A few of my favorite questions

I´ve been so humored by the questions I get asked sometimes, that I thought a couple of them would be post-worthy:

• Where does your name come from? Is your father latino? Why Andrea? ...to all three of these questions, I explain that ¨Andrea¨ is also a very common name in English.
  

• How do you say ¨mall¨ in English? ...mall

• The other day I was with a friend and I sneezed. She said ¨cheers¨ and then asked how to say ¨salud¨in English. In Spanish, ¨salud¨is used both when you sneeze and make a toast. I taught her the phrase ¨bless you¨and days late am still humored by her comment!

Pronunciation is also something that greatly humors me. I had a student last night pronounce ¨knuckle¨more like ¨canookle¨. After a few more big pronunciation errors, I decided I´ll be devoting a large portion of our next class to pronunciation exercises!

Upper 80s in Santiago this week! I walked from one school to the other yesterday mid-afternoon and got some sun. My family was really concerned that I had gotten burnt. I tried to explain that I was not burnt, but they didn´t believe me until this morning when I woke-up and my mom said, ¨You have such a nice tan!¨

I showered before bed last night and didn´t dry my hair. This is a big problem here because apparently you´re doomed to get sick or maybe even die...who knows. My family was pleased to see me alive and healthy when I got up this morning. I´m such a rule-breaker, I know ;)

Change

I moved Tuesday night! Very sudden, but well worth it. I now live in a part of town called "La Florida". It's farther from work, but closer to the Andes mountains and all my church friends. Thankfully, the metro is close to home so I hop on the train for the forty minute commute to school.

The Lord always provides. About two weeks ago a girl from church, Claudia, invited me to live with her family. I was hesitant since she lives farther away and I was potentially being relocated to Concepcion, a city seven hours south of here, for work. Wouldn't you know, crazy Yoya turned-out to be crazier than I thought. Early this week I encountered drama at home and discovered Yoya has been bad-mouthing me behind my back and was counting down the days 'til I moved. I let Claudia know I definitely wanted to move in with her and once she heard my situation, she said, "We'll come get you now!" So I packed my bags and moved Tuesday night around midnight!

Claudia is 32 and her and her 27-year-old brother, Alvaro, both live at home with their two parents. We all go to the same church, but I hadn't met their parents before because I go to the youth service on Sunday nights. It is very normal for kids to live at home all through their single lives, and people here get married much later, so being in your upper 20s and 30s and still living with your folks is normal. They have an american kitchen complete with a microwave and dishwasher! I feel spoiled already! They treat me like family and said they are so glad to have me here so I'm not alone so much. Close-knit families are one admirable thing about latin culture.

Unfortunately, I've found other aspects of Chilean culture to be disheartening. Did you know that in Europe they have a saying, "If a Chilean tries to steal from you, let him; it's part of his culture?" I honestly knew very little of Chile before moving here, but Chileans have told me the stereotype is that they steal. As such, no one trusts anyone, and therefore lying is much more common place. I found my school to be of little integrity and then the situation with Yoya lying to my face and manipulating situations further confirmed there may be a cultural aspect imbedded in the hearts of some of the people here. Obviously, stereotypes are never true of everyone, so I have to guard my heart and learn from situations and choose to think the best of people regardless of some of the negative experiences I've had.

Another cultural component is the class system. Chile is by no means a poor country, yet a small percentage of the population possesses the majority of the wealth. There are certain last names that everyone knows have money in the family. The USA is unique in the sense that we have such a huge middle class, that I often regard everyone the same and forget that there can be such huge financial distinctions, particularly in other cultures.

I teach in two different locations; one in Las Condes, the ritzy part of town, and the other downtown. I've noticed that my student's pronunciation of "ch" and "sh" was the same for both. I teach downtown during the evenings and they say "sh" all the time so "chair" sounds like "share". While in Las Condes yesterday, a Chilean guy applying for a job at the institute informed me that upper class says "ch" and lower class says "sh". So the upper class live in "Chile" and the lower class in "Shile", and I found that so interesting! He said just hearing someone say the name of their country tells him everything.

I'm no expert on this culture, but little by little I'm learning a lot and I continue to thank God I'm in this country.

An Ode to Yoya

It's a lovely spring day and I'm sitting outside a corner fountain shop having just skyped my wonderful family. Before making it over here I hand-washed a rug from my room.

Yoya has a little, old washing machine. She is very worried about it breaking, so we're not allowed to use it for much. Anything bulky or that may leave fuzzies in the machine should not be washed. When washing a load of laundry, there are three settings: wash, rinse, and tumble or something to that effect. I'm not supposed to use the wash cycle because that is hard on the machine, so basically I put my clothes in with some soap, then rinse them and hang to dry. What a system!

Since I was not allowed to wash the rug in the washer, I put it outside in a bucket with soap and water a day or two ago. Then what? I confessed to Yoya that I did not know how to wash the rug by hand and rather irritated she replied, "you're an intelligent girl!" She proceeded to hose it down a bit, barely ring it out, then drape it over something to dry. It's still gross, mind you. I suppose I could have done that myself. She then replied, "Now you'll be a good house wife someday." I told her I didn't think that would make me a good housewife because I could find a machine to wash all my clothes. She replied, "I guess you'll be living in the states, then." Oh my.

Besides teaching me how to wash clothes by hand, Yoya teaches me other household tricks. Apparently salt gets-out red wine stains, which is honestly nice to know. We are to save all our fruit and vegetable scraps when we cut them up. After a few days we compile the scraps and Yoya boils them in water on the stove for awhile. She then lets the water cool and uses it to water the plants. She showed me a plant today, "See, it was droopy and sad just the other day but now it looks so nice!" I agreed with her and she made me promise to share this valuable information with my mom. I refrained from telling her we probably wouldn't go through the hassle of such a practice, considering we can buy good plant food at the store.

Yoya is proud to have taught me so many things. She speaks her mind and somedays I answer more patiently than others. She is hard of hearing and when I first arrived I thought my Spanish just really needed a lot of work. I now realize it's more an issue of her hearing than my speaking. She is very particular and set in her ways, but I will always think about her with a smile of gratitude for the hospitality she's shown me during my stay here in Santiago.

TEC

This weekend I went on a church retreat. About 75 youth gathered together at a local school here in Santiago. The retreat started Saturday morning and ended Monday evening, which was Christopher Columbus Day; a holiday, of course. I was the only Gringa and loved the complete immersion into young, Chilean Christians lives.

I was in a small group with seven others. One of the group members was Paraguayan and the others were from here in Chile. My group made fun of my accent and it was absolutely hilarious. I received a lot of attention being the only English-speaker and they even translated some things into English over the microphone, just being funny! I learned some new slang which is always fun, but more importantly than that, I experienced the presence of the Holy Spirit with a body of believers.

The messages were pretty foundational, but small group discussions were an encouragement and blessing and allowed me to finally feel connected to people on a deep-level here in Chile. About half the songs we sang were familiar to me, though the words were in Spanish. I felt cared for, valued, and loved. The Lord reminded me that he just wants me and I am never alone.

Algorrobo, Chile

Went home with Amal, my 18-year-old "sister", this past weekend. She lives in a small town called Algorrobo. Her family is from Jordyn so we ate lots of delicious arabic food that her mom made us. I acquired another "sister"; 10-year-old Samar. The three of us climbed small mountains and explored beaches in between. Their dad gave me a tour of the farm, where I developed an even deeper respect for farmers as I watched a man planting seeds by hand. The weather was sunny and cool and I took deep breaths of clean air.