Our new normal

“Create results, not excuses”. That was what was on the t-shirt of the Chilano I passed, while I was walking back to the Metro post my afternoon workout at one of the Everyday Fitness locations in Santiago. That pretty much sums up the Chilean mindset. It’s all about the results for them.

That’s very evident at the school we’re at. The pace of learning is breathtaking. We’re faced with a daily tsunami of nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions, and irregular grammar. My class is full of German cyborgs who are absorbing Spanish like they’ve dialled up the Mother Ship in The Matrix and are downloading textbooks en masse. They try to include me in some of the exercises, but it’s clearly a matter of pity for the senior citizen who reminds them of a familiar simpleton from their home villages.

Be it as it may, we’ve finished our second week at the school and have settled in to a routine that has become our new normal:

07:00     Wake up and turn on the Ozzie Open to catch the latest live action

07:15     Coffee in bed

07:30     Shower and prep for the day

08:00     Breakie and emails + homework that we should have completed the evening before

08:30     Prep to leave, chastened by the knowledge that you’ve forgotten everything you learned the day before

09:00     Flurry of activity to get out the door

09:15     Head downstairs and turn right to go to the river to grab the path we take to school

09:20     Confront the Manhattan level crush of cars, motorcycles, bikes, people, jugglers, merchants, etc.

9:50        Arrive at school

10:00     ?Como estas? 

13:40     Classs is over… WTF?!

13:50     Heads spinning, make our way slowly back home speaking a mix of garbled nonsense languages –Spanish, Dutch, English + some old Yiddish I learned as a kid that, from the trauma, seems to be bubbling to the surface. The rest of the day is a blur of shopping, occasional outings organized by the school, meal prep, cleaning, homework, Netflix, blogging, Yatzee, and existential reflection. Needless to say, the time is passing by very quickly. In two weeks we’re scheduled to leave Santiago for parts North. I now know, literally, what “Tempus Fugit” means. Truus: In my class are 8 students, 2 Americans, 1 Fin, 1 German, 1 Swiss, 1 Australian, 1 Slovenian and me. Beside the intensity of the program to teach us vocabulary, grammar and to communicate with each other, is the heat that makes it for me hard to concentrate. There is no AC in the class rooms. The daily temperature is 30+ and always sunny. Needless to say school is not easy! However the teachers are amazing they are very supportive and positive and we students indeed have a lot of fun. The pics we add today are all pics from our daily routine. Every morning lots of retired men are watering and cleaning the park. The río Mapocho suppose to be clean, brown color comes from all the minerals and mining according to the Chilean people. Darren and I try to study during our morning commute in the park. Not sure if it always works. Ciao