overseas briefing

What has surprised me most about Chile isn’t how different the culture is. I knew going in that their lunch is the equivalent of dinner in the United States. I knew that they keep different hours, as they don’t leave their houses until 11p.m. or midnight, and usually stay out until 5 or 6 a.m. Bars and clubs often don’t open until at least 1 a.m. — when dances at Midd are dying down, the party hasn’t even started in Chile. I expected to eat some weird foods, like the appetizer that was combination between flan and jello but made with spinach.

What I did not expect were the similarities. I have two homestay sisters, ages 19 and 22, who would look more at home on the streets of New York than me.  I did not expect my first dinner with my homestay family to be store bought pizza crust with store bought sauce and cheese. I live in a small two-story house in a tiny neighborhood that looks like Suburbia, USA if you discount the lack of front or back yards (keeping a lawn up in a city 30 miles from the driest place on Earth doesn’t happen).  I wasn’t expecting my sisters to spend all day on Facebook or watching American TV and movies subtitled in Spanish. My homestay parents are the equivalent of American middle-class, both working in different stores six days a week to get their daughters through college and help support their aging parents. Doctor visits are capped at 15 minutes, weather is the most common topic of conversation and even the newscasts are on the same topics of fad diets, politics and gossip about popstars.

Concentrating in afternoon classes is still hard because I don’t always understand the professors, though now it is usually words in Spanish and not microbiology that are confusing my brain. When I am speaking my words come out in Spanglish, a mix of languages that fits my mixed culture; when talking in one language I often can’t think of words in either. I still come home from class ready for a nap, still drink tea at most meals and still love trying to get everywhere by walking. In times of emergency, family is central, as in the tsunami warning after the Japan earthquake. Just like in the states, my entire family was gathered around the TV watching the destruction in Japan and knowing how easily the same could happen here.

My SIT program here in Chile has been a lot like freshman orientation at Middlebury.  A bunch of amazing people tossed together from different sides of the country with different backgrounds, levels of Spanish and healthcare knowledge, who are all taking the same classes, going the same places and wanting to learn new things, all the while trying to get to know each other and trying to adapt to the culture. We are getting used to the coffee (this time not school coffee, but Nescafe), the schedule, the people, the way of life. Just like Midd changed me, Chile will too, but as with Midd I think it will take returning to my other home to see the growth.