Adapting--más o menos

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Side note: I wrote this blog over a week ago, but for some reason I had trouble getting it posted. This website is a bit confusing...

It is day number thirteen. I am trying to limit my entries to no more than one a week, but with each day that goes by I gain plenty of experiences worth noting. So far I have only been out of the city once. The rest of the time I have spent going to class and trying to orient myself in Santiago.

My Spanish is still basic, but I feel as though it is improving every day. It is difficult to say, because in some situations I can understand almost everything, yet in other situations I have no clue what is going on. The hardest part is being asked questions. It is much easier to listen quietly to other people’s conversations. That way I can listen for key words to get the gist of what is being said. If I miss a beat I can wait until the conversation switches topics again.

I thought that I would stick out as obvious American, but this might not be true. Contrary to what I was told prior to arriving Chileans do not dress conservatively. Plenty of the people my age are very westernized. There is also a significant mix of white Europeans ancestry in Chile. I have seen plenty of people who I would have guess to be estadounidense*, but do not know any English. Because of this I blend in a little better.

Going to a new school has been a smooth transition. I ride the metro to school every day, and then walk the remaining ten blocks to class. I have just two classes. The first is Spanish, which meets for three hours on MWF and an hour and a half on TTH. The other class is Chilean Native Cultures, which is taught in English. As helpful as Spanish class is it does not compare with conversing with the locals.

It was (and still is my intention) to attempt to associate with as many Chileans as possible, and keep my time spent with Americans at a minimum. At first I thought this was going to be difficult. All my classmates are Americans or at least English speakers (there is one girl from Sweden). Also my host brother, Pablo, almost always speaks to me in English. Fortunately, there are opportunities to practice Spanish.

The past two Sundays I have spent here have been family days. I have the impression that this is normal in Chile. As I previously mentioned Saturdays are usual late nights. This past Saturday we had dinner at 10:30pm. It was so late that I had assumed that we would not be having dinner. Similar to the previous week I woke up late (10:30am), but was still the first one awake.

At 2:00pm we had visitors. My host mother’s brother and her boyfriend’s daughters came over for lunch. Before the actual meal we sat around the living room eating chips, nuts, and crackers. At roughly 3:00pm we had lunch which was a full course meal, met by dessert. After a long lunch we returned to the living room where I listened to them speak Spanish for several hours. Had I have not been intrigued to learn Spanish I might have started to get bored. They arrived at 2:00pm and left at 9:30pm. We spend the whole time in the living room or around the dinner table.

At lunch I made sure to eat a lot, because as I have learned you never know when you will next eat. I was smart, but not smart enough. I should have stuffed myself, because we did not eat dinner that night. Of course I did not know this until I went to bed at 11:00pm.

On Saturday I went to a National Park type area north of Santiago called Yerba Loca. This was a nice change, because for the first time in almost two weeks I was able to get out of the city and into natural. I went with four other Americans (sadly no practicing Spanish). We hired a minibus to take us up there. The trip was a little under an hour, during which we climbed to roughly 6000’ elevation.

At first the road was windy, paved, with lots of sharp switch backs (picture above). Eventually it turned into a single lane dirt road winding along the side of a cliff. I did not think too much of it until we met another car coming towards us. There was no turnout anywhere near. To the dismay of myself and the only other four people on the bus, our bus driver started to pass the car. The dirt road was not wide enough for both vehicles. To make matters worse we were on the cliff side of the road. There was nothing more we could do but pray that our driver knew what he was doing. Somehow we made it through. I was not sitting on the cliff side of the bus so I do not know how close we were to the edge. I do not want to know how close we came to toppling down thousands of feet.

On a brighter note, I have signed up to be a conversation partner with a local Chilean. The idea is that I teach him English and he teaches me Spanish. We met today for the first time. Currently, Daniel (my partner) is on summer vacation, but is working in admissions at Universidad de Andres Bello. We met for lunch today which was a good experience. Daniel speaks very little English, less so than I speak Spanish.

I met him outside of the admissions building during his lunch break. He took me up to the office that he works in to introduce me to his co-workers. They all seemed very excited to meet me. Several times Daniel asked me to bring more of my American friends. He and some of the other guys asked me if I knew any American women. This is something that Pablo has also asked me several times.

Daniel and his friends said they wanted the phone numbers of my female friends. If there has been one this most apparent about Chileans is that they are persistently assertive towards women. I already knew this, and this was one of the reasons that I did not ask any of my female friends to join me. I did not want to subject them to a crowd of aggressive Chilean guys whom I did not know. Maybe later I will introduce them, but I figured I should get to know them at first. As it turns out the Chilean girls are just like the guys.

It could not have been more obvious that nearly all the girls were coming on to me. It is a bit much to handle, considering that it all happens so quickly. Rarely in the states are men objectified in the way that I felt today. I swear that when Daniel was introducing me to some of his female friends he said …y este es Fiona, la madre de tus hijos. Translation: “…and this is Fiona, the mother of you children.” I might have mistaken la madre for something else, but one of the reasons that I am sure that he said it was because all the girls started laughing very loudly.

Overall it was great being with the Chileans. None of them knew English too well (some knew none), so I got to practice a lot of Spanish. They were all fairly easy to understand. One thing that surprised me was that when one of them asked me how long I had been studying Spanish, and I said “four years, but I have not studied in three years” he responded by saying “really? But your Spanish is very good.” This was a huge confidence booster. It let me know that what I am saying actually makes sense, and that I am not just throwing words out to deaf ears.

Also there are a few other signs that I am slowly adapting to the language. Earlier this week I was speaking on the phone in English, and I kept saying sí instead of “yes, I understand” or “right” or “I got it”. Also last night I had my first dream in Spanish. It was probably not all in Spanish, but there are certain parts that I know were in Spanish. Who knows if the words made sense, but at the very least it shows that my mind is making a conscious effort to learn.

Things are starting to look good. Maybe I will come back fluent or very close to it.



Uno más cosa…

Americans, myself included, are not the only ones who feel nervous when forced to speak to strangers in a different language. When I was introduced to one of Daniel’s friend who is not competent in English I heard her say soy muy nerviosa. I AM VERY NERVOUS.

So the next time you have to put yourself on the line remember that the fear you have is completely normal.






*Chilean’s term for Americans, meaning United States of American. There is no word for it in English. Chileans do not always appreciate the term Americano, because they are also Americans.

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