The Bag Lady Cometh...
My Dad has always enjoyed referring to me as the Bag Lady (I tend to carry lots of bags around, I guess), but I have now added new meaning to that nickname. It likes to rain in Viña, and by rain, I mean a lot. And apparently our street is perfectly situated so that all the water in both this city and neighboring Valpo pools around our block. Yesterday I found myself standing in the middle of the street (the only place that wasn´t completely flooded), walking up and down with my newly-bought umbrella, trying to find a place to cross that was flooded by less than 8 feet of water. I was about to give up--to resign myself to walking around for the next few months with a perpetually wet, colorfully moldy boot--when a nice man in a car stopped, parked in the middle of the flood, and told me to climb through his backseat to the relative safety of the lofty sidewalk. This was fantastic...and apparently quite common. Ever since, my mom has been making sure that I leave the house properly dressed--with a plastic shopping bag tied securely over my left food and leg. Yes, this will make me feel less conspicuous.
Things here have been really good, despite the relative lack of blogging time. It´s absolutely freezing (snow in Santiago, and the roads are closed all over the country!), but I´ve made good friends with my family´s estufa (space heater). This whole humidity thing is so obnoxious--it´s so damp that the dry skin I´ve been accumulating on my left foot from lack of, well, anything, can´t even slough at this point--now it´s doing something that more closely resembles sludging whenever I get out of the shower. I told my new friend Emily all about it today on our tour of the university, and she thought it was fascinating.
I managed to pre-register myself for a good 10 classes or so today--I love this whole shopping thing. I think I´ll end up going back either tomorrow or friday and changing the whole thing--so my style. We also got to sign up for conversation partners (30 minutes in Spanish and 30 minutes in English with Chilean students) as well as for extracurriculars like sailing and yoga and salsa. I can´t believe that I´m actually getting excited for classes to start. And I´m starting to feel really comfortable in my family situation. My Dad had to leave a little while ago, and my Mom was telling me how much he liked me--apparently he was supposed to leave yesterday, but he wanted to spend more time with me. I almost died when she told me that. I´ve been meeting lots of different people, too. Yesterday I went to a small town called Quillota with Cris and Pauli to see her grandmother, aunt, and cousin. Her grandmother was hilarious and kept a large bottle of Bailey´s in her liquour cabinet...I love Chile. I also met my mom´s sister today, who was lots of fun to talk to. Even the language seems to be getting a bit easier, which pleases me to no end. So things are really good, even if they are ridiculously cold. I bought slippers, though, and that helped. Now I kind of feel like I´m just waiting for the bad part to hit--like I should be bracing for impact. I do believe that this kind of thing gets easier the more you do it, but I don´t think it´s possible to ever skip the intense culture shock step entirely. It does feel different then either Mexico or Argentina, though; I don´t have that horrible sinking feeling whenever I´m alone or whenever I realize where I am. That frightening sense of vulnerablility and loss of self doesn´t seem so present this time. Or maybe that´s just the honeymoon talking. Either way, I´m amassing quite the collection of shopping bags.
Things here have been really good, despite the relative lack of blogging time. It´s absolutely freezing (snow in Santiago, and the roads are closed all over the country!), but I´ve made good friends with my family´s estufa (space heater). This whole humidity thing is so obnoxious--it´s so damp that the dry skin I´ve been accumulating on my left foot from lack of, well, anything, can´t even slough at this point--now it´s doing something that more closely resembles sludging whenever I get out of the shower. I told my new friend Emily all about it today on our tour of the university, and she thought it was fascinating.
I managed to pre-register myself for a good 10 classes or so today--I love this whole shopping thing. I think I´ll end up going back either tomorrow or friday and changing the whole thing--so my style. We also got to sign up for conversation partners (30 minutes in Spanish and 30 minutes in English with Chilean students) as well as for extracurriculars like sailing and yoga and salsa. I can´t believe that I´m actually getting excited for classes to start. And I´m starting to feel really comfortable in my family situation. My Dad had to leave a little while ago, and my Mom was telling me how much he liked me--apparently he was supposed to leave yesterday, but he wanted to spend more time with me. I almost died when she told me that. I´ve been meeting lots of different people, too. Yesterday I went to a small town called Quillota with Cris and Pauli to see her grandmother, aunt, and cousin. Her grandmother was hilarious and kept a large bottle of Bailey´s in her liquour cabinet...I love Chile. I also met my mom´s sister today, who was lots of fun to talk to. Even the language seems to be getting a bit easier, which pleases me to no end. So things are really good, even if they are ridiculously cold. I bought slippers, though, and that helped. Now I kind of feel like I´m just waiting for the bad part to hit--like I should be bracing for impact. I do believe that this kind of thing gets easier the more you do it, but I don´t think it´s possible to ever skip the intense culture shock step entirely. It does feel different then either Mexico or Argentina, though; I don´t have that horrible sinking feeling whenever I´m alone or whenever I realize where I am. That frightening sense of vulnerablility and loss of self doesn´t seem so present this time. Or maybe that´s just the honeymoon talking. Either way, I´m amassing quite the collection of shopping bags.
posted by Emily Schulman | 7:15 PM
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