Square One

One month.
a.k.a. Four weeks.
a.k.a.Thirty days.
Part of me feels like it's been an eternity, and part of me feels like it's been a blink of an eye. But either way, I should probably let the world know that I still exist.

I'm deeply and truly sorry for not writing in a while. Every time I sat down and started jotting something down, my thoughts came faster than my words. Each page was filled with sections crossed out, phrases circled, arrows shooting from sentence to sentence, and the margins filled with random tidbits that I was planning on elaborating on later. It was brain barf in its purest form: messy, all over the place, and from the deepest part of my being. As of now, every facet of my life has been new, and even my habits have changed week in and week out. I didn't know what to write because I didn't actually know what was around me. Too much was shifting too quickly. I needed time to find some terra firma before starting to look around and reflect, and I think I'm at a place now to give it a shot.

When I started this blog, I said that I would tell my story piece by piece and that hopefully, each piece would be strung together to tell a coherent story. I still think that is largely true *fingers crossed*. So this post is not all-encompassing of the past month. It can't be.

Instead, this post focuses on the most prevalent part of my experience here thus far.

As many of you know, I applied to this job through an agency called CIEE. Well, CIEE has two programs: Teach in Chile and Teach in Chile Professional. This year, I happen to be the sole participant in the Professional program. When I found that out, I was slightly worried that would mean that I would spend my first months here as a lonely wandering gringo.

You can imagine my unadulterated joy when I found out that gringos of all shapes and sizes swarmed my hostel, courtesy of the sister Teach in Chile program. They had been here for about three weeks by the time I arrived, which meant that they were slightly more adjusted to chileno life but very much so new. I was quickly adopted, which included being roped into group chats on Whatsapp and Facebook. Every afternoon, when I finished my aimless wandering around the city, I had people to come home to and ask how my day was. All of us still had that lingering sense of being bright eyed and bushy tailed in this giant city.

We spent our weekends on the patio of the hostel, drinking cheap Chilean wine from a botilleria down the street. We would talk about our pasts, our futures, religion, philosophy, the meaning of life and love, and the other typical topics that come up after half a bottle of wine. Okay, fine. It was a whole bottle of wine.

One night, a friend and I bought a couple of beers and sat on the stoop outside of the hostel. We could have gone outside, but the night was warm, the beer was cold, and the girl working the counter had a broken foot. We didn't feel like there was a need to be anywhere else other than where we were. It was easily more than an hour before we went inside.

It's nice to move to a new place and have a support system right off the bat. I had a chance to vent about how run down and overpriced the apartment was that I saw that day. I got to laugh about how awkward it was when I realized I had gone the wrong way on the metro, and I knew the people laughing with me had probably done it a few times too.

But two weeks after I moved in, we all began to move out. Throughout my last few days there, the hostel had a newly free bed each day. Each night meant helping someone else haul their suitcase down the rickety staircase and wait for the cab to arrive. Eventually, it was my turn to leave. I moved out of the hostel on April 4th, and it had been about a week and a half after arriving in Chile.

Now, all of us are scattered throughout the city. We each have new roommates, new neighborhoods, new friends, and new lives. Weeks later, we have to go out of the way to see each other, which is a lot easier to do on the weekends than on a typical Tuesday. We don't come home to the hostel, and even when we meet up again, we part ways every night at a metro stop. I don't think I would have had it any other way.

Orientation was great: it gave me a cushion that I needed to land on before heading out on my own. It gave me a safe place and a group that would claim me. Part of why I went through CIEE is because I knew that I needed a safety net that would offer me a comfort and security as I transitioned into life here. I never intended to get tangled too much into it. Each of us came here with the intention of branching out and exploring the world. Although we haven't forgotten about one another, we have begun to connect to other people and take up other opportunities that are uniquely our own.

The great part about parting ways is that when our paths cross, we have stories to tell. We can invite each other to events and places that we wouldn't have gone to from inside our bubble. Case in point: in about fifteen minutes, I'm heading to a campo south of here because I am lucky enough to know my beer-on-the-stoop friend (hereafter known as "Emily").

One of the scariest parts of moving to a new place is feeling alone, isolated, and lost in a world that seems way too big and foreign. I would never look to be stuck in a gringo bubble, shut off from all that Santiago and Chile have to offer. But I am incredibly grateful to have been given a starting place. I needed a square one, and I found that in a hostel off of Roman Diaz.

I would write more, and probably edit more too, but I have a campo to go to!

Ciao,


Joe and the Gringos

My Santiagoals

It's strange: I'm about to begin my third week here in Santiago, and I already feel like my life would be missing something if I couldn't order jugo de maracuyá with my dinner or have an empanada on my way home from work. At times, I have to remind myself that I've been here for a rough estimation of no time at all. This is a big city and a different country, and I still get lost and confused on the regular. Realistically, it only takes a quick trip to the grocery store to put me back in my place.

So in the face of my renewed sense of ignorance, I think that there's a lot of good in still being wide eyed and bushy tailed. There's a lot of time left, a lot that I still don't know, and a lot that I still have yet to experience. So I want to take advantage of my beginner status and think about what it is exactly that I want to accomplish while I'm here. If I were leaving this country tomorrow, what regrets would I have? And since I'm not leaving tomorrow, what are some things that I want to be working towards?

In short, what are my Santiagoals? (*Patent pending)

I've decided on the following five as my initial non-negotiables. In the following months, I'm sure that this list will grow, and I think that having only five now will give it the room to do exactly that. But I don't take promises to myself lightly. When I was little, I wanted green hair, and last year, I dyed my hair green for a day just to honor that. Let that story be a testament to my determination: each word written here is written in stone. I will not leave this country until the following demands (of myself) have been fulfilled.

1. I will become a wine connoisseur. Chile has established itself as one of the wine capitals of the world, even going as far as being the sole producer of Carménère, a grape that was thought to have gone extinct before being rediscovered here. Gone are the days of wine coolers and slapping the bag. I am now (or will be) a man who can tell the difference between shiraz, malbec, and merlot. I can pair my wines with fine cheeses and detect subtle undertones of vanilla and blackberry. And if you don't finish your small tasting glasses or all of your brie on your cheeseboard, then I will happily take them off your hands. But in all seriousness, I think that traveling to different vineyards is a great way to see the country and become familiar with something that Chile is truly proud of. And yes, any hobby that involves eating, drinking, and traveling can't be a bad hobby to have.

2. I will explore this land of ice and fire. Chile is Westeros, from the deserts in the north to the glaciers in the south. And although we don't have dragons, we do have penguins. I think they're cute enough to justify the trade off. There is a lot of country beyond Santiago, and I want to make sure that I get out of the city enough to see it all. Part of living is complete immersion, and that means hitting the road every chance I get.

3. I will travel to at least two other countries in South America. I could spend years exploring Chile alone and find my time well spent. With the mountains in the east and the ocean is the west, Chile is effectively an island, cut off from the rest of South America. Regardless, this may very well be my only time to spend in this part of the world, let alone call it home. So I want to make sure that I'm not cut off also. Currently, Peru, Brazil, Easter Island, and Argentina are the top contenders. In an ideal world where teachers are the 1%, I would visit each country and linger in my luxury. I'm not opposed to the possibility, and I like to be optimistic.

4. I will speak Spanish with confidence. This may seem like a given, but I don't think it is. Learning another language is incredibly difficult, especially with all the monkey wrenches unique to Chilean Spanish. It is very possible to live here and not learn Spanish. This is my vow to not do that. As challenging as learning another language is, I can say first hand that it's harder living in a place surrounded by conversations, signs, music, etc. that I can't begin to understand. The language barrier is real, and part of living here is doing everything I can to break through it.

5. I will become a better teacher. I am a recent graduate spending a year traveling South America. I'm about a profile picture in nature and a copy of On the Road away from the ultimate twenty-something cliché. But I also am a teacher, and this is the career I have chosen. Don't get me wrong: I will absolutely spend nights under the stars, but I don't want my role as a traveler to completely eclipse my role as a teacher. I still have students, and I am still Mr. Joe ("Rogers" is impossible to pronounce in Spanish). That's too much a part of me to leave it behind.

This job is out of my comfort zone in about all ways possible. I'm used to high schoolers, filled with angst, wit, and sarcasm. But my last student was in preschool, and instead of wanting to learn English, he wanted to dress up as Bumblebee. True to his character, he stopped talking completely...in English or Spanish. Instead of a classroom, I teach in a living room. Instead of twenty students, I might have two. No tests, no homework, no white board. It is my job to engage students in activities, to bring English to life in a way that is intentionally unconventional. And as challenging as it is, I think that there is a lot for me to learn.

I don't know who I'll be or how I will change in the next year, but there are some things that I can control. Every journey has a direction, even if it's arbitrary. By writing these down, I'm recognizing that I have agency in what my life will be like here. For now, this is my direction. These are what will guide my experience.

These, ladies and gentlemen, are my Santiagoals.

Feelings on the First Day: Looking Back, Looking Forward

March 23rd

Yesterday, I saw a video of a man standing on a ledge. He was already submerged underwater, and in front of him, the pool dropped off for another one-hundred feet. No light reached the bottom, and for a couple seconds, I simply looked over the ledge with him, waiting. Then he jumped, his arms spread out to his sides, composed and pointed as he faced the darkness in front of him.

He fell slowly, deliberately. I watched as he became little more than a silhouette as the water went from blue to black. In less than a minute, he had disappeardd, enveloped by the shadows he sought to penetrate.

That's what it feels like to leave.

I don't feel like I'm breaking through a barrier or bursting through a door that had been closed to me. I feel like I'm fading away slowly. It's a gradual and gentle drifting into the unknown. Each moment is bringing me deeper, each step farther away. And the strangest thing is that I'm letting it happen. Leaving isn't an event- it's a process. Each step forward is a chance to turn back, a chance to surface, breathe, and swim back to shore. I didn't watch enough of the video to see if the other man ever came back up, but maybe right now isn't the best time to find out.

This morning, I had a cup of coffee with my dad before he left for work, and I took each sip a little slower than the last. Then I said good bye to my dog, who might have thought I was going to the store or on a run. I closed the door behind me.

My brothers drove me to Miami, and somewhere beyond the tanned tourists and wafting scent of spf 50, there was the Atlantic ocean. But we didn't stay long, and we didn't get out of the car. The airport was the other way.

Soon, my one-way ticket was tucked into my passport, and I was looking out of my window over the runway. Excuse me. It was the guy from 18H. Are you going to use that blanket?

No I wasn't, but I kept it anyway. Planes get cold, and this was a long flight. I could always change my mind. Somewhere beneath me, the wheels left the tarmac, and I left the country.

Leaving is surprisingly passive. The only thing I could do was let go, unwind my grasp around my sense of the world and be swept away. And so I fell. I flew. I moved, weightless as I waited for an unknown country to ground me again. Waiting for something solid.

March 25th

The first day in Chile felt like a continual push outwards, a stretching of the boundaries that delineated this new reality. I woke up to the sound of strangers shifting around me, suitcases zipping and unzipping, and the slow creak of the bedroom door. I didn't move for a while, and I didn't open my eyes. I just lay there, unwilling to acknowledge that the day had started, that I couldn't go back to sleep. My time here had actually began.

Seeing what was around me would make it real, and I wasn't sure I could face that yet. My sheets were tucked in around me, fitted to my body in a weak and flimsy attempt to separate me from a world I couldn't begin to comprehend. But the day would begin with or without me, and I have come too far to be left behind. So I began too.

The ladder from the upper bunk shook under my weight, so I jumped the last two steps and went downstairs. A woman with black-framed glasses was at the front desk. Como está? I was fine thanks. Yes, I had slept well. Yes, breakfast would be great, thanks.

After a second cup of instant coffee, I went for a walk, slipping into the solitude of a city of thousands. I rested in the mutual agreement that if I don't talk to you, you won't talk to me. But regardless, my world was expanding beyond my bunk at the hostel. I noted grocery stores and pharmacies, crossed at crosswalks, and wondered whether the buses were going towards or away from downtown. Somewhere behind the haze hovering around the city were the Andes, and this is where I live now. I continued exploring this new world of mine, drawing lines to separate the unfamiliar from the unknown.

Realistically, this world was not new, and besides the strange gringo who kept glancing at street signs, everything is most likely very much the same as it was the day before.

But I can be objective later. Right then, in that moment, I felt like I was carving a city out corner by corner, street by street. Everything was new, and everything was worth discovering. This is what it was to travel: a continual act of being lost and being found. A constant push against boundaries.

So I turned another corner and continued.