Answers to Common Questions after studying abroad

Most people I know know I've studied abroad.

If you didn't, you are most likely a teacher or not my friend.

The hard part for people is knowing to which country I went.

You do not earn points for saying South America.  Basically the only two typical places for a person who studies Spanish at Penn to go to study abroad are Spain or somewhere in South America.

You get a point for saying Argentina or Peru.  It is funny that people even think of Peru at all because Penn does not have a study abroad program available in Peru.  However, in my head, if the country you guess is touching the country I went to, then it counts somewhat.  Minus a point for saying a country that is in South America but does not touch like Bolivia, Colombia or Uruguay.  Minus ten points for saying a country in South America that does not speak Spanish (Brazil, Guyana etc).

Ten thousand gazillion points for if you hit the target on the first try.  Yes, I went to Chi Chi Chi Le Le Le--Chile.  Cueca yes, Tango no.

You get minus five hundred million points for asking me if I studied Spanish in Chile.  How am I supposed to answer that?  All my classes were in Spanish.  I did not take a Spanish language class in Chile because it is the equivalent to one in the U.S. save a few chilenismos thrown into the mix.  But I took all of my classes in Spanish because that is what Penn requires.  Hint: if someone went to Spain or Cuba or Mexico or Costa Rica or Argentina, they took all their classes in Spanish too.

Am I fluent?

I can speak better.

Would I be mistaken for Chilean with my Spanish?

No, but even if I were a Chinese Chilean person with perfect Castellano or Chileno, they would think I was from China or Korea...or Japan (Sorry to the other countries like the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia etc.  I don't know if Chileans know you exist, but then again, it is hard for them to understand the Chinese American thing too.)

Did I have the most fantastic, amazing, life-changing time ever?  Was it super fun?

If I gush to you, I am faking, acting and lying.  Chile was amazing.  Chile was life-changing.  But being abroad in Chile was at times really hard.  Some days and weeks, I was insecure, sad, lonely, worried and most of all, extremely frustrated with myself, the people and the culture.

Would I go back?

You betcha.  I am flying back to Chile in the next 9 years before my reciprocity fee expires. Anyone want to join me?

Para mi amigo Alonso-- la arquitectura de Peru

Las paredes de Cuzco

 El puente Inca

 Qorikancha

Sacsayhuaman

Into the mind of the home

"Can anyone guess what that structure behind you was?"

Our tour guide, a tall lady costumed in a red dress and an adorable red leaf hat, motioned to a tiled cove in the wall behind the sofa.  It was a furrow that could have been a fireplace if there wasn't one directly across from it already.

"That's right folks!  It was an natural air conditioner, and it could cool this living room down to 90 degrees Fahrenheit.  But seeing how outside could easily reach 112 degrees, if the Johnsons had opened the door and told you 'Come on in', you wouldn't have turned your nose up to that."

She smiled winningly, and we continued onto Scotty's room in the Death Valley Ranch otherwise known as Scotty's Castle.

My parents had convinced me to go on a family vacation after I came back from Chile.  Four days after I landed in Philadelphia, without a breath of hesitation, we flew into Los Angeles and then drove to Las Vegas and continued to Death Valley. It was our first day in the desert, and we were touring the only house to be seen in a hundred mile radius, Scotty's Castle.

From the outside, the house seemed dreamed up by a little girl with its silly tower and a strange, empty, moat-like swimming pool.  But on the inside, it was beautiful.

The incredible story of Scotty, a con-man cowboy, befriending Albert Johnson, a 1920's millionaire, and the two living in a desert castle was brought to life by our guide.  The house was remarkably intricate and well maintained.  Room after room of stunning wood furniture, carpet and gorgeously Spanish lights greeted us as our tour group passed from Scotty's room to the sun room to the music room to the kitchen. 

However, I couldn't shake the feeling that somehow I had seen this all before.  This house, as wonderful as it was, was just as quirky and illustrious as some other place I had visited.  And it wasn't until our tour group reached the kitchen with its old Spanish saying along the lines of Invita Ud. todos que quieren sentarse y Ud. seria el bienvenido or perhaps it was when we touched the master bedroom upstairs when it hit me.

I had gone on house tours before!  I had in fact visited all three of Pablo Neruda's houses in Chile.  And as interesting as a preaching millionaire, his wife and his lying cowboy buddy was, can they really beat the strange one known as Neruda?

The Nobel Prize winning, communist poet Neruda who was also a Chilean ambassador had the most insane mind that culminated in the craziest collections of things.  No one is permitted to take pictures inside the houses so you will just have to imagine a love of ships and collections of mastheads, bottled ships, glasses, butterflies and art that just explodes in the house (or between three houses).

La Chascona (In Santiago)

La Sebastiana (in Valparaiso)

La Isla Negra (in La Isla Negra which contrary to what the name suggests is not on an island)

I visited the last of his houses, La Isla Negra, three weeks before I left Chile.  It was perhaps the complete opposite of Scotty's castle.  Instead of being set in the middle of a hot sunny desert like Scotty's, La Isla Negra was situated on the coast 50 meters from the ocean.  Instead of clear sun all the time, La Isla Negra waited in fog for most of the morning until the noon sun lifts the billowing curtain.  It was from the collection of shells and sea creatures in La Isla Negra house that taught me what a narwhal was and that it was real.

Can you imagine that?

And that is perhaps why, even as I was listening to a gigantic self playing pipe organ led around by a woman in full costume in a tower of an imaginary castle in the middle of Death Valley, I couldn't help but sigh and hold a breath of wistful remembrance for the eccentricities of Chile.

From the fruits of summer to the icy snow in just two weeks

Do you ever get to the end of a vacation and you are sipping on a fruity drink by the pool or walking along the beach suddenly realize that this is it?  You will go back to your real life and your real worries and every moment that you are spending in this place, under this sun, in this world will soon surrender into a distant picture of how it was?

Every time I go to China, I get one of those dreadful illuminations.  I usually delay it by frantically eating and shopping and attempting to stuff every imaginable tidbit of Asia into my suitcase so that the memory won't fade.  But alas, the loss is inevitable.

In the case of Chile, I decided to do a whirlwind of travelling.  As soon as my finals ended, I went to La Isla Negra, Valdivia, Montevideo, Colonia, Buenos Aires, Punte del Este, Arica, Cuzco, Machu Picchu, Puno, Lago Titicala (Titicaca) back to Santiago and finally to the States.  I didn't have a chance to breathe.  Time seemed infinitely short and measured as I crazily took one bus here, another bus there, an airplane here, a ferry there.  Even as I was buying alfajores in Santiago, two days before my trip back to the states, my mind and my body never registered what it meant.

Now, after another whirlwind of travel around Nevada with my family, the tides of contemplation have come.

The tip of the thought begins with two questions I never thought to ask when I planned to study abroad:  When will I go back to Chile? and What do I do now that I am back?