A new city.

So I arrived in Santiago, Chile on September 4, 2009. I was greeted at the airport by a very smiley friendly female, whom we now call Mariah. She was holding a hand drawn sign with "ve-global" on it. We said our greetings, made some small talk and waited for two other volunteers' flights to land, and soon I was greeted by two other Americans, Jessica (Ohio) and Annie (Minnesota). I called my mom from the payphone to say I had made it through the night and was now stationed in my new country (and later found out that this two minute and 43 second call would cost 27.00!). We ventured out into the very early morning to arrive at Hostel Sammy. Jessica, Annie and I had arrived in Santiago three days early. We were shown to our room of 8 bunkbeds and as you walked into the room the odor of smelly, dirty socks hit you in the face. I put my stuff down, expecting to see bugs and rats scurry from under the bed, but all looked well. I had a sudden frightening urge that I would not be able to last ten days in this hostel with this stench and wondered what I was doing here.

"I have learned that you lose the good things in life to make room for the great things."

We spent the weekend exploring as more and more volunteers trickled in, that evening we acquired Alexandre (France) and we appropriately nicknamed him Frenchy. Now most of the time I forget his real name because everyone calls him Frenchy! We went out for beer and wine and food and froze to death. As I was packing my belongings into storage and fitting what would now be my life into a backpack and one suitcase, I thought for some reason it would be very hot in Chile. I didn't really plan to be honest and it was NOT hot in Chile. It was winter and it was freezing and even when I put on every item of warm clothing I had brought with me I was still cold. It rained everyday and it was cold for the first week we lived in Santiago, but we persevered. Many people bought hot water bottles to sleep with, we huddled around the one space heater in the middle of the hostel (there is no heat or air conditioning in Chile FYI).

After Frenchy, we acquired Lynn (NYC), Eva (Germany), Angel (Australia), Brys (Canada), Pharoah (Scotland), Yasmin (Italy) and last but not least, Medina (god knows where she is from)...haha...this 18 year old girl has lived in a different country of her life every two years and the list is too long, so she is from "the world." We made an interesting group and little did we know that soon we would all crowd into one room at the smelly hostel and learn to love it. Throughout the first ten days in Santiago, we had a week of orientation. At the end of each day I started to look forward to my sleeping bag and towel (used as a pillow, I wouldn't touch the pillow with a ten foot poll). Every morning, our family of 11 would wake up and  drink instant coffee, homemade pancakes and bread, take cold showers and put on layers. Hostel Sammy became home and orientation week quickly became one of my favorite weeks here (and most likely in my life as well).

You see living in Chile is a compilation of my life in the last 27 years. It's a little bit of childhood, camp, college, and social work. I love the childhood part, half the things we do here with this NGO involve being absolutely silly and learning about yourself. The camp part is constantly having fun people around you who love to sing, dance, play sports, work with kids, do arts and crafts, wake up on bunkbeds, play challenge games, you name it, we have done it. So, after ten days at Hostel Sammy with smelly socks, a very cute dog, and ONLY cold water, we moved into our apartments in Santa Lucia and the apartments are very nice, but quite small. Right now I share the one bedroom with Annie. Pharoah sleeps in the other room (I think this is a Chilean bedroom or what we would call an office or closet at home). So we were given bunk beds made for children, and after three nights of climbing onto my top bunk with a mattress thinner than a sheet, I put it on the floor next to the bunk bed. So now I sleep on a mattress on the floor with about a foot in between Annie's mattress and mine, and I love it. I never thought I would say that, but the door hits my head when you open it and we share one shelf for our clothes, but its great. I love living simply now, doing without in this life has taught me how much I wasted before arriving here and how anything can be comfortable at the end of a long day.

Of course there is definately work with all the play, and as I spend more time here I challeneged in news ways that I didnt realize were possible. Feelings of homesickness, fear, sadness, frustration, worthlessness all crept in from time to time, but we learned to speak to one anotehr about these feelings and quickly realized how many people were experiencing teh same thing. Most nights I spend sitting up talking (eating chocolate and drinking wine) with friends. It's really difficult to explain to someone not living here with it is like to live in another country. Its one thing to say, "I am happy here," but that doesn't encompass why, or the constant thought process. Not everything is happy here, there are many many frustrating and sad moments, but I believe its the "living outside your own world" that makes it happy. I am balanced. I love every little part of my life right now and I am not sure that I have ever said that before. I am not sure why I feel this blessed recently. Something inside of me has sparked that was either out for a long time or never lit before, but to live and feel complete is an amazing feeling. Its a learning curve, everyday my mind is stimulated to think in another language, but so many doors have opened once I began to listen closer and speak clearer. I feel now that possibilities in life are endless in a way that I did not feel before.

I was walking home from my pilates class the other night (trying to lose the extra weight I have acquired in chile, apparently thinking that I could eat an excess amount of chocolate and fried pumpkin bread everyday caught up to me). And it was just one of those perfect nights. Its finally summer here, and its a beautiful summer, no humidity, with the type of nights where anything more thank a tank top and shorts is too hot, but you are just super comfortable in the air around you. I was walking down our busy street and realized what a division Santiago is. To my left I passed one nice apartment building after another, parks, fountains and hundreds of people outside, lovers, children, people playing, running, talking, enjoying the beautiful night. I thought I was in Spain again for a moment, but then I looked to my right, and directly across the street was utter poverty. From my window on the 12th floor of my building you can see the "roofs" of these buildings across the street, which are made from those large plastic signs you see on the side of buildings advertising something. People have lined this side of the street in abandoned old buildings and made roofs out of plastic. Now I live across the street in a 15 foot highrise with a doorman, rooftop pool and barbeque areas. We pay 220.00 each a month for this apartment, including everything. If the people across the street can not afford anything more than an abandoned building I think we have begun to define poverty in Chile. The division of poverty is amazing, you realize why it's a third world country at these moments. For me, living in Santiago, it is possible to forget that it is third world, but many reasons I love what I do is I get to be reminded everyday, from the neighborhoods I work in, the children I work with and the other side of the street from my building.

"It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarley sat back and let things happen to them,  they went out and happened to things."

It is a new city to me, there is a lot of beauty here, but I have found most of the beauty in the people I work with, the children that allow me into their home everyday and strangers I have met that take the time to listen to my broken spanish and smile and can not wait to show me around their city. There is pride in Chile.