It wasn’t until I woke up in my
friend Mike’s apartment about twenty stories off the ground in Santiago de
Chile, shivering in my sleep that I realized what an adventure I’d experienced
the day before.
“Mike,” I thought, “he’s in Chile.
Why is he here?” It hit me like the café instantáneo I drank that morning,
like the chilling air of the Chilean winter, it hit me like the sun rays
rushing over los Andes and darting
between the skyscrapers of the modern Latin American city, Santiago de Chile.
Rewinding one week, I was
checking my student email as often as possible, hoping for information on a
Chilean host family or an itinerary for getting picked up from the airport and
plugged into orientation week at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de
Valparaíso (PUCV). A week after
the deadline promised by the university, I received an email claiming that the
information would arrive at the latest the following week. However, as I nervously talked with people
the night before flying to a country unknown to me I chose to be optimistic
instead of assertive and did not make the extra phone call.
Arriving
in Chile with no way to reach the university wasn’t my initial plan. When no one from the school came to pick me
up from the airport I sat down and focused on deep breaths. Although traveling makes one more flexible as
a person, it never hurts to practice controlled breathing. Being alone at the airport wouldn’t have been
so difficult if I 1) had taken pesos chilenos
out of the bank, 2) had a cell phone, and 3) could access WiFi
without paying for it. I had never
considered sleeping on a suitcase so intensely before. It could be comfortable, right? After borrowing two cell phones and trying to
sneak Wifi access I was able to reach my friend Mike who is originally from the
U.S., but works in Santiago.
Forty minutes later, he showed up
at the Aeropuerto de Santiago
to take care of both a friend who hadn’t planned ahead well and a study abroad
student whose organization had not communicated with him.
The
next morning on the way to the Valparaíso bus, we walked through the business
district of downtown Santiago and it became clear that Santiago de Chile is a
much different city than San Rafael, Costa Rica. I saw people bundled in scarves rushing to
catch a subway, their attaché cases bobbing back and forth. I smelled the famous pollution of
Chile’s biggest city,
which holds an estimated 40-60% of the nation’s entire population. I heard a Spanish dialect very different from
that of Costa Rica. It’s true that Chilean Spanish is very mentally
stimulating, but also beautiful in my opinion.
It was a whirl of European architecture and New York City pacing, and
then I was on a bus with a sign that read “Valparaíso.”
By
10:30 I hopped off the bus with my luggage and found a bench in the station. Mike had called a friend of his in who agreed
to pick up the gringo stranger. After finding each other, we walked to the
office of international student affairs and did things in person. Two hours later I was in my casa nueva in Chile.
If it wasn’t for the renowned
Chilean hospitality I’m not sure what would’ve happened. But for now the news is as follows: I made it to Chile and through orientation
week, my broken computer is now fixed (another story altogether), and I’m
falling in love with the port city of Valparaíso. Clearly being in a second transition period is
difficult, but “difficult” or “uncomfortable” only becomes a problem when in
the wrong mindset. When one is in the
right mindset you never know what aventuras
will find you. That was my first lesson
in Chile.
