EL FIN

I decided to wait awhile before finishing my blog. I needed to give myself a little time before I could digest the past semester in my mind.

I would have to say that all in all I enjoyed the semester thoroughly. Besides the bars, the beach, the bodacious babes (I'm a fan of alliteration), it was fascinating to get to live and get to know another culture. Now when I see pictures of Chile, the landscape, the cities, the people, I have something to put in context. Five months worth of memories and insights. Amazing.

When I first got there I knew nothing about the country. I'm not going to claim to be an expert on Chile, all I can say is that from living there is that I barely scratched the surface. Maybe I'm a post-modernist in a sense, truth and knowledge can't really be attained. Without a doubt though, Chile is a country with a lot of depth and complexities that I haven't yet come to fully understand.

I think I'll have to go abroad again to truly understand. When I first got there Prof. Ramirez told us Chile was an 'island', meaning that due to geographic features, mountains in the east and desert to the north Chilean culture developed in isolation from the rest of Latin America. This to some extant explains why they are not as gung ho about the regional integration projects and why they have a tenacity for creating thousands of slang words for foreigners and Spanish speakers to gnaw their teeth at.

(I still wonder what FOFEAR means? I guess I'll have to go back and ask...)
But it will be a lot easier the second time. I have friends there now, I can ride the metro, ride and survive on el micro, consume my weight in manjar, make an empanada like a pro (well I know how to do it, in practice it might turn out differently...as Anna can attest), give directions in Santiago, sing Victor Jarra songs at a pena, know the difference between bilp and pap, and on and on and on...

It's hard to explain what I learned in Chile. People ask me all the time, and I give the usual ''oh my spanish is a lot better, it was so much fun etc, etc..."

But there was something more, something I can't quite explain...Cachai?!