Day 13: Leaving

These past two weeks have been nothing short of amazing. I came into this trip thinking that it could be cool to see another culture and to be fully immersed in it. I underestimated it. This was a great experience that I will not soon forget. Even the hotel added to my experience. The windows didn't lock, our first door was not functional after just one day, we woke up with morning dew all over our belongs, and there was even a day we did not have running water, but the other days the water was just cold and pressureless. I would still not swap Hotel America for a five-star one. Bonding with 16 other students for two weeks really made me some new friends and I hope to keep them throughout the years. People normally say after living with so many people your going to want to kill them, I feel the opposite, I wish this was a four week program. There were so many cultural differences I picked up. Some that I would like to bring back to America and some I am glad that they are in Chile. I like the way people greet and talk in Chile. It is very personal and people are genuinely interested in becoming friends. There is no personal bubble, but I am okay with that. People are also very accepting, at least to me, and this is something that I would not mind see a little bit more in the states. The stray dogs that accompany the streets are good companions and they are all very well trained. Since we were such a big group, dogs would follow us left and right and this is something I got used to and started to like. Even in our lectures when we asked about the dogs, the natives said how they are big fans and even though there are laws to keep them off the streets they are glad that they are very lightly enforced. Something I do not like is the amount of trash cans and the size of them. I would have to search for a couple blocks or two just to throw out something as small as a little ice cream dish. This was everywhere though. Some of the only trash cans were in the bathrooms and this was for your toilet paper. I would not mind if this tradition stayed overseas. One thing that really got me thinking was the presence of English. I keep thinking that if this trip was swapped, say 17 Chileans coming to America that did not speak English very well, that they would have a much, much more difficult time adapting. There were restaurant signs in english, they had English menus, and even more important most of the people there were able to at least have a basic conversation with you. We visited Chile in the winter, which means there were not many tourists so I could not picture a better time to see the country and get fully immersed in the culture. I feel so Chilean that at the airport in Dallas the first few words I said when I ordered a snack were in Spanish! Chile overall was a great experience and I just wanted to thank Jorge and Sarah for being the best mentors and the other students that made my trip unforgettable! :) Oh, and sorry for the pictures being huge. Both my laptop and phone broke over this trip so I needed to get these pictures off of facebook so they may be a little big/blurry. Thanks for reading!