The trip to Chile was long. Dad drove me to the airport early in the morning and walked with me through the baggage check, cracking bad jokes in his booming voice. It was moderately embarrassing, but as soon as I got my boarding pass and stepped into the "take off your shoes and jacket and pray you didn't pack any liquids" line, I missed it. He watched me walk through security; I took my backpack, rosie, and my shoes from the security officer, waved goodbye one last time. Then I turned around and cried. Six months is a long time--at least I've got Rosie, so I'm not completely alone.
Sitting at the terminal, it hit really hard that I was going to a foreign place. Half of the people waiting for flight 1915, service SFO to LAX, were speaking Spanish. I settled down with a book within listening distance of three twenty-somethings who I assumed to be Mexican, chattering happily in Spanish about their upcoming trip.
-I'm headed to Chile. I here there's more work there than there is anywhere else right now--I've been to Guatemala, Cuba, México... But they don't pay as well as Chile.
I started staring. I know I did. There were two boys and a girl; she had long, ratty brown hair and big eyes, her ribs poked out through her sweater. One of the men was flirting outrageously with her, the other was her traveling partner. I listened to them talk about South American economic tendencies, and to the flirtatious man's bad pick up lines (i knew they were bad because I could understand them. And because every time he pulled one out, she rolled her eyes while her friend guffawed and pretended to look around at the other passengers waiting in the terminal.)
Finally, the plane boarded. An hour and a half later, there was absolutely no turning around: It's a short hop from SFO to LAX, but it's a six to eight hour eternity to drive. I was really, officially on my way.
After getting briefly lost in LAX (the international terminal is completely separated from the national terminals. You have to walk outside along the taxi-pickup road to get there. Once I found my way inside, I didn't know if I was supposed to check in again at the counter or just proceed to the waiting area. Should I change money now? Should I find somewhere to get food? Why was everyone speaking Japanese?), I found my terminal, bought a bottle of water, and changed $200 U.S. (the exchange rate is appr. $500 (Chilean Pesos) to $1 US.) into $100,000 Chilean pesos. I stuffed all of those (too many) zeroes into my tourist pouch and sat down with my water, my book, and some banana bread to wait for however many hours.
In the end, I wound up people watching. The Spanish speaking terminal is close to the Japanese and Korean terminals; an old Korean woman with a walker tripped on the automated walkway and got into a fight with a flight attendant who came by to help. Two very cute blonde children ran around with their father, jabbering away in Spanish. Our flight attendants came in, wearing bright red skirt suits and chattering happily. A Japanese flight was booked to leave in a few hours; the attendants were sitting on the other side of the lobby, eating and joking with each other. And then we boarded our plane, and started out over the ocean.
I was seated in the emergency row (bonus: extra foot room!)(non-bonus: no place to put my backpack) with a motherly woman in her mid-50's with dyed-blonde hair, wearing a wool poncho. She asked me a question in Spanish; I don't know what it was. I just smiled awkwardly and half-shook my head.
-¿Hablas español?- she asked
-Sí- I answered. -más o menos.
She took that to mean that I was linguistically challenged. She explained to me (in English) that she'd come to the bay area to visit one of her sisters who lives there. All of her siblings came to visit for a few weeks, and they went to San Francisco, to the beach, everywhere. Now she was going home, to Chile, her country. Because she was
-Chilena. That means I'm from Chile.
To avoid being boxed as "stupid" or "bad at spanish," I explained (haltingly) in Castellano that I was going to university in Santiago, and that I was going to meet with my program head in Nuñoa once we landed. She looked at me, a little concerned, and told me that she would give me her contact information and watch me on my way out of the airport to make sure nothing happened to me. I thanked her, and settled in with my book for the fourteen hour stretch ahead of us, while she pulled out "El Mercurio" (which I happened to know was a Chilean newspaper) and started to read.
Several humiliating hours later (picture this: you're sleeping on an airplane. A flight attendant walks by, asks you if you're hungry. You don't hear what she's saying. She asks if you speak spanish. Before you can answer, the kindly woman you're sitting next to says "no" for you, and then explains to you (after you've refused the offered ham and cheese sandwich) that "hambre" is a very important word. -Tienes HAMBRE- she explains. -HAMBRE. That means hungry. Are you hungry?- You smile and repeat after her, and try to swallow your pride. Years and years of Spanish classes have gotten you this far: you are unable to communicate hunger or understand anybody around you. You hope this doesn't forebode the entirety of your trip.) we landed, first in Peru, then, three hours later, in Chile.
It was about six AM, Chilean time. I passed through customs without much difficulty, and then was in a cab, heading to a distant place called "Nuñoa," watching the sun rise through the window.
It was also freezing. June below the equator is winter; it was pre-dawn, and i thought my nose might just fall off.
Two hours later (it's not actually a two hour drive from the airport to the school. My cab driver got lost. In the process of taking me from the airport to the university, he drove the wrong way up a one way street, drove on the sidewalk, asked me if I knew where the street was, and scraped the door on a tree.) it was 8 in the freezing morning, and I'd arrived at the Universidad Católica, campus oriente. I thanked the cab driver, wandered around the school lost for a few minutes, and finally got up the nerve to ask a security guard where the University of California office was.
-Por el pasillo a la izquierda, tras de esta camión blanca. Dobla por allá y siga al derecho. está al lado izquierdo.
Only, due to his thick Chilean accent, it sounded more like this:
-Porel pasillo ala ihquierda, trah ehta camión blanca. Doblaporallá y siga al derecho. ehtá al lao ihzuierdo.
I smiled and thanked him and was happy to have recognized the word "left." I found the white truck, I turned left, and sure enough, there was a door down the hallway, on the lefthand side, that said "Universidad de California" with an arrow pointing up. The outside door was open, but I couldn't get into the office itself. It was, after all, 8:25 in the morning; the office doesn't open until 9:00. So I settled down behind my bag, snuggled into my coat, and waited.
Lucky for me, within ten minutes, Maricarmen had come to my rescue. She walked in, bundled up in her winter coat and bright yellow scarf, her curly hair half-hidden in a messenger boy's cap, her delicate nose pink from the cold. She smiled at me and said something that I couldn't decipher. And then she took me downstairs to find Verónica, an older, shorter, blonder version of herself, who had the keys to the office. Vero kissed me on the cheek, and when I forgot to kiss back, she laughed and explained that this is how people greet each other in Chile, and that I'd get used to it before long. And then they took me to the office, where there were six computers all in a row (although only one of them actually worked) and an estufa (a gas-fueled space heater.) Before long, I was back to normal body heat, and another estadounidense had arrived. Another estadounidense who, I discovered over a piping hot cup of nescafé (which i awkwardly ordered from a food cart on campus, while the lady behind the counter smiled at me, simultaneously amused and frustrated) is from Pleasanton and happens to see the same dentist I do. The world is far, far too small sometimes.
Back in the Study Center office, Californians were multiplying like rabbits. First there was one, then two, finally, there were about 20 people crowded into a room meant to house no more than 8. And then the host parents started coming.
One at a time, they filed into the hallway, said hello to Verónica. Vero would call a name, a Californian student would smile awkwardly to the rest of us, stand up, and march through the door to meet his or her Chilean mother for the first time. It was like sitting at a twisted kind of orphanage: we knew nothing about our host families. Nothing. They knew lots about us--our eating habits, our ages, our likes, dislikes, sibling count, religious orientation. We had been selected based on compatibility. We were all nervous.
Thusly I met Luci (Lucrecia), my host mom. She came in, face serious, hair perfectly dyed a deep, almost maroon red. A long black winter coat, a sweater collar peaking through at the top. Black, shiny shoes, and an oversized black purse. She awkwardly kissed me on the cheek, smiled tightly, turned to Verónica and asked
-¿Habla español? (does she speak spanish?)
-Más o menos. Se articula muy bien. (More or less. She over-enunciates.)
Another tight-lipped smile, and then we walked down the stairs and into the taxi that was waiting for us in the parking lot. Luci chattered the entire way, about a back surgery she had several years back that fixed her spine, but how her back still hurts when it gets cold. About the cold--how it hasn't been this cold ever, as far as she can remember. About how we were heading to her apartment. And then in the taxi, she chatted with the taxi driver, about how I was a student from the United States, about where her house was. And I stared out the window trying to see Santiago, my new city, and trying not to fall asleep.
Into an apartment complex, up two flights of steps, and a kiss on the cheek to Ivan, her husband, which I managed to deliver slightly less awkwardly, and I was home. Home, in Santiago, is a small apartment with two bedrooms, a sewing/craft room, a long, narrow kitchen, and a living/dining room. It is cramped, but perfect for three people. I had hoped for siblings. Instead, I have ghost siblings: my host mother's two daughters, Lorna and Carolina, who live in Europe with their husbands and call daily to see how their parents are doing. I walked through the apartment and admired the photos on the walls, and then Luci took me back to see my room. I thought I might have a heart attack when I saw the view from my bedroom window: The cordillera. The Andes. Right out of my bedroom window.
