It’s a funny
thing when your days spent in another country begin to feel like the everyday. When the excitement of living abroad dies
down, and you really start to feel like you’re just living your life, day in and
day out, going to work, hanging with friends, going to sleep… and you sometimes
have to remind yourself, “Look around! You’re in Chile! Everyone’s speaking
another language! Wake up and smell the Nuts4Nuts!”
It’s when
you get to this point that you also start to feel like it’s strange to write a
blog entry about your everyday life… which is my excuse for why I haven’t done
so in over six months! But here I am, taking a stab at it, so that whoever
might be interested might know what I’m up to now, after nearly one year living
in Santiago, Chile.
It was
around the four month marker that I began to really enjoy living here in
Santiago. When I had a good group of friends, when I started to actually
understand Chilean Spanish, when I felt like I could easily navigate this huge
city, and when I started to feel really close to the girls at the hogar and therefore really started
enjoying going to work there every day. (If this ridiculously long blog entry
isn’t enough, and you want to read more about my love for the girls at the hogar, you can check out the blog entry
I wrote for VE here).
On Christmas
Eve, I went to the hogar and spent it
outside in the 90-degree heat with my girls; and laughed as I watched them
shake their asses to Reggaeton
blaring from the speakers, instead of sweetly singing Christmas carols by a
fire. In February, the girls went on vacation to the beautiful Chilean coast,
and I went with them. Slept in a room of 20-some bunk beds, and tried to ignore
the 3-year-old having a crying fit in the middle of the night because she didn’t
want to get up to pee. And in the day, walked the 40-minute hike to the beach
with all 16 girls and a few tias, and
happily watched them splash around in the beautiful, clear (but cold!) water.
In April, I excitedly took the girls to VE’s Festival de Arte (my favorite VE program), and filmed their awesome
performances of singing or dancing like a giddy soccer mom. In June, when it
started to get really cold here in Chile, I cuddled with the girls on the couch
under blankets as we sat as close as possible to the single space heater in the
hogar, giggling about things I can’t
remember now.
Later in
June, I received the news that the hogar,
where I volunteered for nine months, was closing down due to mainly financial
reasons. I sat with all the girls at the huge picnic-like-table where we’ve
shared so many almuerzos, onces and cenas, listened to their sobbing and stroked their backs as the
directors announced the news to them all. And I’ve said goodbye, one by one or
two by two, as each girl has packed up their stuff and moved on to another hogar; a process that was extremely hard
at first, with lots tears and sugar water. But a process that, after the third
or fouth despedida, seems most of us
have become immune to. Despedidas where
we eat junk food and cake and go around the table, each girl and tia having to say the same kind words to
the one scheduled to leave that day: “que
te vaya bien en tu nuevo hogar,” “te
quiero mucho con todo mi corazón,” “te
voy a extrañar” ...it was not the way I imagined saying goodbye to the
girls, this slow drawn-out process (I definitely would have preferred the
rip-the-bandaid-off approach), especially since I thought I still had three months
left to spend with them all.
Six girls now remain at the hogar, six out of sixteen, waiting for their turn to move on. When I go there now, it’s strange… the atmosphere completely different. It’s much quieter, no screaming or fighting, no one running around the house or throwing dirt on the patio, no dance competitions or girls fighting for their turn on the computer. This new, calm hogar is not the hogar I knew and loved, but I try to enjoy the rare peace and quiet and the one-on-one time I can have with the few girls who remain.
Just the
other day I went to the hogar and was
told that the youngest girl, well the youngest girl now, and also one of my favorites (although maybe I shouldn’t admit
that), was upstairs in her room, with bronchitis. I went up to say hi to her,
see how she was doing, and found her lying there in her bed, toying with a
broken camera, looking absolutely bored out of her mind (and not so sick at all).
She looked happy to see me, but immediately asked me if I had any paper and
colored pencils for her to color with. I went downstairs to retrieve some and
we spent the next hour in her room coloring, something I’ve done many times with the girls at the hogar, but rarely one-on-one, and rarely
did it seem to mean so much. But this sick little girl was so happy to have something to do, and someone to do it with. And I
felt like that one hour spent alone with her in her room coloring, was one of the
most fulfilling hours in all my time at the hogar.
As I was walking out the door that evening, I heard her little voice behind
me, and she happily handed me a big piece of paper that said “ALISOS te kiero
muco” (translation: ALLISON I love you so much), then ran back up to her room
while the strict tia eyed her angrily
for coming downstairs without permission. And as I walked out of the gate, she
shouted and waved from her window “Chao,
Tia Allison! Chao!” But it’s not goodbye yet, not really. I still have
three months left. Three months where I hope to visit the girls often at their
new hogares, at least for a chance to
say goodbye for real.
The closing
of the hogar came at a strangely
convenient time for me, though. I had just started working in the office of VE
Global, as the Coordinator of Communications and Development, taking over where
my friend, Nola, had left off. It was meant to be a part-time and completely
volunteer job, where I would spend half my time in the office and half in the hogar. But with the hogar closing, and with Jamie, the Director of Communications and
Development, finishing up her time here in Chile, it ended up working out strangely
perfectly that they needed me to start full-time anyway. And so began my new
Chilean life, working every day in the office, and going into the hogar for a few hours here and there when
I can, as VE Global looks for a new Director of Communications and Development,
and I try my best to serve as the temporary one.
So now it is
July, my first ever cold July, my
eleventh month in Santiago, Chile, and my work here has completely changed. I
loved volunteering at the hogar, and
absolutely adore the girls there, but I was also ready for something different.
And as it turns out, I love working in the office. I’m learning lots of new
skills in areas that I never really thought to delve into (Communications? Resource
Development? Who knew?) and enjoy the feeling of actually accomplishing
something at the end of the day, and really seeing the results (something that doesn’t happen too often when
you work in an hogar).
But I’m also
starting to feel the end of the year coming. And home is calling my name. One
year is a long time to be away from your family, your friends, and the places, food,
and comforts you know and love. Especially when your friends abroad, who become
your family abroad, all leave you behind as they return home themselves.
I love that
you can get almost anything, almost anywhere, on the streets of Santiago. It
rains, and there are people selling umbrellas right outside the metro. It’s
hot, and you can get an ice cream from the vendor who just hopped on the bus. It’s
cold, and stands pop up selling warm tights, gloves, and socks. And the smell
of those Nuts4Nuts carts on every
other block... the fact that I haven’t actually succumbed to buying their amazing-smelling
candied nuts absolutely blows my mind. But above all, I love the amazing girls,
all 16 of them, that I’ve spent nearly every day with for the last eleven months,
who I will miss terribly when I have to really
say goodbye.
But what am
I saying? My year in Chile isn’t over yet! I still have three months left to
enjoy living in this awesome country. And that’s exactly what I plan to do:
enjoy it.
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