The first fortnight in Chile

My adventure in Chile started with both departing and landing on the 29^th of September, 2014.

I had slept in a hotel the night before, as to be close to the city for the 6:30am check-in. A final repack of the bags the night before, and an early wakeup. Whilst struggling to get my first suitcase out of the door, I was too slow to realise the door was in-fact closing behind me. I had, in the first stage of my journey, locked three of my bags and the key inside the room. With not a staff member in sight, I called the hotel to have a very sleepy manager answer the phone and tell me unforgivingly to wait for the bus driver to arrive. The bus driver did unlock my room, I did get my 4 bags onto the bus and arrived to Sydney as planned.

The travel was quiet and calm, without any major hassles. The only drama being the large stinky woman who sat next to me giving me a waft of B.O every time she moved, and constantly nudging me as she overtook her share of the armrest and the leg space in front of me. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep too well due to being constantly woken by said touching and change of aroma in the air.

Immigrations were cleared, almost without problems. I had thought I had lost the crucial documents needed to enter Chile. After making an attendant go and get new ones, I then found the documents floating in clear sight on top of my bag where all the documents were. I blame the jet lag.

Customs was cleared as I threw all my bags into the conveyor to be screened and quickly reloaded them before the customs man who had asked for my declaration form realised I hadn’t actually given him one. It’s a bit hard to give something you hadn’t filled out.

Rubén was there to greet me at the airport when I cleared into the usual contaminated air that is Santiago. A shared transfer back to his house, I spent the rest of the day fighting the urge to go to sleep.

Eventually, at 8:30, I was nodding off while watching Rubén eat his supper. I was “given permission” to finally go to sleep.

What followed was the most needed 14 hour sleep I’ve ever had.

Most of the first week was struggling with constant jetlag and dehydration with occasional bursts of activity.

Tuesday 30^th September

The first of the notable burst of activities would be whilst trying to exchange my rather large sum of Australian dollars to Chilean Pesos.

In Santiago, there is a street which is lined one after another with currency-conversion houses. Each house clearly expresses their prices on the boards or in the windows. We were hoping to get 530 pesos per dollar, but upon inspection we saw only top price was 517.

No problems for us, we walked around the block and started to head for our house of choice. When we turned the first corner, a smartly-dressed man (I will refer to him from now as SDM) approached Rubén asking if he was converting cash. He replied that he was. Rubén also told him the currency and the SDM told him he could convert for 522 pesos and to follow him.

Are you hearing alarm bells yet?

The SDM assured Rubén that he was working within a bank.

The SDM started walking quickly away from the street of houses, and starting giving the details of how much money we were converting to a man on a cell phone.

I was concerned, but Rubén seemed to think it was ok. Afterall, it is common to have people attract you to their business from the street.

Surely enough, the SDM walked us straight into a large corporate bank, with security guards and all. I became a little less nervous.

We followed him up three flights of stairs, when he told us to take a seat near some people working. Rubén asked if we were going to deal with one of these people, and he nervously replied no and that we will go to another area.

That is when things got interesting.

All of a sudden, a small group of men came in the direction of the SDM. The SDM made a run for it down the stairs. The group of men called out loudly for the guards to capture him in the entrance.

When we walked to the entrance, the SDM was being attained against his will by one guard on each arm.

We were questioned by the guards if we had exchanged any money. The SMD pleaded with us to tell him we hadn’t. As it was the truth, we said he hadn’t and he was released. He quickly left the bank.

Rubén did apologise for putting me in the dangerous situation.

We then promptly made our way straight to the money house we had in mind and converted our money to Pesos.

I really wish I had taken a photo of it. The AUD of $100 and $50 notes fitted nicely inside our wallet. The Pesos needed an A4 envelope to contain it. Unsurprisingly as the largest note they have here in Chile is equivalent to $40.

We walked promptly to the bank and dumped it all Rubén’s bank account.

Then we had a big sigh of relief.

Wednesday 1^st October

Another burst of activity was to register my presence here in Chile. The first step is to go to the International Police. The process is quite simple here. Present your visa in your passport, register your address, phone number, email and profession and they give you a slip of paper stating that your paper work checks out.

Then you take that slip to the Civil Registration Office who takes your fingerprints, inputs the data and orders an identity card for you to pick up in 10 days time. Exactly the same procedure as 2 years ago when I moved to Santiago.

But nothing is that quick and easy here in Chile.

We left the apartment at 10 in the morning, and walked about 25 minutes to the Civil Registration Office. Rubén doubled checked that the procedure was correct and which exact documents was needed from the International Police. We were told what, and then given the address of the International Police.

1^st Challenge: The International Police was not 10 minutes from the Civil Registration Office as last time, instead in a new location about 30 minutes from there… 5 minutes from our apartment.

So we walked back, joined an eternal queue and took a number to be served at the International Police. We were number 218. They were up to number 56. After half an hour of waiting, Rubén and I calculated it would be over a 3 hour wait. So we picked up our things and did some errands.

We returned to wait a further half hour before being served. 10 minutes inputting the data and we had my slip of paper.

Now, the Civil Registration Office closes at 2pm, we arrived about 1:50 with no dramas. Took another number, waited another 40 minutes (doors were closed to new customers, but they still served those waiting). Photo taken, fingerprints taken, signature recorded and we were done.

Over 5 hours for such a simple task. That’s how anything bureaucratic works in Chile!

Thursday 2^nd October

The third notable activity was I met with my previous boss at Instituto Norteamericano, the institute where I taught English in 2012. I was welcomed back with open arms. She, along with the other big-wigs who just so-happened to walk past the office at that time were very pleased to see me (or just a native with a proper teaching degree).

I was informed that I left a very good impression in the Institute last time, and I would have no trouble being allocated work.

The 4^th Term in the Institute begins on 21^st October, which is the most convenient classes to teach as they are 10 minutes walking from my Father-in-law’s apartment, and follow the traditional classroom method of “learn everything this book says”. Easy!

There are, also, classes that take place in Empresas. These are classes where businesses hire a teacher to teach a course in their workplace. I was very quickly offered three of these courses, meaning I had work 5 days a week (if only for 2 hours a day haha).

The second of these three classes were later taken from me as I couldn’t make the first class due to travelling for a wedding. Didn’t worry me too much, who wants to do a class at 8:30 on a Monday morning, and 4pm on a Friday afternoon anyway?!

At this point I am working Tuesday – Friday mornings.

Saturday 4^th October

In preparation for this upcoming wedding, I needed to buy a dress. My boxes hadn’t arrived from Australia yet, and the number to call from the invoice simply was an automated message telling us the phone was either out of service or out of range. After shipping them 2 months earlier, we were starting to think we’d never see them again.

María, Rubén’s sister, agreed to help me go shopping to find a dress that is on-trend with Chile at this time. She took me to the cheap shopping district of Patrinato. Shop after shop deemed as unsuitable as clothing labelled large/extra large failed to sit my chumba-wamba body or adequately cover my giraffe like features. With entering each shop, I could see the attendant look me up and down, knowing there wasn’t much they could offer me.

Eventually, we found a little black dress that did fit around my Michelan Man body. Only problem, the inbuilt soft cups to support the boobs were more like shoulder pads. The seller told me I could easily remove these pads, if I cut the dress open, remove them and restitch it.

By this point, I’d had enough fun being squeezed into dresses that didn’t quite fit and bought it anyway. The bra/shoulder pads remained in the dress… look carefully at the wedding photos and see if you can locate where my boobs were somehow supposed to be.

Moral of this story is that I can only shop at the expensive shops for white people.

By the second week in Chile, the dreaded jetlag and culture shock had finally subsided, just in time to help Rubén prepare for his day of interviews and applications in Panamá the following week.

He received an email on Monday 6^th October informing him that he had to present a creative speech about his career history and his goals for the future using only a wall space or a flipchart (explicitly stating NO POWERPOINT). It also had to be portable from Santiago to Panamá city via a suitcase.

Needless to say we spent the next 5 days writing, modifying and rehearsing this speech whilst trying to make it creative.

We narrowed it down to a poster board showing the heading ‘My Story’ with 5 hidden images and 5 hidden captions.

The first half of the speech Rubén explains his story of work and study, revealing generic images linking to his story. Then, for the second, he removes the part saying ‘My Story’ and reveals the company logo. He then expresses his aims and goals for the position, revealing captions which give a new meaning to each of the previous images proving that he is the perfect fit.

Kind of clever, huh?

It took us hours to buy the appropriate resources (beige cardboard with yellow post-its, scissors, glue), find appropriate images, print and cut a test poster and print and cut a good-copy.

In the end we were very proud of our idea and we think we are on a winner with the ‘creative and informative’ brief. Here’s hoping that the panel agrees with us and see our vision for the speech.

I thought taking a break from full-time classroom work would mean no more poster making. Guess I was wrong!

We also had various days shopping for suits, shirts and ties to give Mr Rubén the confidence needed to impress the panel over the three day stint in Panamá.

Wednesday 8^th October

I attended a workshop seminar regarding teaching in Empresas. Nothing was said that was amazingly enlightening, in fact I held the same objections to a seminar run by the same man two years ago! However, just like last time, the captive audience of Chilean English teacher praised him for his amazing way to deliver content… just as the book suggests.

I was nervous about teaching English to bosses in businesses, as they are always so demanding, much older than me and the content revolving around ‘Business English’ was putting me on edge thinking my recent experiences of teaching full stops just wouldn’t be up to scratch! However, after this seminar the confidence came flooding right back to me. Bring on next week!

Friday 10^th October

After some last minute rehearsing and cutting and pasting, we packed our bags and met Nestor at a nearby train station. Nestor drove us the 6 hours north to the beautiful coastal city of Coquimbo, where the family of Rubén’s father live. This was in preparation for the wedding of Rubén’s cousin Felipe to his now-wife Nathalie.

We arrived late, about 10:30pm to the house of Rubén cousin (brother of the groom) Andres & Soledad. Supper was served along with cakes and a few drinks later it was time for bed at about 2am.

Saturday 11^th October

This was the big day for the wedding of Felipe and Nathalie. But unlike in Australia, there was no need for an early start. The ceremony in the Church wasn’t due to start until 8pm!

Rubén and I crawled out of bed late and had lunch. We went to visit the block of land and the house one of his cousin’s was building nearby. Below are pictures from their roof-top garage – the best view in all of Coquimbo!

The girls had their salon appointments at about 2pm, returning at 4pm to do their make up together before getting dressed separately.

By 7:30 everyone was dressed and on their way to the Church, conveniently located 5 minutes away!

We congratulated the anxious groom who was waiting outside the Church when we arrived. We took a few photos, watched random street dogs do their business before being ushered into the Church by a few parishioners just before 8pm. At this point, only some of Felipe’s family was accounted for, and no one for Nathalie’s.

It was another 25 minute wait in which guests arrived in dribs and drabs. Eventually, at 8:30 (Check the clock in the rear of the Church!), the Bride and family arrived and the ceremony was under way. Highlight of the ceremony was their son of the Bride and Groom playing hide-and-seek inbetween Mum's dress and veil!

After the ceremony, we headed in a convoy to the place of the ceremony. The entrées were served at 11pm, with the whole night wrapping up at about 4:30am.

The concept of Open-Bar is quite different, with no concept of standard drinks or Responsible Service of Alcohol, just like the Chilean’s like it. The Reception was similar to our own, even down to the cake topper!

Instead of formal speeches, they were improvised and said during entrees.

There was a live band for part, and a VJ for the rest.

After the three course meal, bridal dance, family dance and a bit of dancing it was time to cake, throw the garter toss the bouquet and chose a lace string. That's what the umbrella picture is. Each string can be pulled by a lady and may have a little trinket attached eg. a ring to symbolise marriage, a little doll for a baby and so forth.

Bonboneries were woolen heart keyrings.

Lastly, out came costume-like props to really get the fun started! Unfortunately, I don't have any pics of these - plenty from the professional photographer though.

All in all, an excellent and enjoyable night!

Returned home in the taxi from hell, but like all taxis at 5am in Chile, arrived home in one-piece!

Sunday 12^th October

We woke up about midday again, myself feeling dehydrated and Rubén feeling a little worse for wear after a heavy night of drinking!

A quick shower for me, and a few spews for Rubén, we headed to his Aunty’s house for lunch before the 6 hour trip home courtesy of Nestor again J

Once back in the apartment, we were told much to our delight that the 3 boxes had arrived and were waiting in the lobby. Apparently they came on a big kangaroo and by the look of them I felt inclined to believe the concierges veiled attempt at humour. We lifted one into a shopping trolley and drove the shopping trolley through the building, into the lift up to the apartment. Then on a rug in the front door and dragged to our room, before being walked across the carpet in the bedroom. Repeat this 3x and we were absolutely wrecked! Upon closer inspection, it is clear the boxes had been searched by customs and they weren’t quite sure how to repack them to Rubén’s precise standards. I’ve gone through the boxes and nothing is cracked or missing. Only one moneybox was destroyed when the customs man tried to open it, only to realise it didn’t open by ripping off the top. No dramas there J

We then went to bed at 11pm for the worlds shortest sleep!

Monday 13^th October

2:30am the alarm went off. Rubén was up and dressed faster than I’ve ever seen him! His flight to Panamá left the airport at 6:02am, and had a taxi booked for 3am. A very tired good luck hug was given before I promptly went back to bed.

I spent part of Monday writing this blog, while the rest catching up on sleep! Rubén has arrived safely in Panamá, and we both agree that whatever happens, happens!

I promise to be less wordy and more picture-focused in future blogs. I apologise that it has taken me two weeks to get into the mood of wanting to write. Settling in Chile was much harder this time than previously!