Week one, done

South America » Chile » Santiago Region » Santiago
January 11th 2011

Published: January 12th 2011

I am coming to the completion of my first week in Chile. As expected I am still getting used to my new life. Living in a new city/country is challenging in itself, but not being able to communicate makes it ten times more difficult. I rarely know where I am in Santiago or the direction in which I am headed. This is annoying, but it is nothing compared to feeling like an idiot every time someone addresses me.

Most Americans who think they know enough Spanish to "get by" are sorely mistaken. I can say this because I thought I knew enough to get by, but when you get asked a question and have mere fractions of a second to respond you might think twice the next time you say “I know Spanish.” The fact that I need to time to process what was said to me, how I should response, and how I should pronounce it is lost on the Chileans. I know a lot more Spanish than they think I do, but they will never know because I am not at a point where I can speak without thinking. It also does not help that there are dozens of ways to say something. This is fine if I am asking the questions, but as soon as the response comes back I lose hope.

There is a famous saying "you learn something new every day." This is true, unless you do what I am doing. In this case you learn something new about every minute. The most important thing I have learned in my short time in Chile is assume the unexpected. Until I improve my Spanish I will never know what is about to happen. I rarely know when we are about to eat dinner, or go somewhere, or when visitors are going to saw up to the house.

This weekend was the perfect example of not knowing what to expect. On Saturday, after running in the park (and getting lost on my way back home), I went to my room to study up on my Spanish. I figured that we would eat dinner sometime around nine. Usually Pablo, my host brother, gets home from work shortly after nine, and we eat dinner. Nine o’clock came and went. Shortly afterwards I heard visitors arrive.

Greetings are very important in Chile. I meet two people whose names I still do not know. Then over the course of the next two plus hours I sat at the table with four adults and listened as best I could, trying to understand even a word of what they were saying. The whole time we were eating bread style crackers, cheese, pickles, and salmon. I was not sure if this was dinner or an appetizer. In the US it would have been an appetizer.

However, in Chile dinner is usually very late. We have never eaten before 9:00pm. Sometimes it is very light, other times it is a multiple course meal. In this instance I was not sure if there would be more, because we do not eat dinner American style with all the food on the table in front of us. As it turned out there was nothing more. I did not figure this out until roughly 11:30pm. The adults continued to talk, but I went to Pablo’s room with Pablo (who had returned home halfway through “dinner”) and two of Pablo’s friends. The three of them were getting ready to go out to the bars. Pablo was trying to convince me to go. I am very glad that I did not. The three of them left at 1:00am; I heard them return at 8:00am. Staying out until two hours after the sun has risen is a concept lost on me. To make this even more absurd is that Pablo had to be at work at 11:00am.

I got up shortly before 11:00am. Amazingly I was the first one awake. I did not expect Pablo or his friends to be up, but neither my host mother nor her boyfriend was awake before midday.
This was something I had never experienced before. It was 11:00am and I was the only one in the house awake. What to do? After eating breakfast I considered my options. I went on my computer for a while, and decided that I was going to go to the park to run. A few minutes before I was about to go my host mother came and asked me if I was ready to go. What was she talking about?

Not knowing how to form the questions I wanted to ask I simply said yes. She told me to bring my swimsuit. The previous night at dinner someone had mentioned something about a pool, but I do not remember in what context. Once I was ready I left the house with my host mother and her boyfriend. Since we do not have a car we walked down the street. I still had no clue where we were going or for how long.
As it turns out we were gone for the entire day. We went to her boyfriend’s apartment in downtown Santiago. We shopped at a farmer’s market, went in the swimming pool (which was on top of the fourteen story apartment building), had lunch, and returned home.

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