As ominous as the title sounds, this is simply what life is like on your year abroad if you are doing more than one language. You have to keep one eye on where you're going next and how you're getting there, especially if you're looking to minimise the costs of flying..and I mean; who isn't?
I have now been in Santiago de Chile for a month - 5 weeks in actual fact. It is a wonderful, vibrant and energetic city with so much to offer every minute of every day - cliché over, my sincerest apologies for the vomit stain on your keyboard/mobile phone. In all seriousness, I can't wait to discover more in this city and around the country that I'm spending 4 and a half months in as my second half of the infamous yah abroad.
View from a brief 40 minute climb up a nearby hill
I am teaching in a school here in Santiago, at last count I have lessons with 12 classes from Kinder (5 yrs) to Cuarto Medio (17-18 yrs) lasting up to 6 hours each day. It has been an amazing experience so far and I'm very lucky on many counts. First and foremost is the family that I live with, they are some of the loveliest and most welcoming people and I have become immersed in their family life with no difficulty at all. This has been immensely helpful when it has come to both getting to know Santiago as a city and generally being looked after at the school (where my Spanish mother also works as a science teacher) and has gone as far as being set up with meetings with other Chileans my age all of whom have been equally delightful.
Sunset from the back door
A few observations that were the first to occur to me when penning this questionable blog entry:
All the Chileans that I have met have been very friendly and have been universally kind and welcoming to a very white foreigner turning up pretty much out of the blue.
Chilean Spanish can be pretty challenging (especially if your host-mother speaks at a scary rate of knots). Chileans are (so they tell me) frequently mocked by other South American nations for speaking a Spanish that is mostly another language. These modismos (colloquialisms/idioms) have a strong basis in some of Chile's indigenous languages and thus make little sense in the Castillian that we've been learning so carefully for 8 years or so. It is especially difficult when humour is used because the speak tends to get more colloquial as a rule, at least I feel like there's certainly more to learn!
Summer hits Narnia
We also took a trip...
Last Sunday we (me and two friends from Durham) undertook a short trip to a small town called Casablanca to participate in a Wine Festival that was held in the town's main square. It was a beautiful day and we managed the bus ride there without much difficulty. The day passed in blissful (entirely responsible, of course) enjoyment of the wines on offer but did inevitably finish with a very British trio of white twenty-somethings drinking tepid prosecco and eating crisps in a park. We slowly realised that we were not entirely sure of the way we were supposed to get home (having been dropped off on the side of the motorway by the bus). Following many (unsuccessful) attempts to flag down buses from our company we took the collective decision to try and hitchhike a ways - it was a mere 50 minutes by bus, we were determined to make it.
We were pleasantly surprised after nearly an hour of attempts (including the original buses) when a large lorry stopped for us and two Chilean companions (who frankly sponged off our wonderful hitchhiking skills all the way back). The chap driving the lorry was a quiet, 26 year-old guy who was very happy to have some interesting company in his cab. With the back seat furnished as a sleeping space we were very comfortable, at least until we saw the somewhat disturbing M4 Carbine that was sharing the space. The driver was very relaxed however and encouraged us to take some photos with said deadly firearm - we put it down to one of those experiences that gives you a good story afterwards and hoped he was as harmless as he seemed...
Probably not as scared as we should have been...
A sequence of comparably uneventful rides later brought us to completely the wrong side of Santiago which meant an hour and a half of metro travel for me before getting home to a well deserved rest.
Safe to say, if the next 3 months are anything on this one - it's going to be a very entertaining rest of trip.