Patience, Etc.

Hey All, So we got an apartment! We are soooooooo excited. We were in the hostel for exactly three weeks. Last week I didn't get any blogging done because even though I kept thinking of cool things, we were just surviving from day to day. I don't know why changing places and things in one's life and living in the unknown is so exhausting, but it is. So, last week consisted of lots of apartment hunting. We slowly learned how to interpret apartment advertisements in Spanish, with a few mistakes along the way. I washed laundry by hand for the first time in my life. This is because there aren't any do it yourself laundromats. You have to pay someone to wash your clothes for you and it is about $8 per load. So, that adds up quickly! So, we decided to hold out on washing clothes until we got an apartment. I learned that you really can wear the same shirt several times if you need to, but eventually I had to wash at least some underwear. Luckily Callie had given us some packets of travel, liquid laundry detergent before we left so I used this to wash the clothes (yeah Callie and yeah Woolite).  Somehow I learned in this week that things don't have to be just right....I'm a bit of a germaphobe/perfectionist. Alllll of this did me some good and helped me loosen up. We lived with lots of noise, a barely functional kitchen, a gross bathroom, but we lived. And all is fine! We still struggled with finding food all week...somehow we constantly felt like we were starving because making, buying, keeping food was a challenge. But, yesterday was our first full day in the apartment and we finally felt like we didn't get famished even once all day. It was wonderful. So, I don't have pics of the apartment yet but I will soon and will put them on here. It is an awesome little apartment! We love it! It was actually the first one we ever looked at. But, we misunderstood the price and when looking at it a week later realized we had gotten the price wrong. We thought it was out of our price range, but it wasn't. So, we called back and within minutes our apartment search ended and we had a key in the next few hours. It is basically the size of a studio apartment (or a hotel suite) but it does have a separate bedroom (versus studios that don't). And, we have a balcony!! I love it. It makes it feel like we have more space, and provides an eating area at a table - outside. If we have visitors we will get a fouton matress for them to sleep on.


Lastly, you are probably wondering about school and classes. Wow! This has been an adventure as well but of course we expected it to be. Chile is what they call a "high context" society, which means you are expected to gather information from your environment yourself, versus being fed everything that you need to know. America is NOT a high context society. We are "low context", which means you are told everything you need to know and there is little to figure out on your own. So, we have gone with the flow and slowly figured out...where to get books for the students, where to make copies, some of the student's books are two weeks late and the first test is this week, how to print, that you have to bring your own printer paper, how to get a computer or cd player for class, how to use the computer system, how to give the placement tests, and much more. Sometimes I just learn by mistake....I didn't return a classroom key immediately after class - oops I didn't know I was supposed to so they tracked me down for it and I got corrected strongly in Spanish. Also, Chilean students tell their teachers "no" in grade/middle/high school and it is ok. The teacher will just go on to someone else. They warned us that they might do this to us as well, but it isn't too common. Well, I had it on my third day of class and ended up having to ask a couple students to leave class. Wow. That was hard. My boss told me I did the right thing though. The students are allowed to be 15 minutes late for class but no more. I've had to tell several students that they can't enter because they were past 15 minutes late. Not fun. They are allowed to miss 7 classes before they fail. But, I must say, they are gracious here. Because they don't provide as much information, there seems to be grace given when there are mistakes or errors. They yell at you a little (or they don't) but everything really is ok. Versus in the US if you make a mistake I feel like you are in much more trouble. I sorta' like the relaxed-ness (if that is a word). They just don't get quite as up tight. Everything will work out. I like it! And, it does work out.


I always feel like I am rambling on the blog. Just trying to get info out. There is so much, I don't know where to start or what all to say so I just go with what pops into my head. - Cherith