Reflections

Alright - so I started this post over a week ago and just never got around to finishing it.  I don't even know if it's so much that I "didn't get around to finishing it" or if I just never wanted to.  Because if I finished writing it then it meant that my trip was really over.  The 14-hours spent on planes, the packing, the hasta luegos, the Denver heat, and the fact that I go back to work on Monday didn't seem to really solidify this fact in my head.

It's hard because I keep telling myself that I need to be happy that this happened, not sad that it ended.  I went into it knowing that it was going to be a month long trip, I knew that I had a life here that I needed to come back to (not just needed, but wanted.)

I think the hard part is finding a way to bring the person that I became in Chile back to the US with me. I know it sounds super... Eat, Pray, Love of me - but this will definitely be one of those life experiences that has changed me as a person.

I've always known that I'm a smart person, a hard worker, a caring person, blahblahblah (I promise, I'm not trying to toot my own horn here or anything.)  However, I've also always known that I'm a scared person.  I'm scared of things changing, I'm terrified of failing at something, I panic when I see centipedes, and I was petrified of being completely on my own.

Moving to Madison was terrifying - but I knew some people there, I had been to the campus before, and all of my friends were doing the same thing so it made sense that I couldn't just sit in my childhood bedroom and play with beanie babies for the rest of my life.

Moving to Denver was even more terrifying - this time I knew no people in this new city, not all of my friends were moving out of Madison/ the Twin Cities, but I had Amanda with me so I knew that I wasn't by myself.  I also knew that it was something that I needed to do if I wanted to move on into the adult world.  Moreso, I knew that there would be mountains waiting for me to ski on so if I could just make it until the winter I would have something comfortable and familiar.

Traveling to Chile was something completely different.  I didn't have any nights where I would stay up sobbing or days when Gilmore Girls would make me cry uncontrollably because I was so scared to move (yep... I'm referring to both the Madison and Denver move there.)

**It should be noted that me crying is nothing to be concerned about - I cry when I'm sad, when I'm scared, when i'm happy... when I find a beautiful dress in the store or see a commercial about abused animals - it's pretty typical in my life**

No, I was just plain ol'excited for Chile.  I knew that it was going to be scary and I knew that it was going to be new and different but I didn't know much beyond that.  However, upon arriving in Chile I was suddenly terrified of everything - the language, the city, everything.  

If there's one thing in life that I hate and (was) terrified of, it's small talk.  When I was walking to school on that first morning in Chile - I realized that I would have to do a lot of small talk-ing.  When I got into school I came to harsh realization that it would be small talk in Spanish. Seriously?

I took a deep breath and marched in.  This is the part where I couldn't even figure out how to put my name on the entry test, but I could just laugh it off knowing that I was there BECAUSE I didn't know that.  I could barely understand the question "where are you from" in Spanish, but I quickly learned and started being able to understand more and more, and through many gestures I began to be able to get my point across. 

From that day on I forced myself to talk and plan things and invite people to do things and invite myself along on things other people had planned.

Here is where I learned the greatest lesson - it's actually not hard.  Yes, it's not always comfortable and I have to make a conscious effort to do these things, but at the end of the day I wasn't crying or bleeding or completely alone.  Instead, I had friends and people that wanted to go on hikes and adventures with me.

Now, part of this is because everyone was kind of the college-dorm syndrome, where no one has friends and everyone needs friends so everyone hangs out all the time type-of-deal.  However, I have found that I'm still talking to a lot of the people I met there and I miss them quite terribly.

So, I can make friends after all.  I never doubted that I could make friends - I have friends and all that, but it was still scary going to a place where I wouldn't know anyone (with the exception of the lovely Elin Harm.)

I was also terrified of not being able to speak Spanish - I have always hated traveling and not being able to speak the language, to me it feels disrespectful, rude, and just irritating.  While I felt like I could at least understand SOME Spanish, I knew that I could speak very little.

However, by the end of my trip I was able to have conversations with friends and my host family that were entirely in Spanish.  They weren't always perfect, and sometimes I would answer a question with a a completely odd answer because I had misunderstood the question; but I could do it.

I must say that I was fairly confident in my ability to learn Spanish (not that I've learned it all by any means) but I was more worried about navigating around this new city all on my own.  I am kind of... lazy when it comes to finding new things.  I do love exploring and finding things on my own, but when I have a question about my car or cooking or really anything, I will usually call my family and ask them.  In short, I don't really do stuff totally for myself (or rarely.)  And while it's good to ask for help and all that nonsense, it makes me a very reliant person - thankfully I have incredible people in my life to help me figure out all the little things that I need to figure out, but there also comes a time when I need to learn to do it all for myself.

Part of it is truly just laziness, why spend 20 minutes calling 20 different numbers when I could just ask my dad or mom what to do.  Why waste food experimenting cooking when I can just make a simple phone call and have a better idea what to do.

Well - in Chile I didn't have my cell phone, I couldn't just pick up the phone and get my easy answer.  Little by little I started figuring out all these little things on my own - how to get to a new spot via the metro, which restaurants to go to, how to put minutes on my cell phone, how to get money out of the ATM, how to buy a bus ticket... the list goes on and on.  While I would get advice and pointers, I would usually just sort of figure it out for myself.  Sometimes I was wrong - sometimes I would end up looking silly when trying to get money out of an ATM that said that no foreign cards were accepted, sometimes I wouldn't be able to find the museum exhibit and I wouldn't be able to understand the directions given to me... but then there were those times when I got it right the first time.  I got minutes on my phone (all in Spanish) I would get directions to a new restaurant, all these little things that I was doing on my own (I am aware that many people do these same things all the time on their own) and no one was dying because of it.  Yes, there were plenty of embarrassing moments - but I learned to laugh at them and move on.

It's hard to put into words exactly what this trip meant.  Because I am still very much the same person while not the same person at all.  I have been lucky enough to have traveled a lot in my life, but this was very different.

I learned to spend time with myself.  I mean, I love me in all my quirkiness and whatnot - but I have never been terribly comfortable doing things by myself.  However, now I sure do love it.  Just this morning I took an excellent hike on my own and loved every single minute of it.  Don't get me wrong, I love being with people still - but I'm learning to appreciate alone time more and more.

So, in short.  Here's a list of things that I learned this trip:

- Attitude is everything - if you think something is going to suck, chances are it will.  If you can think think of life as adventure, it will be just that - one beautiful, big adventure.  And if you really hope for happiness you will probably be able to find it somewhere.

- Life is so painfully short, you might as well love every minute of it.

- Sometimes it's ok to get lost, because in the time that you have spent being lost you have seen and learned and experienced so many new things that when you do make it back home, home will suddenly be that much better.

- Life is a lot like driving in a dangerously speeding taxi. If you're constantly looking ahead you'll feel like you're spinning out of control and about to crash.  It's much better to let go and enjoy the incredible views out the side windows, you'll be surprised by how many times you make it safely to your destination regardless of whether or not you were watching for it.  

- No matter where you are, there are always adventures to be had - whether that adventure is trying a new food, climbing a mountain, or simply going to a new store or taking a new route to an old store: everything can be an adventure. 

- A person's a person a person.  No matter where we live, no matter what we do for a living, no matter which language we speak and no matter why we feel we are on this earth... we are all so much more similar than we are different.  We all have the same dreams of love and happiness, prosperity and good health.  Hopefully someday someone in power somewhere will realize this... 

- Good food, good people, and good wine should be at the top of everyone's life lists of priorities.  All the other stuff will figure itself out eventually - but if you can surround yourself with good people and take some time to truly enjoy life, everything will be better. 

La Ultima Semana

So this is a post that has been in the works for quite a while.  It's a recap of things that happened in my last week while in Chile (hence the title - it means "the last week" in Spanish)

On Tuesday I had the pleasure of going to the Teleton Foundation - here's the link to their website (it's in Spanish, I'm not sure if you can translate it... but you can see pictures and videos!)
It's a foundation that works mostly with kids with disabilities and different needs (physical rehabilitation, OT, PT, and other medical services.)

I was supposed to go the previous week as well, but due to the fact that I was in Argentina - I was unable to.   So, this was my first and last week.  I had gone to the building previously with the director of the school, but I was now going on my own.  I showed up and waited around for a few moments in order to figure out exactly what I would be doing.  There was some mixup with what day I was coming, but they quickly found me a spot hanging out with the kiddos in the waiting room.
As several parents told me, unfortunately waiting becomes a big part of your life when you have a child with special needs (waiting to meet with the doctors, waiting to find out the results from the doctors, waiting to discuss options with the doctors, waiting for the next doctor, etc.)
Many of the families there had more than one child with them, and what child wants to sit in a boring meeting with doctors who are discussing things that you either don't understand or are too scary for you to want to understand them...
Teleton figured this out early and they have volunteers who are designated to hang out in the waiting rooms so that the parents can meet with the doctors and the kids can draw, paint, do puzzles, and ask millions of questions of the mysterious Gringa.

It was such a fun experience, the kids were super polite and incredibly adorable and I was given an excellent opportunity to practice my Spanish.  The kids were the best  to talk to because if I didn't understand something they would usually repeat it, only this time they'd say it a little louder and a lot faster :) We had hilarious conversations surrounding such topics as Hannah Montana, dinosaurs, and where Superman really lives.
I had the immense pleasure of meeting a little 3-year old boy named Johnny.  But, as he so carefully informed me, all of his female friends refer to him as "Superman Johnny" - he was equipped with flying gestures to help me understand.  Anytime I would call him Johnny he would wave his little finger at me as he says "no, no, no senora - SUPERMAN Johnny" It took all my energy to restrain myself from trying to fit him in my purse to take home as a Chilean souvenir.

The rest of the week was spent in class, eating, and soaking up as much time with friends as I could.  We went out to meals, went out for countless glasses of Chilean wine, went out for drinks and dancing; just really did all the little things that had become so routine for us all while in Santiago.  We danced up a storm on Wednesday night, took it easy but met up with a bunch of friends on Thursday night, and then took it easy on Friday night.  We went to a friends' apartment and ate a lot of food, had some wine, listened to music, and just enjoyed one another's company.  One of the best parts of all of this hanging out was that we were starting to speak in Spanish more and more with one another; instead of English.  Just yet another sign that I had actually been learning things while there!
A side note- on Wednesday night we went to this wonderfully Chilean restaurant/bar that is famous for a very Chilean drink - the Terremota (which translates to "earthquake", ironic?) It's a mixture of wine, a liquor called Fernet, and ice cream (we had pineapple ice cream, awesome!) They're called earthquakes for a reason, drink them too quickly and you will start to feel as though the earth is shaking.  Traditionally you would also have an "aftershock" to follow it up - a smaller drink, we never had it so I'm unsure what would be in it, fun nonetheless!

Anyways!

Saturday was one of my favorite days from my entire trip.  I met up with some friends at the Metro station where we then headed to my favorite place - the bus station!
We bought bus tickets to Isla Negra, the coastal town that was home to the poet Pablo Neruda.  I know that I have talked about him before, but I am very serious, if you are unfamiliar with his work please do yourself a favor and read ANY of his poems.  He wrote everything in Spanish, but the the way in which he wrote really lends itself easily to translation, so it's almost as beautiful in English as it is in Spanish.

We boarded the bus and had about an hour and a half bus ride to the beautiful town of Isla Negra.  There isn't a whoooole lot there aside from Neruda's house/museum - but that was totally ok with us.  We deboarded the bus and started to wander through the quiet streets of the town.  Neruda's face was everything; parking lot signs, sidewalks, you really feel as though he's watching you while you're there.  There were lots of signs pointing us to Neruda's house so we made our way there immediately.

His house is breathtaking, to say the least.  Again, he was definitely an odd dude.  He was enamored with the ocean and boats - and this is very much reflected in his house.  First off, his house is built on a bluff/hill overlooking the ocean, so he was constantly surrounded with grand views of the ocean waves crashing over the black rocks for which Isla Negra is famous.
Throughout the house there are a lot of figure heads that you might find on the front of boats (the real name for them escapes me) mermaids, women, etc.  Kind of odd, especially as there are some that have those eyes that seem to follow you wherever you are in the room - but fun nonetheless.
In many rooms there are port windows like you would find on a boat.  Many of the ceilings are low like they would be on a real boat, even the furniture makes you feel like you're on a boat.  You can see his original writing desk - a beautiful old wooden desk.  The view out the window would inspire even the least poetic person to write at least something moderately poetic.
Neruda was a collector - he has bug collections, boats-in-a-bottle collections, books, seashells... truly a man after my own heart.

The best part of the house was his bedroom.  There were so many windows with exquisite views of the ocean of which he was so fond.  I would give almost anything to be able to wake up to views like that each morning - you could see up and down the coast out the floor-to-ceiling windows, simply perfect.

After taking roughly 1,109,083 pictures of the ocean, his house, the ocean, and a few more of the ocean, we decided that it was time for lunch.  We went next door to the restaurant that's connected to the museum; while it's a little more pricey that we were hoping for - it was absolutely worth every cent.  We were able to sit at a lovely table in the afternoon sunshine.  We had perfect views of the ocean, so we could enjoy our meal in warmth with a soundtrack of waves crashing and seagulls calling.  We had a leisurely lunch of absurd seafood - I had a conger eel stew that was absolutely amazing.  Each bite was delightful.  We had bread and coca colas and then a dessert of chocolate mousse cake and crepes with dulce de leche... like I said, it was truly a perfect day.  We had excellent Spanish conversation with lots of laughs, it was really just so excellent.
From lunch we meandered down to the ocean.  To get there we walked through some of the streets of town - the town is mostly comprised of wealthy vacation homes, so just strolling and admiring the houses was enough.  We then came to a dead end road where there was a secret little path taking us down to a sprawling sand/rock beach.  We played around on the rocks, finding tide pools and touching funny little shells and fish like things in the various pools.  Again, we had quite the photoshoot because everywhere you looked was more beautiful than a postcard.
We then boarded the bus back to Santiago and went home and relaxed.  We had a nice final dinner with our host family then went out to meet up with some friends.  We had a super fun last night of dancing, laughing and good conversation.

By the time Sunday rolled around I was thoroughly exhausted.  I spent the day packing and then just lazing around hanging out with my family and watching TV shows on my computer.
I then got picked up by a shuttle and was taken off to the airport.  Things were smooth at the airport - lots of lines to wait in, but that's nothing new.  My flights were long but incredibly uneventful - I got to watch a lot of movies due to my inability to sleep, but again, that's nothing new.
Eventually I ended up back in Denver - disoriented, confused with English, way too warm, and exhausted, but I was home.

The strangest thing about being back is that my life there and my life here were so disconnected.  People there are still there or back in their respective countries, and people here are still here - they've never met and who knows when they will.  I find it hard to talk about my trip when people say "tell me about your trip!" because I just don't even know where to begin.  It's hard to pick out my favorite stories because they're all my favorite.  It's hard to decide on the best food because everything I ate was the best.  I know I sound silly and cliché, but it's true.  It was such a change from my life here, and it became such a life changing experience, that it's hard to explain.  It seems silly to tell the few stories that I do because it doesn't even begin to do the trip justice.  All I can say is that it was truly one of the best times of my life, and I am so thankful that I got to experience this all.