In every country there is a learning curve, and this post will attempt to explain my experience with Chile’s learning curve thus far.

At this moment, I am sitting in a computer lab on campus, enjoying the internet for the first time since my last blog post.  As I write this, I am constantly hitting wrong keys and putting accidental accent marks of various sorts on letters, as this key board is very different than what I am used to.  I am still making a few mistakes here and there, but as I type more, I find that it is becoming easier and easier to avoid those wrong keys.  However I am not completely free from typos yet, as it takes more than just a day to erase years of practiced hand-placement on a keyboard.

There’s a metaphor in there somewhere.

One thing I have found problematic here is finding my way around new parts of the city.  It is not the public transportation’s fault–if nothing else, the metro has been an absolute lifesaver.  The problem, I believe, lies in the Chileans’ ability (or lack thereof) to give good directions.  Those who do know how to point me in the right direction tend to give poor explanations, such as “it is on that corner,” said while waving in a vague direction, meaning my destination could lie at any one of six different “corners.”  Thanks.

And then there are those who don’t know the answer to my queries for directions.  However, as I have learned, it is cultural to just give an answer, albeit absolutely false, instead of admiting that you don’t know your way around your own city.  This has lead me down many an incorrect road.  I realized today, after having to ask 5 different people how to get to a certain building downtown, that there must be a way to tell who actually knows where they are sending me and who is just being “polite.”  My mission: figure out the difference; the small variations in intonation between those who know what they are saying and those who do not.  I am sure I will still be given lots of incorrect information as I continue to navigate the city, but with experience, it should become easier to find my way flawlessly across this unfamilliar city, this strange keyboard.

The literature class I am taking here gives assigned readings every week, and to get the readings one must go to a little photocopy shop on campus where all the classes’ readings can be purchased.  Last week I bought the readings for my lit class, intending to complete them this weekend.  Yesterday, I opened up the readings only to find that they were about Greek cultural history.  Quick check against the syllabus: suspicions confirmed.  The photocopy center had given me the wrong thing.  So today, despite not having any classes, I trekked my way down to campus to pick up the correct readings.  I had to wait in line for an hour just to get to the front of the line.  When I finally got my readings, I checked to make sure they were the real thing as I walked away.  Wrong again.  Turning around, I fought my way to the front to inform the guy behind the counter of the mistake.  Long story short, I had to wait another half hour just for him to correct the mistake.

Lesson?  Always check to make sure your photocopies are correct on the spot. One fewer typo to make as I go about my business every day here in Santiago.

I could go on and on with examples of how I have been slowly learning how things operate here in Chile, but they all tend to have the same moral at the end of the story.  Learning how to live in another culture takes time.  Now that I have been here going on three weeks, I have at least gotten to the point where I understand that the learning curve exists, and although I have learned a lot in the last few weeks, I have a long way to go.  I still find myself getting frustrated by Chileans’ horrible directions, as well as their overall lack of promptness and efficiency, but I have learned enough now to feel confident in my ability to figure out the rest.  But like typing on this godforsaken keyboard, I know it will take lots of practice before I am typo free here in Chile.

I know it’s a lame title, but I couldn’t possibly keep a blog in Latin America without using it at least once.

After a weekend of searching, I am pleased to say that I have found a place to live!  It is located in Providencia, the area of town that was far and away my first choice.  The apartment is close to a metro station, and lots of nightlife.  The apartment itself is pretty nice–OK by U.S. standards, but way better than some of the other apartments I’ve seen here.  My room has access to an outdoor terrace where I can watch people walk by down below and get some semi-fresh air.  I will post pictures one I get a chance to move in, which will probably be tomorrow.

In the meantime, here is a brief update on my activities so far:

Barrio Bella Vista. AKA, where the action's at.

A few nights ago I went out to experience Chilean nightlife at its best–in the neighborhood called Bella Vista.  Bella Vista is probably one of, if not the hub of activity here in Santiago.  To give you an idea, it is a neighborhood that consists solely of brightly-painted bars, discotecas and restaurants. Every weekend it is absolutely packed with people and interesting things to do. I went with a couple exchange friends, where we promptly met a large group of other Americans from Notre Dame (woot woot!) who are also here as exchange students.  We all decided to navigate the craziness together, finally settling upon a discoteca in which to enter.  To give you an idea of how Chilean nightlife works, our group of about ten people went into this club, and in doing so probably doubled the number of people inside.  That was at 2am.  The clubs here don’t even get busy until 3am or later.  Quite a different schedule than I’m used to all the way around, but I’m not complaining.

Since then, I have spent approximately 8 hours walking around Santiago looking at various apartments, following leads, etc.  Today was the lucky day, as this morning we finally found the right place.  And the best part?  It’s 5 minutes away from Bella Vista.

Today was the first day of classes for the PUC.  I didn’t have any classes today, but tomorrow the locura really begins (as if it hadn’t already).  I found choosing classes to take quite the challenge.  There’s no shortage of interesting classes, the only problem is that I’ve already taken the equivalent for most of them.  The classes I have left to take are either not offered here, or are classes that I don’t want to attempt due to their intensly quantative nature.  (Taking classes in a different language is a challenge, taking math and science classes in a different language torture.) After hours spent studying the course catelog, I think I have finally settled upon a few classes to take.  I am nervous, as I still feel that people here speak lightning fast and with lots of vocab I’m not familliar with.  But I guess that’s all part of the experience, eh?

Luckily this week is only three days long–two for me, since I didn’t have class today.  The reason is because a new president is assuming office on Thursday, so everyone here just decided to take Thursday and Friday off.  No complaints here.  I don’t think I could have chosen a more interesting time to be in Chile if I tried. Go figure…for once, I feel like I’m exactly in the center of the action, all the way around.

My name is Katie Gray, and I’m a CISB student on exchange in Chile for Spring Semester.  Well, I’ve been in Santiago about 3 days and I’m already shaking things up!  Talk about making waves!

Ok, enough.  First and foremost, I am alright, and so is everyone else I know here in Chile so far.  I am very lucky to be living in a nice part of town with solid architecture that was built with earthquakes (terremotos in spanish) in mind.  I am so grateful that I had the fortune to come across this family, who were not only level-headed, but were well prepared with loads of candles and a radio to listen to updates on, for when the power went out during the quake. However, all our thoughts go out to everyone who was not lucky enough to be in a well-built structure during the quake.  I know there isn’t a lot of damage here in this part of town, but everyone here is thinking about the people who were living in areas that may have gotten hit harder.

So, in case anyone is interested, here’s what happened.  I am still feeling like I’m on Tucson time, and for those who know me as the night owl I am, you can imagine that I’ve had a pretty hard time getting to bed before 4am here the last few nights (which is about midnight in Tucson time).  The family’s two sons, Rodrigo and Javier, were having friends over for a little get-together last night, and they invited me to come out and socialize with them.  So we were all in the backyard at 4am when the earthquake hit.  It took a few seconds to dawn on me what was happening.  There were about 15 or 20 of us in and outside the house, and everyone immediately rushed outside and huddled together in a circle and held hands while we waited for it to pass.  I’m told it lasted for 3 minutes, which is an incredibly long time to be wondering if the Earth is about to open and swallow you up.  The most fascinating image that I will remember until the day I die was of the pool in their backyard, which was twisting sideways back and forth like a mobius strip, emptying out probably half of its water in the process. Incredible.

They are saying that at the epicenter the quake registered at as 8.8, and I think here in Santiago it was an 8.0.  Thinking about this really makes me feel fortunate to have been in a place that is well prepared for earthquakes.  To give you a frame of reference, the quake that hit Haiti in January registered as a 7.0–so many tens of times less intense.  But the immense damage was sustained due to their poor construction and infrastructure.  Luckily, much like the Bay Area, Chile is better prepared than a lot of other countries for such disasters.  As Maria said, better it happen here than in somewhere like Bolivia or Peru.

Immediately following, everyone was pretty out of it for a few seconds, and then all of a sudden, it was like we all came back to life at once, and people started hugging each other and crying and getting on their phones to call their families.  It was then that everyone really started to freak out, because the power had gone out (on purpose–it’s one of Chile’s many earthquake safety measures), and all the phone lines were down, so no one could get in touch with their loved ones, and some people were getting really worried.  There was one guy at the party, who is easily big and tough-looking enough to be a bouncer, who was in the corner bawling because all his family lives in Conception, where the epicenter of the earthquake was.  My thoughts to him and his family.

All in all, I probably got to bed a little before 7am this morning.  I woke up at 1pm, noting that last night did not do anything to actually help me achieve my goal of setting my body clock forward a few hours…but then again, I just don’t think it was meant to happen last night.  Tonight however…

On a side note, last night during the 3 hours where everyone was just milling around and talking by candle light, it occured to me that I was incredibly hungry.  Like, emergency chocolate hungry.  Even after my post yesterday, I never imagined that I would ever actually have to use the chocolate for an emergency, but with the power out and not a lot of food to go around with such a full house, I decided it was time to use up the rest.  Luckily it did the trick, and now I have learned my lesson.  I will never take emergency chocolate for granted again. Amen.

Check natural disaster off the life list.

Que les vayan bien.