well, although it was a long 24 hours of traveling! One of my friends from the program ended up being on my flight from Dallas to Santiago. It didn’t mean much because we were far apart on the plane and separated shortly after getting our bags in Santiago, but it was nice to have one familiar face in a strange airport.

We arrived in Santiago on time, the flight was even a bit early, but we had to sit on the runway for an hour due to over-crowding because of a volcanic eruption in Chile earlier that week. The Santiago airport was fine, but a lot of the planes from Buenos Aires had to land in Santiago instead, so things were a little crazy. We eventually got off the plane, however, and things went smoothly after that. Well, with a couple minor exceptions:

• They wouldn’t take my $100 bill for the reciprocity fee because it was “too dirty” (it was not too dirty!)
• A dog attacked me because I was carrying fruit, which I had forgotten to declare, because I didn’t think a little baggy of grapes, apples, and dried bananas was a big deal. I offered to just throw them away, but instead had to fill out a new declaration form, get a big pink sticker, and draw the attention of several other dogs before the food was eventually taken away from me anyway. Oops.

Other than that, everything was very easy, and I even got asked for directions by another American guy. He told me I looked like a “seasoned traveler,” so he figured he’d ask. Of course, I had no idea where we were supposed to be going, but I was flattered that it at least appeared like I did ☺

I was met at the airport by my host mom, Elizabeth, and her brother Carlos. I felt really bad for keeping them waiting almost two hours, but they were very nice about it and extremely welcoming. Carlos commented on how heavy my suitcase was, but I had to correct him – 50.4 pounds is one of the lightest bags I have ever packed! You cannot call that heavy.

I got running commentary on buildings, sites, religion, and politics as we drove through Santiago, although most of it took place in English. Elizabeth and Carlos both speak English pretty well, as they lived in Los Angeles for a while when they were younger. [As a side note: Elizabeth’s partner Elias also speaks decent English, and having so many English speakers around has been kind of frustrating for me. My host sister Romi (short for Romina) doesn’t speak English hardly at all, and every time I ask her what a word means (or even if I don’t), she will ask Elizabeth to translate to English, when really all I want is an explanation in Spanish. Elizabeth especially is also very eager to speak in English, and I hate to disappoint her by only speaking in Spanish. But Carlos and Elias make a point of speaking almost exclusively in Spanish, and they both keep telling Elizabeth that she needs to let me have my immersion experience. She said she will stop speaking in English entirely after this week, but it’s clear that she really likes practicing her English skills so I think I’ll suggest having one conversation entirely in English per day, or something like that. Right now, I’m mainly replying in Spanish to her comments in English, so I don’t think either of us is getting too much out of it.] I saw some of the cool sites of Santiago, and learned interesting facts about my host family, such as that they are all Jewish. My host mom’s parents are from Hungary and Israel, and she was born in Bolivia and lived in Uruguay before coming to Chile (At least, I’m pretty sure that’s what she said, I’m getting it all confused in my head now. At least part of that statement is correct though.) Them being Jewish is great, because it means that I won’t be having fish and seafood every day like I was worried about.

After we got to the apartment, which is very nice (I’ll try to post some pictures later, I haven’t taken any yet), Elizabeth left to go to Synagogue and I took a quick shower and unpacked. I also met Elias, her live-in boyfriend, when he got up. Elias is 72 or 73 years old and hilarious. Some of the stuff he does really reminds me of what my grandpa on my mom’s side used to do – he told the doorman I was his new sweetheart, and told me to tell everyone at lunch that he was my boyfriend (which I completely forgot about when prompted, disappointing him immensely). I really like Elias, and he is easy to have conversations with.

Later that day, we went to Carlos’ house for lunch with all the extended family. It was hard to keep them all straight, but they were all very nice! I was inundated with questions the entire time, and had a great time with all of them. One of the boys, Benjamin, especially liked tricking me with Spanish wordplay jokes, which is extremely easy to do. Example: Oro no es, plata no es, cuando abras las cortinas, miras que es.” (“It’s not gold, it’s not silver, when you open the curtains you see what it is.”) I said the window, but the correct answer was banana – platano – because the sentence says “plata no es,” or put together “platano es” (it’s a banana). I in turn, translated some of my favorite English jokes, like “Why did the monkey fall out of the tree? – Because he was dead.” The same boy also regaled me with lines from Fiddler on the Roof, which his school is performing in English. He’s the butcher and doesn’t really know English, so listening to him pronounce his lines as he has written them phonetically is quite funny. I actually might record a couple of the scenes for him so he can hear the English pronunciation, because right now he is sometimes hardly intelligible.

I also have had to retell a misunderstanding from the car ride through Santiago about a million times, because Elizabeth and Carlos think it’s hilarious. As I said, the conversation included a lot of English, so when they asked me if I had a notebook, I assumed they meant an English notebook, with paper and everything (cuaderno). I told them no, but I could always buy one if I needed to. They looked surprised, and told me that a notebook was too expensive for me to just go buy one, at which point I was very confused. Turns out that here they call laptops notebooks… whoops.

After lunch, we came back and I took a much-needed nap. Around nine, I went to a birthday party with my host sister. She is in her thirties, but still lives at home (and doesn’t really act her age, I don’t think). The party was fun – I was somewhat of a spectacle, and I got to try a lot of Chilean drinks – pisco sour, pisco cola (pisco with Coke), a white sangria like thing, and this sweet mango drink. It was interesting hanging out with a bunch of people ten years older than me… it made me realize how little people change/mature as they get older. One of the girls there was telling me how she liked this guy across the room, but wouldn’t go talk to him, etc. All in all, the party was fun and I’m glad I went.

This morning, I got up at 10:30 and was one of the first ones up. So far I’ve eaten breakfast, exercised, and done this. We were supposedly leaving for the grocery store at 12:15, but it’s now 1:30, so I’m not exactly sure what’s going on… We’re going to lunch at Elias’ brother’s house, so I’m guessing we might just go straight there at this point. Then I have my first meeting with my program at 6 PM.

That’s about it as far as my host family and experiences so far I think. The not drinking tap water thing is really getting to me though, as I knew it would. I got as much water on the plane as I could, and I have been rationing myself since. My host mom is going to buy me water, but I think I’ll get myself a ton of water sometime so I don’t have to feel bad about being a little water-drinking machine. I have also already messed up a couple times… I don’t think tea equals water being boiled for a minute straight, but I’ve had that, and I completely forgot to brush my teeth with bottled water like they told me to. Also pretty sure some of the drinks last night had at least some tap water in them. But so far I haven’t felt bad at all, so maybe my theory about my invincibility to bad water and typhoid is correct!

Alright, well still not looking like we’re leaving anytime soon, but I’m out of stuff to say. Later!

Note: I had to wait to post this until after I got back tonight, as we ended up leaving shortly after and the blog poster thing wasn't immediately working for me. We had empanadas for lunch, which were delicious, and I met lots more people! Including a sister of the daughter in law of Elias who lived in Vermont for a couple months, so could speak good English. Such a difference from León, where hardly anyone spoke English and those who did didn't really like to! After that, we went shopping for food (I had to taste all the cheese and meats to make sure I liked them and was so full after the empanadas!), then went on a driving tour of the richest parts of Santiago (beautiful), then went to the meeting with my program. The meeting was actually the most boring part of the day, but luckily it didn't last too long. We're about to have dinner now (it's 8:30) and then I think I'll go right to bed, because I have to be up early tomorrow morning for the first day of activities. Hopefully I'll be able to sleep through all the racket of honking horns to celebrate Católico winning the soccer game today...

Buenas noches a todos,

Brianna