Chile

“Galope, Miss Ohio. Galope!” urged my riding instructor in a confusing mix of English and Spanish. Aiming my horse for the jump, I wondered to myself what I was doing here. I was in a ring with six other riders on a horse that took one look at a jump and took off like a bat out of hell before flinging himself over it blindly. I had tried to tell my instructor earlier that I had jumped some before, but I was mostly a dressage rider. If I jumped, it was over a hunter course – a type of jumping that judges you on how nicely and steadily you can go over a fence and how pretty you can make it look, not so much a true “jumper” that was all about speed and anything goes, really, as long as you make it over the fence the fastest. I had tried to explain that, but his English wasn’t every good and my Spanish was about as good as his English - he seemed to think I would do just fine. Without further ado, I was plopped on a horse (no release forms or any sort of boring U.S. type of paperwork) and off we went. One small jump in and he raised it about three feet. He had trouble pronouncing my name, but knew that I was from Ohio, so he just went with that as he urged me to try the course one more time. Was I having fun or was I just so petrified the adrenaline made it feel similar to fun? Looking back, I feel like my entire month spent in Chile felt like that. Petrifying and confusing and so unbelievably awesome.

A quick snapshot of one of my riding lessons in Chile

Me and Calafate after a lesson - he was such a great horse!

 I was halfway through college when I realized that I had enough time to try to minor in something. I had always wanted to learn another language and had enjoyed Spanish in high school, so with two years left in college I set out to learn as much Spanish as I could. About two classes into my Spanish minor, our professor, or “profe” as we liked to call her, announced that she was getting together another group of students to go to her home country of Chile with her for winter break. Profe was one of my favorites, she was easy going but didn’t let you fool around in class, she was always was excited and full of energy, and was genuinely a nice person. Later I came to realize, a typical Chilean.  Attending a liberal arts college, our winter break was actually a month long – starting for Thanksgiving and ending after New Years. I would have to get a loan and squeeze in some extra tutor sessions, but it sounded like an adventure. After class that day, I approached her and told her I would like to go, but I was worried about my Spanish speaking ability (I was pretty terrible) she said there would be no problem and she would make sure my host family knew English as well.

Two months later, one hell of an expensive plane ride to Santiago, one club-hopping weekend in the city, and a 12-hour bus ride that I could not fall asleep on at all, and I found myself in my new home away from home for a month. My host parents did not speak English. Not even a little bit. Talk about an awkward dinner conversation, I finally figured out that my host dad had asked what my parents do after about 4 tries and he kind of squinted his eyes and looked at me funny as I tried to tell him my dad was an architect. My host sister was younger than me and attending a school that taught all in English, but she had not been attending there for long. The idea was that I would teach her English and she would teach me Spanish. After that miserable and awkward dinner, I retreated to my room in which I fell asleep wondering what I had gotten myself into.

My host sister and I while out exploring the coast

The truth is, you learn to adapt. No matter how bad or impossible you think the situation you are in is, you always can adapt and go with it. I loved everything about that month in Chile. The second I stopped worrying about what people thought of my terrible Spanish or how the day was going to turn out, was the second that I could pay more attention to the scenery around me and the wonderful people I was meeting. I still remember the first night I went to the discothèque and was out until 4am. Some friends from the school we were attending during the week dropped me off in front of my host house and I cringed as I had to ring the bell for them to open the gate and let me in the house. Waiting for a grumpy and/or angry host mom or dad to open the front door for me, I was surprised to see my host dad swing the door open and spread open his arms, an enormous grin on his face. My rough translation of what he said was something along the lines of “Why are you back so early?”

Our group at the base of the active Volcano in Pucon, Chile

Everyone I met in Chile was friendly and seemed genuinely happy. The next morning I overslept my alarm and woke up with 4 minutes before I had to leave for school (luckily we only were a 10 minute walk away and everyone in Chile is always late – even to school! If a party starts at 8pm, we would have dinner at 8, go shopping at 9 and then probably get to the party sometime around 10. School started at 8am, and we regularly arrived around 8:20). Anyway, so I am terribly late (and quite frankly, hung over) and rush out of my bedroom, shoving stuff into my bag and frantically tell my host mom I am ready to leave. She is surprised and said she thought I would want to sleep more since I was out partying all night. But I had to go to class, I tried to explain. Shrugging at my crazy American ways, she put out some cookies for me to eat while I walked and told me to have a good day. And yes, Chileans, who are as a whole, way skinnier than most Americans, eat cookies and cake for almost every breakfast. After a few classes (in which there is a snack break in between), I walk back home with my host sister to eat an enormous and always delicious lunch, take a siesta and then walk back for a few more classes. Lunch one day was called “crudos” and it was a raw meat paste on toast, topped with lemon juice and tartar sauce, and you know what, it was am-ma-zing. Everyone in the family comes home for lunch – that is the big meal of the day. What a wonderful break it was to relax and talk and recoup before going out for the afternoon. Dinner was late, around 10pm, and was usually some more cake or sometimes bread. The one time I told them at 10pm I was going to go to bed they were so confused, they were like “for the night or are you coming back out later?”

Chileans definitely do not take life too seriously. My profe was from Valdivia, were we stayed for most of the trip, and she was busy visiting old friends and family, so she was basically MIA. It was up to us to figure things out. Its amazing how quickly you learn a language when you realize that if you don’t, you will not be able to do anything – no getting a taxi, no ordering food, no talking to anyone around you. They soon had us touring local elementary schools in which we were separated into classrooms and the teachers announced that we would be teaching class for the day. Wait?! What?! I learned quickly that Chileans aren’t really big planners and kind of take things as they come – so what do you do, adapt and attempt to teach this class or panic and freeze up? Teaching a class full of elementary students is way more fun! Did they learn anything from me? Probably not. But I bet I was pretty good entertainment. I had about 20 groupies during recess, a 10 year old boy asked me on a date, and I made a little girl cry tears of happiness when I read them “The Little Mermaid” in terrible, stumbling Spanish.

An overview of the last city we visited before heading to the airport for home - Vina Del Mar

By night I was getting a hang of the taxi system and learning where and where not I could walk to (Chile is very nice, but all the nice houses have tall fences around them with locked gates –I am only assuming there is a reason for that). The bars and discothèques in the area were over the top (one was seven levels) and always served up my new favorite drink – piscola: a mixture of Pisco (a type of Chilean alcohol) and coke. The other popular drink was the Pisco sour (which has now come to the U.S., but is not always made in the true Chilean way). My host family had this wonderful little cabin in the mountains next to the coast where we would go to have asada (meat roasted on a stick over a fire pit – in Chile you did not have a grill, you had an asada. It was a matter of pride between families on who had a better asada. It sounds simple, but these asadas were often inside the house and were a big deal to have. And man, was the food amazing!). At the cabin, they also taught me how to make a traditional pisco sour (lots of ice, lime juice, and some sugar and shake it in with the pisco). What a cool experience that was – hanging out with my Chilean family and all their friends, drinking pisco sours and eating asada in their cabin that overlooked the mountains!

Learning how to make Pisco Sours

I was finally comfortable and well adjusted when our profe showed up to take us on our promised four day trip to Argentina. Without further ado, we were shoved in a van and taken via bumpy dirt roads to the boarder. Passing through the isolated border station, we proceeded to make our way through the Andes. We started off with beautiful jungles, landscapes, and waterfalls and soon we found ourselves driving into snow coated roads and blowing winds. At the official country line, we stopped for a picture. “But I have sandals on,“ I told my profe as she told us to go outside and stand by the sign. “No, no that’s ok,” she said cheerfully as she shoved me out into the snow. One snowball fight and some slight frostbite later, we were back on the road and almost to Argentina.

Just one of the everyday views that greeted you in Bariloche, Argentina

My first experience in Argentina was at a snowboard shop that I had found while walking down the street. A nice girl came up to me and asked me if I need any help. I stared at her dumbly for about a minute and then walked away. It was only while I was browsing through the coats did I realize what she had said! An argentine accent was much different than a Chilean accent – especially since my Chilean wasn’t that good in the first place. Thankfully I picked it up fairly quickly after that and that night was able to order my first drink. I asked for something that was popular in Argentina, and the bartender gave me fernet. Fernet is some sort of alcohol made out of artichokes (I have only found it once in the states – in Baltimore and the bartender there told me that it was once used back in the day as a type of digestive aid or medicine, so you can imagine how it tastes.) It was very bitter and pretty disgusting, but I drank it anyway and when the friend I was with could not finish his, I bragged how much tougher I was. Which led to the bet that I had to drink fernet and only fernet all weekend long. I have to admit, I ate a lot of fruit and showered with my mouth open, but I did it. And you know what, I really like fernet now. My Spanish also gets exponentially better if I have been drinking.

Just down the street from our hotel, we found this sunken pier and I couldn't resist! It was a cloudy day, but it felt like you were standing in the middle of an ocean with the waves crashing around you and the towering Andes in the distance.

If there was a moral to this whole story, I am not sure what it would be. I guess the point was to share a few fun stories and show you that it is fun to go out of your comfort level and experience new places, people, and cultures. You learn so much more about people when you have to actually concentrate on the conversation and truly listen to them – and not just what they are saying, but what their body language is saying too. You will be pleasantly surprised when you go out of your comfort zone. I have always been petrified of boats and rafts ever since my uncle tipped mine when I was younger. I went whitewater rafting in Chile – I actually got willingly into the raft! Even after a 20 minute tutorial in Spanish on what to do if you fall out of the raft or if we tipped!

Found this bar in the airport before heading back to the U.S. and couldn't resist getting this photo!

I met so many amazing people and had the most wonderful time. It was something I will never forget and something I will always want to go back to. Even in my darkest hours of the trip, like on my 12 hour bus ride where I could not sleep or returning to Chile after drinking Fernet for an entire weekend, something so amazing would happen that made me question if I was even still in this world. During that long bus ride, I watched an entire lunar eclipse through my window. I watched the moon as it hung over the endless valley and distant mountains as it changed from white to orange to blood red and back again. Driving back from Chile, the car I was in got lost and we had to stop and wait. We were literally in the middle of nowhere, somewhere past the Chilean border. We all got out of the car and just looked up at the sky and you know what? The entire universe was above us. I had never seen the southern sky – the amount of stars was memorizing and just seeing the sky stretch out before you like that took your breath away. It is easy to get caught up in the little things, like jobs and money and relationships and wondering if you are fitting in. To just take a few minutes (or 12 sleepless hours) to stand back and appreciate something so much bigger than you, bigger than the world as you know it, bigger than simple comprehension, to come back down to earth and settle into yourself again after that is almost reassuring. We don’t have it all figured out, everything is not always perfect or comfortable, but always just take a moment to appreciate it – no matter what your situation is.