Time

I don’t understand time, and I never have. One day twenty-four hours go by so slowly that it is hard to focus, other days speed by so quickly that I don’t know where the time went. Sometimes it’s a combination of the two. But twenty-four hours never feels like exactly twenty-four hours. I’ve never looked at a week and said, “That felt like a week.” There’s always a modifier—“That felt like a long week,” “That week felt like two days,” “I can’t believe how slowly that week went by!” It’s always been “Why is time going so slowly,” or “I can’t believe how quickly time has gone.”

I can’t believe how quickly time has gone. I have been in Chile for over six weeks, now. The first part of our program is finished, and with it our Spanish classes, our seminar at Universidad Alberto Hurtado, our first practicum, and the significant portion of our Santiago homestay.

Tonight, Geoff’s family hosted a big fiesta for all of the students and their homestay families. It was really wonderful to finally meet everyone’s families—and was great to converse with new people—new patient people—in Spanish. And of course, because we’re in Chile, there was a dance party in the backyard—complete with Chilean, American, and British music (at one point “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” by the Beatles started playing), a conga line, and plenty of energy.

Tomorrow night, we leave for Temuco. We will be staying in a community called Chopod, living with one other student and a Mapuche family who may or may not have electricity or running water (and definitely don’t have internet…which will probably be my biggest struggle.) We will be attending workshops on intercultural and bilingual education, human rights, and the Mapadungun language. I am so excited for this portion of the trip—although I hear they eat even more in Temuco, and are still offended if you don’t eat everything. But I am very excited to get out of the city, and be back in the country—fresh air sounds fantastic. Below is a map of Chile—Santiago is in the second red area, Region Metropolitina, and Temuco is in the ninth region (Araucania.)



Also tomorrow night—Daylight Savings Time. As of right now, Chile is in the same time zone as New York, but beginning tomorrow we’ll be two hours apart (New York moves forward, Chile moves back.) As I said, I don’t understand time.

Nine Days To Go!

As the countdown of days until departure rolls into single digits, I am getting to be more nervous than I anticipated.

Things I am Nervous About:

• Being away from the people I care about for an extensive period of time. Not seeing my best friend for a year (she's doing Spring and Summer abroad in China). Not talking to my family regularly.
• Living with a new family, adjusting to their rules and the mores of Chilean life.
• The Spanish. I'm not nearly fluent enough--communicating is going to be difficult for at least a few weeks.
• Still nervous about accidentally breaking some cultural taboo unintentionally and winding up offending someone...
• Post-program travel. Do I really want to spend two months traveling around after three months away?
• The required readings are difficult--which means that classes are going to be difficult. Which is fine; I enjoy an academic challenge. But the fact that everything's in Spanish complicates things a great deal.
• Grades, tests, and the possibility of lecture classes. I've been away from those things for a long time now, and I'm not looking forward to getting back to them. I don't want to become ridiculously competitive over grades, but I want to do well. I feel a lot of pressure to get all As, because these grades will be some of few that will show up on my Hampshire transcript--and I want grad schools to be interested enough in me to read my evaluations. As for tests--I get quite anxious about them, and am very unpracticed in both the actual test-taking and the studying beforehand. I'd rather write a paper.

Things I am Excited For:

• Travel. To see five new countries, and return to one that is home away from home.Meeting new people. The people I've spoken to from the program seem really nice so far, and I can't wait to meet them face to face. Meeting my family in Uruguay and Brazil.
• To finally be fluent in another language.
• My independent study project--I'll write more about this after meeting with the Academic Director in Chile and getting everything approved.
• Classes. To learn new things that I wouldn't have the opportunity to study in depth in the US.

This should really be a Venn Diagram--there are so many overlaps.

Seven Weeks to Go!

I got my first passport when I was nine years old, and was fascinated by the stamps. I was headed to Israel for my cousin’s Bar Mitzvah, and more than the traveling, more than the sightseeing, I was excited to have that tangible reminder of places visited marked on the pages of that colorful, important document.

While traveling so far at such a young age could have easily turned my world upside down, it seemed to turn it right side up. It made me feel important to travel; I felt like I was someone bigger than a little blonde nine-year-old who lived in totally-normal Katonah, NY. In Israel, I put paper prayers in the cracks of the Western Wall, I planted a tree for my great-grandmother; in Egypt, I saw real mummies, and I walked through the Pyramids (which, interestingly, smelled strange.) When I came home, I had stories to tell my friends, kids who mostly had never been far beyond the East Coast, if they’d even made it that far. I was different; I was interesting. I was not just a book-nerd, but I was a well-traveled book-nerd. Travel gave me some clout among the other elementary-school-academics—and it helped that I came home from that particular trip reading (albeit, at nine, only partially understanding) The Diary of Anne Frank, bought from the gift store at Yad Vashem.

In my teens I ventured to many new places—I spent a significant amount of my high school breaks and summer vacations in Nicaragua, but also managed to explore Mexico and the Dominican Republic, England and Italy, and, of course, Canada—and always, whenever I would go through customs, I would excitedly look at the new stamp on my passport. Although the marking was no longer a necessity for my memory, looking at it reminded me that I was somewhere different, somewhere special, and that a life-changing experience was bound to occur in the following days.

Now, two passports and two horrible passport photos later, I am heading out of the country for my first real extended visit. I have used the phrase “I am moving to Santiago, Chile in two months” a couple of times in the past few days, because that’s how it feels. I’m picking up my life, dropping everything—most notably a relationship, four years of vegetarianism, and the comfort of 24/7 internet access—to go on this five-month South American adventure. And as much as I know I will miss all of the things and people I will leave here, I am incredibly excited for this experience.

Here is the general plan: I am participating in a wonderful study abroad program through SIT, called Chile: Education and Social Change, for three months. Through the program, I will be living in Santiago and taking classes there, traveling up and down Chile and to Argentina, and completing an independent study project on empowerment through (creative) writing/literacy education in urban and rural schools. After the program is over, I will be spending approximately two months exploring South America, during which I will hopefully meet the remaining family I have in Montevideo, hike the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu with my mom, and eventually spend some time back in Nicaragua. However, all of these plans are open to change as I change, as I learn, and as my Spanish language skills increase.

I do have the standard list of worries: I talk to my parents almost every day and I know that, come seven weeks from now, that will be essentially impossible; my Spanish isn’t excellent and I’m terrified of being in a place where I can’t communicate with fluency; I’m nervous about moving in with a host family; I’m afraid I won’t like the food; I don’t want to offend anyone by breaking cultural taboos without knowing it. My nose ring should likely come out, but I’m thinking of replacing it with a simple stud. I’ll have to abandon the idea of spaghetti-strap tank-tops, which have long been my warm-weather staple item.

Yet, somehow, there is a strange sense of comfort that I will be getting away from here—from all of the things that tie me to the area(s) in which I live. It’s a chance for reinvention, it’s a chance for discovery, and it’s a chance for adventure. And, if nothing else, I will have a new passport stamp; a new experience. (Look how cool the stamps are in Chile!)