cold, colder, and coldest
It's almost winter in Chile! Now when I say it's cold outside, it's really not, not to a New Yorker at least, or I should say upstate New Yorker. Its usually like a brisk fall day. At night, the temperature hits a cool 40-45 degrees or so and during the day stays usually somewhere around 50...now 45 degrees in March in NYS is almost shorts and flip flop weather after bearing through negative temperatures all winter. So why is it so cold?
Because...drum roll please...there is no heat inside the buildings! Now I remember a time living on good old Margaret St and my parents refusing to turn the heat on unless the temperature dropped below 40 degrees...we sat bundled in hats and scarfs and I imed my friends with gloves on my fingers, so I guess I should be sort of accustomed to it by noq, but man it's cold. Its nice to have a brisk cold day and come inside and take off your jacket and warm up...but usually once inside and out of any sort of direct sunlight you suddenly get colder here.
But Chile invented Panties...no folks, stop that thought, not the kind you find in the middle of your floor wadded in a ball...its like a thin spandexy material that you wear under your clothes. So what's my new morning routine you ask?...one complete layer against my body of panties...i have black and red...i know so wild in my color choices. Then goes on the pants of choice, I have a current number of three pairs of pants to my name, so jeans or leggings...then usually a tank top, t shirt and long sleeve shirt. Sounds ridiculous? Its life without heat. Its actually not terrible until the night when you are typing on your laptop and your fingers are cold.
Tonight my lovely landlord sees me freezing in my bedroom and says "Oh Meghan I have this if your cold" and puts a portable heater in a brand new box in my room...thanks I think, I have to move out in two days and am bitter about it. But for now I lay on my stomach across my bed with the heat blowing on my face and fingers and type away.
There are STILL days in this country that I can't believe that this is my life. I had one yesterday, I looked at the sun setting on the mountains and the smog made it all such a pretty color pink and I was walking inbtween two hogars...and I looked up and thought...Meg, you live in Chile? When did that happen? There are several moments I have also where I want to possibly strangle someone and so goes life...highs and lows....but usually the highs are much higher and the lows don't dip so low. I spent the day yesterday at my hogar hanging out with some teenage girls. We studied english and in an hour learned 1 through 100 and reviewed, "hello, how are you....my name is.....what is your name"...they love it. They love the sound of their own voices making some other language, its pretty amazing to watch. As usual my normal 7:00 pm stop time reached much later as children needed help with homework and the dark night loomed around us. So I stayed and helped and hung out and talked with a Tia about her daughter and spoke with a young girl who had just gotten out the hospital for the 3rd time...3rd attempted suicide. Although she looked at me through very blank eyes...she asked me to stay. We didn't talk about much, the tutoring she recieves in the mornings, her likes and dislikes, but as we sat on the grass and it started to get dark she wanted to get a sweater and turned to me and said "Tia, will you wait for me if I go get a sweater." "Of course I will," I answered, why else am I here, I thought to myself. I don't know that I am helping her at all but at least I am someone to hang out with for the evening, at least for tonight she is healthy.
And so goes Santiago. Its been an interesting few months. Since January, I have returned to Santiago with a sort of indefinate timeline in my head. I stick to my same goals I came to Chile with, speak spanish fluently (now I added like a chilean) and live everyday to the fullest. In January I said goodbye to my closest friend in Santiago and soon realized after a rather quiet february that it was time to branch out and get out. I had been hanging out with the same group of (great) friends since arriving and have done some incredible things in Chile, seen more of the country than I expected to....but now I needed stability. I made it though my transition time. I thought I would run when it started to become uncomfortable, but I stayed put, qualmed the nerves and LISTENED to myself. I have gotten almost good at this in this country.
So since February, I would say three major things have occured in my life. I drastically improved my spanish, I put the bullshit aside and got out the books and studied, studied, studied, I spoke, think, drank, listened, tried, cried, etc. in spanish. I yelled at cab drivers, gave speeches to directors of institutes, asked questions, got hung up on on the phone, pulled out my verb book everyday on the metro and finally, after 8 months in chile know how to conjugate all the verbs I know 8 DIFFERENT WAYS. WHOO HOO. I can say complex sentences! Do I know spanish now?
NO. Language is NOT easy. You get somewhere, its like a marathon, a really really long hard marathon. So you get to a mile marker and think, god I just ran 6 k, thats awesome, I didn't know I could do that! But then you realize you have 20k left to run and you want to cry a bit, but you keep running. I'm still running. Not sure what mile marker I am at yet. I came to a very important realization yesterday though. I lately realized that I can understand ALMOST all spanish but have more of a difficulty speaking and was always trying to understand why. I realized this....as I was walking home last night I was figuring out how to say..."I would have told you if I could"....and like I had just taught english, I went through the sentence in my head broke it down and figured it out...34 seconds later I could say the sentence in spanish. I know how to do it, but I had to think about it. So when people speak to me and speak quickly to me, I get it, I hear the correct tenses, the words, the verbs, the sentence form and it sounds great, but when I try to do it...sometimes...its like tendria...que......ahhhhhhhhhhh.
I'm trying. I had a cup of tea and went to bed, challenge for tomorrow. So spanish, check. Second big thing, I decided since I lived in Santiago and liked my life, I needed some permancy. I reached out, started hanging out, going out, and doing more things with more people that live here....that aren't passing through for 3 to 6 months. I started to make a life, slowly, so far so good. Third thing, along the same lines, I took a job as the Director of Operations at VE Global.
Now I get to do social work, education, project planning, crisis intervention and whatever else pops up all the time. Its some good stuff, it's a bit like grad school in some ways, I develop projects and see them through. Everyday is a bit different. For example (I can hear my english student saying this every other sentence during class) Por ejemplo...this is the circle explanation I learned in learning a second langauge...
I leave my house tomorrow at 8:50, walk to metro, take metro 40 minutes, walk 15 minutes, arrive at hogar at 10, teach english, help with homework, hang out, (have to leave early tomorrow to teach extra english class) by 1145, go up to Las Condes (two COMPLETELY different neighborhoods) and teach english (for money) to a man in a business suit in a bank. Get to my office my 1:45 (I hope...cutting this one close) to set up projector for math training that I am recieving to implement new math program to children at our Community Center at Domingo Savio. 4:00 end of training, start working on own training that I have to give at 10am on Friday morning. leave office by 6:30 to go back to Las Condes, teach more english to a different man in a business suit in his home with his 6 month old baby and lovely wife who brings me cookies...arrive back in my apt by 9pm...pack and/or go out dancing with friends, we'll see what the night holds.
Friday will be completely different. Friday I get to give a training about the child welfare system and working with sexually abused children in Chile to 45 undergraduate students at 10am. At noon I bring the students to a small tent city in Santiago where we will paint murals, fix their school walls, and introduce the university students to the children that we volunteer with.
It will be an interesting week. And so goes life in Chile. Last weekend we said goodbye to 10 volunteers that are getting ready to leave the country...here is the video we made for our executive director who has been with VE Global for two years now. Brooke's Despidida
Patience and listening, two words that hold so much meaning all in itself, have taken on a very different meaning in my life lately.
Because...drum roll please...there is no heat inside the buildings! Now I remember a time living on good old Margaret St and my parents refusing to turn the heat on unless the temperature dropped below 40 degrees...we sat bundled in hats and scarfs and I imed my friends with gloves on my fingers, so I guess I should be sort of accustomed to it by noq, but man it's cold. Its nice to have a brisk cold day and come inside and take off your jacket and warm up...but usually once inside and out of any sort of direct sunlight you suddenly get colder here.
But Chile invented Panties...no folks, stop that thought, not the kind you find in the middle of your floor wadded in a ball...its like a thin spandexy material that you wear under your clothes. So what's my new morning routine you ask?...one complete layer against my body of panties...i have black and red...i know so wild in my color choices. Then goes on the pants of choice, I have a current number of three pairs of pants to my name, so jeans or leggings...then usually a tank top, t shirt and long sleeve shirt. Sounds ridiculous? Its life without heat. Its actually not terrible until the night when you are typing on your laptop and your fingers are cold.
Tonight my lovely landlord sees me freezing in my bedroom and says "Oh Meghan I have this if your cold" and puts a portable heater in a brand new box in my room...thanks I think, I have to move out in two days and am bitter about it. But for now I lay on my stomach across my bed with the heat blowing on my face and fingers and type away.
There are STILL days in this country that I can't believe that this is my life. I had one yesterday, I looked at the sun setting on the mountains and the smog made it all such a pretty color pink and I was walking inbtween two hogars...and I looked up and thought...Meg, you live in Chile? When did that happen? There are several moments I have also where I want to possibly strangle someone and so goes life...highs and lows....but usually the highs are much higher and the lows don't dip so low. I spent the day yesterday at my hogar hanging out with some teenage girls. We studied english and in an hour learned 1 through 100 and reviewed, "hello, how are you....my name is.....what is your name"...they love it. They love the sound of their own voices making some other language, its pretty amazing to watch. As usual my normal 7:00 pm stop time reached much later as children needed help with homework and the dark night loomed around us. So I stayed and helped and hung out and talked with a Tia about her daughter and spoke with a young girl who had just gotten out the hospital for the 3rd time...3rd attempted suicide. Although she looked at me through very blank eyes...she asked me to stay. We didn't talk about much, the tutoring she recieves in the mornings, her likes and dislikes, but as we sat on the grass and it started to get dark she wanted to get a sweater and turned to me and said "Tia, will you wait for me if I go get a sweater." "Of course I will," I answered, why else am I here, I thought to myself. I don't know that I am helping her at all but at least I am someone to hang out with for the evening, at least for tonight she is healthy.
And so goes Santiago. Its been an interesting few months. Since January, I have returned to Santiago with a sort of indefinate timeline in my head. I stick to my same goals I came to Chile with, speak spanish fluently (now I added like a chilean) and live everyday to the fullest. In January I said goodbye to my closest friend in Santiago and soon realized after a rather quiet february that it was time to branch out and get out. I had been hanging out with the same group of (great) friends since arriving and have done some incredible things in Chile, seen more of the country than I expected to....but now I needed stability. I made it though my transition time. I thought I would run when it started to become uncomfortable, but I stayed put, qualmed the nerves and LISTENED to myself. I have gotten almost good at this in this country.
So since February, I would say three major things have occured in my life. I drastically improved my spanish, I put the bullshit aside and got out the books and studied, studied, studied, I spoke, think, drank, listened, tried, cried, etc. in spanish. I yelled at cab drivers, gave speeches to directors of institutes, asked questions, got hung up on on the phone, pulled out my verb book everyday on the metro and finally, after 8 months in chile know how to conjugate all the verbs I know 8 DIFFERENT WAYS. WHOO HOO. I can say complex sentences! Do I know spanish now?
NO. Language is NOT easy. You get somewhere, its like a marathon, a really really long hard marathon. So you get to a mile marker and think, god I just ran 6 k, thats awesome, I didn't know I could do that! But then you realize you have 20k left to run and you want to cry a bit, but you keep running. I'm still running. Not sure what mile marker I am at yet. I came to a very important realization yesterday though. I lately realized that I can understand ALMOST all spanish but have more of a difficulty speaking and was always trying to understand why. I realized this....as I was walking home last night I was figuring out how to say..."I would have told you if I could"....and like I had just taught english, I went through the sentence in my head broke it down and figured it out...34 seconds later I could say the sentence in spanish. I know how to do it, but I had to think about it. So when people speak to me and speak quickly to me, I get it, I hear the correct tenses, the words, the verbs, the sentence form and it sounds great, but when I try to do it...sometimes...its like tendria...que......ahhhhhhhhhhh.
I'm trying. I had a cup of tea and went to bed, challenge for tomorrow. So spanish, check. Second big thing, I decided since I lived in Santiago and liked my life, I needed some permancy. I reached out, started hanging out, going out, and doing more things with more people that live here....that aren't passing through for 3 to 6 months. I started to make a life, slowly, so far so good. Third thing, along the same lines, I took a job as the Director of Operations at VE Global.
Now I get to do social work, education, project planning, crisis intervention and whatever else pops up all the time. Its some good stuff, it's a bit like grad school in some ways, I develop projects and see them through. Everyday is a bit different. For example (I can hear my english student saying this every other sentence during class) Por ejemplo...this is the circle explanation I learned in learning a second langauge...
I leave my house tomorrow at 8:50, walk to metro, take metro 40 minutes, walk 15 minutes, arrive at hogar at 10, teach english, help with homework, hang out, (have to leave early tomorrow to teach extra english class) by 1145, go up to Las Condes (two COMPLETELY different neighborhoods) and teach english (for money) to a man in a business suit in a bank. Get to my office my 1:45 (I hope...cutting this one close) to set up projector for math training that I am recieving to implement new math program to children at our Community Center at Domingo Savio. 4:00 end of training, start working on own training that I have to give at 10am on Friday morning. leave office by 6:30 to go back to Las Condes, teach more english to a different man in a business suit in his home with his 6 month old baby and lovely wife who brings me cookies...arrive back in my apt by 9pm...pack and/or go out dancing with friends, we'll see what the night holds.
Friday will be completely different. Friday I get to give a training about the child welfare system and working with sexually abused children in Chile to 45 undergraduate students at 10am. At noon I bring the students to a small tent city in Santiago where we will paint murals, fix their school walls, and introduce the university students to the children that we volunteer with.
It will be an interesting week. And so goes life in Chile. Last weekend we said goodbye to 10 volunteers that are getting ready to leave the country...here is the video we made for our executive director who has been with VE Global for two years now. Brooke's Despidida
Patience and listening, two words that hold so much meaning all in itself, have taken on a very different meaning in my life lately.
“Will our life not be a tunnel between two vague clarities? Or will it not be a clarity between two dark triangles?” Pablo Neruda
Comments
Post a Comment