Una nueva amiga...

So… I was really pretty worried about being hindered in meeting people before coming here, and during the time that Maggie was still living here it became rather obvious to me that although she had made friends with Chilean students, the majority of people she spent time with (besides the family, of course) were fellow North American students who had come here in the same program as her. Well, that kind of worried me, since I did not have the advantage of coming with a program and therefore did not have any automatic buddies to explore with.

Two Mondays ago we had an orientation for all international students who will be studying at the U this semester, and during that orientation they identified all of the groups of students who were there. There were probably a few hundred students, and most of them were in groups of 20 or so coming here from US universities. However, they also had the “independiente” students raise their hands, of which there was a grand total of three, including myself. I made sure to pay attention to exactly who the other two independent students were, and when we had a brief break from the information about healthcare services and the library I approached them. One of the students, Jorge, is from Mexico City, and the other, KellyAnne, is from Washington, DC. Luckily, KellyAnne has turned out to be pretty cool, and so she and I have started spending time together.

The first time we hung out was a slightly rainy day early this week; she had class at the Macul campus of the university, which is near where I live, so we met in the Plaza Nunoa (about halfway between my house and the campus) after her class was over. We didn’t have any sort of plan at all, so we jumped on a micro (that’s what they call the city buses here) and rode it downtown. It’s actually kind of funny, because she had no experience riding the micros, only the metro because there’s a station very close to her house, and I have very limited experience and always with someone else (Felipe or Maggie) to tell me where to get on and off. It was rather adventurous of us both, but it turned we’ve got to learn sometime, right? However, it felt rather awkward to be the guide!

Anyhow, we rode the micro downtown, then got off and took the metro to another part of town, near Cerro Santa Lucia, then walked to Bellavista, a sort of artsy-hipster-Portland-y area. She had read about a recycled clothing store there that sounded interesting, so we went and checked it out, but it turned out to be not very exciting. After that we walked around some more in Bellavista trying to find something to do, but we were in sort of an in-between part of the day where the daytime businesses were closed or closing and the nightclubs and bars in the area hadn’t yet opened. We ended up walking back towards downtown and decided to find something to eat. Generally speaking there seems to be an abundance of Chinese food restaurants around here, and KellyAnne hadn’t yet tried the food they have to offer, so we decided to continue exploring until we found one, then go eat. We ended up in a slightly nicer part of town, near the Plaza de Armas, where there’s a huge shopping center / pedestrian walkway and tons of people walking around very busily. It was kind of nice to explore around for a while, but the Chinese restaurants that we have seen are a lot more of a street corner in residential neighborhoods sort of phenomena, and this particular usually ubiquitous and universal type of business was nowhere to be found. We walked around the area for probably a few hours, after which we were exhausted, I had to go to the bathroom, and still hungry. Finally, we just went into a little nothing-exciting restaurant and ordered the only things on the menu we could identify. That meant a hamburger for me. Pretty lame, I know. Don’t worry, I have been trying plenty of Chilean food, but in this particular moment I was starving and didn’t want to risk ordering something completely foreign only to discover it was awful.

So that’s what we did all of that time. The interesting part of this story is that even though we’re both gringas, we did an awesome job of speaking Spanish during all of our adventure. Unfortunately, that meant that we really didn’t talk much about anything interesting or exciting, and I was actually think as we were walking around that I was really kind of bummed out she and I weren’t clicking better. I though’ “That’s strange, when I first met her I had the impression that we were going to get along great, but right now this is kind of lame.” However, once we sat down in the restaurant, during that awful period of time when you’re dying of hunger while you’re waiting for your food, sitting in a restaurant watching everyone around you eating and smelling your own meal cooking, that period of time when the hunger is killing you, we transitioned quite naturally into speaking English. This is when I discovered that yes, in fact she is pretty cool, and we’ve gotten along great ever since. Looks like my fear about having a hard time meeting people or having people get to know me wasn’t that far off base.

KellyAnne is living in a pension, which is kind of like a long-term hostel, and the other day two Mexican boys arrived who will be working / studying here for a while. Yesterday was the birthday of one of them, and my first reaction upon hearing this fact was “Let’s build him a cake!” KellyAnne brought a bunch of family recipes with her from the states, so while Felipe and I finished enjoying the Museo de Bellas Artes, where we had been when KellyAnne called, she went grocery shopping. We met at her house, and what followed was an exercise in hilarity. However, I’m tired of typing right now, so you’re going to have to wait for the rest of the story. Stay tuned.