Firstly, don’t wear vegan deodorant on planes. No one will appreciate it and you’ll almost knock yourself out trying to pull your bags out of the overhead bin. I stepped off the plane in Santiago with three resolutions. 1) learn Spanish fluently 2) don’t let my emotions get the better of me 3) buy some real damn deodorant.
My Erin and my Tyler were kind enough to drive me to Houston to catch my flight. I can’t convey the depth of my sadness as I watched them, arms around each other, smile and wave good-bye as the airport cop found a switchblade in my camera bag. No, I don’t know how it got there and yes, I was crying when I told him as much. I burned their beautiful faces into the back of my eyelids so that I can see them every time I blink, or sleep.
The flights were short (for international travel) and vaguely comfortable although you have to pay for in-flight entertainment, which annoyed me. As I looked out the window headed towards Panama, I touched the long necklace with the Brazilian good-luck charm that always hangs around my neck and couldn’t help thinking about the person who had given it to me. Determining to be heartbroken, I laid my head back on the seat to watch the cloud ocean pass…and immediately fell asleep. Three hours later I awoke to my bubbly, Panamanian, row 17 comrade as she asked me if I wanted some gum and shoved it in my face. Why, yes, thank you. Viny and I spent the next hour talking about her love of Chicago, how long it took her to learn English, and if she’ll stay with her American boyfriend. We exchanged emails in the airport and I might actually write to her. Maybe.
The next flight was spent in and out of consciousness next to a man who really didn’t think my bumbling Spanish and self-conscious giggling was charming, so I’ll only go further to say that I was shepherded through the Santiago airport (which is a collection of tents due to damage caused by the earthquake) by an ex-marine I met on the plane with white-blonde hair and a wedding ring, which I took to mean that he was safe to trust not to hit on me. As I pulled out of his tight hug an hour later with his cell number and date invite my hand, I figured that I just can’t read men.
I started school three hours after I landed. Linguatec is located on Los Leones, in Providencia, a posh neighborhood in Santiago and is twenty minutes from where I am living. It’s modest appearance belies the kindness and warmth of the people inside. My Chinese/New Zealander instructor is young, pretty, and intensely interested in the progress of the students. The toilets flush, there is free and reliable wi-fi, and a water machine that no one monitors. The students are all travelers-three American boys who are seeing the world, one married man who looks like a Viking (erin!), one girl from Canada and another from Maine. Zach is a film grad from California who practically shuddered with excitement as we talked about editing gigs and Eric is a 28 year-old back-packing around South America alone. We discovered we have to same sense of humor when we wrote our commands in an exercise as the ten commandments and gave them all a vulgar twist. Mike is a black-sheep whose 19 and seems to idolize me because I’m from Austin and do yoga. I avoid him. Don is the Viking. That’s all about him, really. Jessica, from Canada, has a strong eh? Oooo accent and cusses when out of the class. She took me around Providencia yesterday and I’ve taken a strong liking to her pudgy straight-forwardness. Hanna speaks four languages and stares at me a lot, but she’s insistent on me learning Spanish and sits very close to me when we talk. At twenty, she moved down here to be with her boyfriend just as Jessica did. I like her too. I haven’t decided about Rafael so I won’t comment on him yet. But I think I like him.
I teach my first English class tomorrow and I am pretty anxious/want to quit and sell marzipan cookies with the vendor on the corner I visit during short breaks in the day.
Beyond that, my friends and loves, it’s gorgeous here. The weather sits in the seventies with clear skies and soft breezes. I live in a tall apartment building with a 70 year-old widow named Carmen (no senora! Carmen, mi hija!) who is small and round and smells of rose water, just like my Mexican grandmother. She talks non-stop in accented Chilean in an attempt to get me speaking the language. She has shown me all the pictures of her children, grandbabies, and dead dogs. The food she cooks is strange-I have no concept of Chilean food and so no context with which to explain it-but VERY good. There is always bread and butter with tea for breakfast and some unidentifiable vegetable entrée in the evening with bread and salad (chopped lettuce, unpitted olives which you’ll only mistake for pitted once, and a mound of beets or soft cheese). Dessert is a fruit with some drizzled honey. She comments on how little I eat and I tell her no, she isn’t fat and we get on marvelously.
Tonight, we sat in her apartment looking at the Andes and talking about her life. We laughed about things, I’m not sure what, and she explained how Chilean food is not spicy, it’s fresh, there aren’t many fat people here, the youth are revolting in words and dress, and how Chilean Spanish drops the “s” from plurals. I asked gently about her deceased husband and she told me of his blackened lungs and adamant addiction. I clucked my sympathy until she looked straight ahead and murmured, “Eight years he’s been gone. Eight whole years. It feels like a saw him just the other day. How quick…you’re too young to know, mi hija, how much one person can miss another. Keep that youth”.
I put my palm over my necklace and clutched it, thinking of you guys.
