What does it all mean

As I spend my last full week in Santiago and prepare one bag to go to Peru on Saturday and the others to go back to the USA, I've been thinking about how easy it is to begin to questions one's decisions. I think when you're getting ready to close the door on something it's a lot easier to overlook the things that may have sent you packing in the first place...

Winter is coming. It's been beautiful and will reach 70 degrees today, but the cold and rain isn't too far behind...

Let's just say that some things about the institute that I work for are less than desirable and probably aren't going to change for awhile...

A lot of expats that you meet and get attached to are here temporarily, if I were to be the one to stay, they would be the ones leaving eventually.

As sad as I am about leaving, the bottom line is that although I'm ready to go home to see my family and friends and tie up some loose ends. I have some boxes to pack at the school that I left behind. I have some more boxes to pack at my townhouse that I'm turning over to someone else for another year...

I can thank my experience in Chile for giving me the tools to take each day at a time and worry about things as they come up.  My "one year ago" self would never have survived the premise that in a week I'll technically be homeless and unemployed. My "10 months later" self knows that I'm meant to move on from Chicago and go somewhere else, that it's time to leave Chile (at least for a few months), and that if my job opportunity back home doesn't pan out that it's because I'm meant to do something else.

The Plan, Part 1

I've had some things in the works for awhile now and although I still don't know it all, I will share with you what I do know. I've given my notice at my institute and I'm leaving Chile to head back to the USA on June 15th.  A few months ago, after a lot of thought about what I wanted to do next, I decided that I didn't see myself living here long term and that it was time to go back and make a new life in a new place back in the States. It wasn't a decision that I made lightly, and I still have a few lingering doubts about whether it was the right one or if I jumped the gun...
I resigned from my old teaching job back in February, my townhouse is now rented until August of 2012, and as of this moment I don't have another job or a place to live. I do have some job opportunities at home that I'm still waiting on, and I know deep down that if those don't pan out that there are other options here in Chile should I decide to come back at some point.
I really like teaching English and working with business professionals and I've enjoyed my opportunities here to gain more professional teaching experience and to improve my Spanish.
It's definitely an "in-limbo" period, but I think for now I'm doing the right thing. I'm sad about leaving Chile, it's been a good home to me, I've made some really good friends here, and I've loved my English students.
Whatever comes next, I know that I made the right decision in coming here in the first place!

Killing Time

I like most parts of the English teacher gig, mostly because it is so different from my old lifestyle as a teacher, always in one place, same schedule everyday, no time to ever go out and do anything during the day except for the occasional Friday race to order and eat a Jimmy Johns sub and be back at school in 50 minutes.
Here I have the opposite problem, sometimes I have so much time to kill in between things that I wish I could stay in one place. It's not really worth it to take the metro home in the late afternoon because that would just mean having to take it again at the busiest time of day in order to get to my night class. I usually end up with about 2-3 hours to kill depending on if it's a day that I meet with my private student at 6:30. Sometimes I'm gone for 12+ hours and realize that I've only been teaching for about 4 of them, but it really comes down to what time and how far away your classes are. I think most English teachers must be master time killers, knowing exactly what coffee shop is where, how good the wifi is, and exactly how long it will take to walk or ride from Point A to Point B.

Here are some of the ways I have been killing my time:

1. Starbucks
Pretty much the only place with soy milk, so bring on the wifi, lattes, and comfortable chairs. I'm pretty sure I've spent more money at Starbucks here than I ever did back home.

2. Journaling
I've actually filled up 2 whole notebooks since I've been here, not bad.

3. Itouch surfing
See number 1

4. Lesson Planning
Sometimes...

5. Eating lunch at 4:30
Too early to eat lunch before I leave the house and by the time I get to my next stop it´s around 4:30. I eat the lunch/dinner combo and then have a late night oatmeal with apples snack. Nothing wrong with just moving the foods around to different times of day, and grabbing lunch somewhere is a great way to kill at least an hour and have a place to sit for awhile.

6. Walking an extra couple of metro stops when it's nice out
I love walking, but when I'm weighed down with a lot of books it makes it a little less enjoyable. The best part is the people watching, I can't get enough.

7. Reading the magazines from El Mecurio
Some days I try to listen to my own teacherly advice...to keep improving at a language, spend some time reading to help learn new vocabulary.

8. Yoga
I'm lucky enough that my yoga place is within walking or biking distance from my house. Walk to class, hop on the metro for the day, and off I go, or sometimes the reverse plan is also true.

Regardless of what I'm doing, sometimes it's just better to be out and about rather then hanging out in the casita!

Fall Colors

Last night we finally changed the clocks. It's obviously a negative when it comes to the shortening of the day and the fact that it got dark at about 6:00 this evening, but a huge plus for the morning because it's been pretty cold and dark and REALLY hard to get out of bed when it's still black outside until after 8am. 

I can't complain about the weather, with the exception of this past Friday and Saturday, it's been absolutely beautiful. Crisp and chilly in the morning and in the evening, but still sunny and reaching low 70's during the day. 

I love the combination of the fall colors against the palm trees and the tropical plants like the hibiscus that still have flowers on them. It sometimes takes a careful eye, but if you can manage to look past the layer of smog, Santiago really is a beautiful green city.

Who's the teacher here?

On Friday I had my first "intercambio" with the husband of one of my business students. She had mentioned to me that has was looking for some English lessons, and since I was also in search of some language improvement myself, in the end we decided the best way to approach the situation would be with a language exchange. He completed his masters degree in the US several years ago and was looking to brush up, and I was looking for someone to help me in a more academic capacity, and who better to do that than a college professor himself.
I'm looking at several job opportunities in the US that would require me to have a formal language evaluation, and where I need to improve my skills is discussing more academic topics at length. I haven't had formal practice with this for years, and although you can often practice this naturally in social situations, I tend to be more of a listener in large groups of Spanish speakers and haven't yet reached the comfort zone where I jump in to give extended length opinions on social or political topics.
What's also important is that my partner knows "correct" Spanish, so he has already helped me a lot with little suggestions to tune a few things up, knowing that my ultimate goal isn't to learn Chilean Spanish, but to use "proper" Spanish in a more academic context.
He also gave me a lot of homework, I have to give a presentation the next time I see him, something about how we attribute archeological studies to the value of a culture. He doesn't mess around, and while I speak he writes things down in his little notebook to give me feedback.

So much for meeting at a cafe to drink coffee and chat, my teacher is strict!

Pichilemu

Last weekend I took advantage of my Friday and Saturday off for Easter weekend, or Semana Santa, and headed with my friend Abby to Pichilemu, a coastal surf town about 3 hours away from Santiago by bus. We had a few minor snags before we left, including an overbooked hostel and a rainy forecast, but I knew when the bus pulled in and we saw the clouds clearing off and the gigantic waves that we had made the right decision.

I'm not usually a last minute person, but we waited a little too long to try to make reservations, so by the time I actually started actively looking for a place to stay,  many of the places were already booked. I should have seen the red flags when one of the places that I had contacted indicated that they were booked already but the next day was showing availability on the Hostelworld website. To make a long story short, emails were sent, apologies were issued, and luckily we were able to book a really nice place to stay out near Punta de Lobos. The tricky part was trying to get my 10% deposit back from Hostelworld, and although the owner took responsibility for not having updated the site properly, her final word to me via email was, "I guess if you really want the 5,000 pesos you can track me down when you get to Pichilemu." Really??? I won't name any names, but I will say that the place we did end up staying, the Natural Surf Lodge, is a really nice place with great views, complete with sounds of the nearby crashing waves. I was also lucky that after a few emails back and forth I was able to get my credit card refunded without having to go track down crazytown herself at her overbooked hostel.

Cactus at the ocean? Who knew?

I want to see someone surfing this wave

In my opinion, too cold for this

Poor guy, I wonder if he's gotten used to the sand between his toes

Yes, we took a carriage ride

Jam packed and waited forever, but totally worth it