times, they are a-changin'

I went to Chile two years ago today. It’s been two years since 13 other students and I boarded a plane in Atlanta to embark on an adventure I will never forget. Another group just went to Chile from my university, and it’s making me reflect quite a bit on my trip while trying not to be jealous of theirs. And when I really think about it, there’s no way I could be jealous because I wouldn’t change a thing in my life to this point. Not even that I was a jerk in eighth grade. Shocking, I know. But life moves, and I can either move with it or fall behind (read: slump into a debilitating depression induced by nostalgia).

Yes, life moves. It’s been two years since I’ve set foot on dear South American soil, and I can feel it. I am REALLY good at focusing my attention anywhere but the present, so walking down Ricardo Lyon to go to class in Chile almost feels more natural to me than walking down Furman Mall today to go to class at 10. But a 10 o’clock class down Furman Mall in Greenville, SC, USA is where I am. Right now. And there’s beauty in being where I am now. As much as I miss the Andes Mountains, a view of Paris Mountain is what I am supposed to have this morning (somewhere behind all the January fog). I want to remember that today.

My January 15, 2013 will be much different than my January 15, 2011, and that’s ok. My 21 year old self is not my 19 year old self and nor will my 23 year old self (Lord willing) be my 21 year old self. And my friends, that’s a very good thing. Change is good. Change is also difficult. By the transitive property of equality, difficult must be good. There’s about to be a lot of change in my life after May 4 this year. I will no longer live in a vast community of 18-22 year old, liberal arts educated individuals. I will no longer have breakfast, lunch, dinner, and coffee dates with friends every day within walking distance.

What will never change is this: God is faithful and God is present.

This is my lesson for today: Chile is past, and that’s ok. It’s even good. Because the God who holds today is the same as the God who holds yesterday’s today, and the day before that’s today, and tomorrow’s today. So my job isn’t to focus on the change, but the One who is in charge of it. Then it doesn’t look so much like change, but like a beautifully crafted story. And like all good stories, this one is crafted by the Author of Life.

My best wishes go to the Chile 2013 group. Love where you are while you’re there, and I’ll do the same.

The last month or so

Firstly, I´d like to apologize for falling so very far behind in the blogging game. I don´t know if anyone actually reads this, but as a self-proclaimed blog-addict, I know how frustrating it is to wait for a blog post. Now that that´s out of the way:

Argentina! We went to Argentina back in February and it was amazing. I was going to name a blog post “Beef and Icecream, a.k.a. why I´m moving to Argentina” but, as you can see, that didn´t happen. The food was legitimately amazing. One night, we had a seafood buffet appetizer and then SEVEN courses of meat that was all extremely delicious. You know, a typical dinner for me. Also, they have this thing called Dulce de Leche that is like caramel on steroids, and if you ever have the chance to have it in icecream form, you need need need to try it! Argentina did have more to offer than food, though. We walked around a bunch of neat neighborhoods, saw historic sites like the Casa Rosada (pink house, like our White House...only pink), saw a Tango show, and went to an Estancia, or ranch, that was very touristy, but very fun. We also went to Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay and it was an awesome little colonial town with Spanish and Portuguese influences. Except for the theft of passports and cameras from three of the guys in my group, it was a wonderful experience.

After a week of classes, I went to Pucón, Chile for the weekend with seven classmates and it was fantastic. Among the highlights of hiking up one of the ten most active volcanoes in the world, sledding down a glacier on the side of said volcano, and biking to some pretty awesome waterfalls and a beach on a dirt road through the Andes mountains, we also stayed in a hostel with a lot of traveling Europeans and Canadians, ate great food for dirt cheap, and had plenty of bonding time as the eight of us shared a loft. Maybe too much bonding time :) Needless to say, I pretty much love Pucón.

Classes have been going pretty well. It´s still a lot of work, but I´m learning so very much about Chile and it´s people and it´s really fascinating. We´ve been going to lots of museums in Santiago lately and we went to a few vineyards this passed weekend with Dr. Cass. I am communicating so much better with my host family and other Chileans. There are still moments when Spanish makes me feel incredibly stupid, but that´s all part of the process (I hope) and I am no longer quite as timid or ashamed to talk to natives. I am officially two-thirds of the way done with classes. I know this because WE´RE GOING TO PERÚ TOMORROW! I´m super excited (if you couldn´t tell by the caps lock screaming I just did)! Lord willing, I will break my late posting trend and give you an update on that before July :)

Speaking of the Lord, He is crazy good to me. I know for a fact that I would have gone nuts here in Chile if it weren´t for Him constantly looking after me and showing me how foolish most of my frustrations are. I have really been shown how great God is no matter where or when I am, and it´s so great to know that he doesn´t change like shifting shadows. The time seems to be moving so quickly here, and through all this traveling and fast moving time, it is awesome to know that He is timeless and placeless (real word?) yet everywhere in every moment. Mind boggling, but oh so great. Both in my trip to Ecuador two summers ago and in this trip, finding out that God is the same everywhere has just blown my mind and I feel like it shouldn´t. I don´t know why I´ve been surprised to find out that He deals with my foolishness in Chile with just as much grace as he deals with it in the Carolinas, but I´m grateful He´s given me the opportunity to notice it. I guess I tend to put God in a box and think I´ve learned what to expect from Him, and that´s just asking Him to blow my mind as He pulls a Houdini out of the box I built and shows me that He´s way too big for me to fathom. I feel like I might be rambling at this point, so I think I´m going to rap this up and go have icecream with some friends to celebrate turning in our mid-term paper for History.

I hope God blesses you (whoever you are and if you even exist) as greatly as He´s been blessing me lately.

Ciao, pesca´o (fun fact: that is a Chilean phrase similar to See you later, alligator)

Pensamientos

This is week four for me in Chile. I can´t tell if it seems like I´ve been here a few days or a few months, it´s one of those weird time warps where certain things feel like I´ve been doing them forever (like lighting the water heater before taking a shower and holding the front gate in just the right way to lock it) and it seems like I´ve always known certain streets and stores, but there are some things I think that will just never feel familiar no matter how long I´m here. No matter how good I am at speaking Spanish, I will always be a gringa, and there´s not too much I can do about that.

I really don´t want this to sound like it´s complaining, because I promise it´s not. I just know that I´ll always be a foreigner which just means I´ll always be different; cultural immersion doesn´t change who you are. I think God´s actually using that knowledge to teach me about being a stranger in this world. Like Chile, the world is not really my home no matter how much time I spend here or how well I know the locals. Hebrews 11:13  talks about how those of great faith in the Bible knew that they were foreigners on earth and knew that their real inheritance was not here. I would really like to always have that eternal perspective.

The Lord has also been showing me the blessing of Christian fellowship. I´ve been blessed with a wonderful church back home and small groups full of awesome girls that help me grow in my faith and make me want to look more like Jesus. I have definitely not been left without that here in Chile, but it´s a lot less than what I´m used to. In the end, my relationship with God comes down to what I put into it, and I´ve had a lot more solo time with Him these past few weeks. Brothers and sisters in Christ are such a blessing and encouragement, but if I´m not seeking Him on my own, their encouragement can only go so far. Seeking God alone has been more challenging for me but really fruitful as well.

I wish I was good at transitioning my thoughts. I´m almost a third of the way done with classes, which is crazy. There have been some pretty hard things going on with the group here, so prayers would definitely be appreciated. I´ll be in Argentina and Uruguay next week and I´m super excited! But right now, I´ve got to go catch a metro!

Hasta luego

How is it February already?

Hey, everyone!

Big news: I´m tan!! Or at least much more so than I usually am in February. We went to Valparaíso and Viña del Mar last weekend. Valpo is a port city built on a bunch of hills. All the houses are super bright and colorful and I wish we could have spent more than a few hours there. We did get to tour La Sebastiana, one of Pablo Neruda's three houses (Pablo is an uber famous Chilean poet who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971 and we just read a novel about him). It was a really cool house and it seems that Pablo and I share a love of world maps. Viña was really fun too. You can´t really swim there (in fact it´s illegal, but no one really pays attention to that) because the waves are so strong and there´s a crazy undertow. I stood at the edge a lot, and the one time I went in it felt like I was in a washing machine full of sand. Not fun. BUT...I did get to take in some sun, play a little soccer (before a stray dog destroyed the ball), and hang out with Furmanites, which is always hilarious.

Then I got to come back to classes (I´m trying to focus more on the fact that I was AT THE BEACH doing homework rather than having to do HOMEWORK at the beach; does that make sense?). So far this week hasn´t been too exciting. I´ll let you know if that changes :)

Gringa Chilena

This is going to be a short post, but I just wanted to let everyone know that I`ve been promoted. I am not just a white girl anymore, I am a Chilean white girl. Or at least that`s what the owner of a furniture store on my street says.

School, Sisters, and Research

I`m in my second week of classes and there`s a lot of work, but we have a lot of fun too. Right now I`m in the library on campus using their computers.

In recent news, my Chilean sisters came home from Scout Camp on Monday, and they are really great. They`ve already taught me a few slang words and I`ve had very successful conversations with both of them (I love how I rate success in my Spanish conversations by how well I was able to form a sentence). Also, the night they got back, they found a starving kitten outside, so the inhabitants of the house went from 2 to 5 over night. They found out at the vet that it`s a boy and Rafa named him Balù (like the bear from The Jungle Book).

Also, I went to a Spanish church service on Sunday (yay!) with Hilary, and it was really good. I`ve really missed praising God in Spanish with native speakers, it is one of the coolest things ever! The sermon was on David and Goliath (David y Goliat), and since it was such a familiar story, it was fairly easy to understand even though it was a Chilean (see the last post about the weird-ness of their Spanish) with a lisp. One of my vecinos (neighbors) invited me to his church too, which I`m really excited about. My term project for Chile is going to have something to do with missionaries or churches in Chile (at least that`s the plan for now), so just like the vineyard was research for David`s project, going to church is research for mine. By the way, the vineyard was really pretty and quite a fun experience, so both "research" trips have been a success!

I`ve got to go to class now! Ciao!

P.S. We`re going to the beach this weekend!

"Mi amor, mi reina, mi gringa"

Hey, hey! I´m all unpacked, I can navigate the metro, and I can buy bread by myself. I´d say those are 5 successful days in Chile! My host mom, Carolina, is extremely charismatic and my host sisters are coming back from girl scout camp on Sunday, so I haven´t met them yet. The title of this post are the three names that Carolina calls me on a daily basis: My love, my queen, and my white girl. She also introduces me to others as "mi gringita." I don´t know if she knows how funny it sounds in english to go up to someone and say "this is my little white girl, Sam," but I can´t help but laugh every time I hear it.

Classes are going well, but I have more homework than I anticipated. I have a lot of reading for all of my classes, but they´re all super interesting. I especially like my Spanish profesor, Profesora Mabel. She´s hilarious, and she wrote the two textbooks that we´re using. Chilean Spanish is more confusing than any other Spanish I´ve heard before. We have to learn extra vocab called chilenismos (chilean-isms) in order to understand what anyone around here is saying. One of my favorite chilenismos so far is "cuico/a" which means a snob; it´s fun to say. They also drop the s at the end of words and the d in the middle of some words and just generally talk fast, but I´m getting used to it.

A lot of us have been going to parks or plazas after class. It´s amazing how much green there is in this city. I really need to start putting pictures up. I don´t have internet at my house so it´s hard to find time to post pictures, but it´s also a good thing because it´s less of a distraction than it usually is for me.

I´m gonig to a vineyard today with some Furmanites for "research." There´s a guy doing a project on the wine culture of Chile, so we´re going to do a tasting and tour of a vineyard really close to the city (and yes, the drinking age is 18 here). Until then, I´m going to research for a presentation I have on Monday.

¡Un besito!

P.S. I explained to Carolina what sweet tea is, and we´re going to make some later! So excited!