Sunday, August 19, 2007: I'm not a complete failure!

Sunday, August 19, 2007

I woke up around 10:30, went to mass at the Jesuit church nearby at 12:00, then took the metro to meet up with Christian, my Chilean language partner. He had emailed me while I was in Argentina and we talked on the phone Saturday and he invited me to eat lunch with his family on Sunday. I was really nervous about meeting a new Chilean family and worried that I wouldn’t be able to understand them. Christian picked me up from the metro in his dad’s truck and while we drove back to his house he explained to me that he has been studying history for 3 years now and is involved with Pastoral, La Católica’s youth ministry organization. It is through Pastoral that he got involved with the Exchange student language partner program and he has had tons of language partners over the years. This made me feel a lot more comfortable and I knew he would be patient while I struggled to communicate.

We got to his house and he introduced me to his parents and his brother, who I later found out is his twin. His brother’s name is Manuel and is also studying history. The even have a few classes together. While their parents finished cooking lunch, the three of us talked about classes, Chile, America, religion, history, public health, etc. I was pleasantly surprised that I could understand and speak quite easily and for probably the first time in Chile I felt like I could relax and be myself with Chileans. Also knowing they were both Christians really helped. They are both very interested in the role of the Church in Chile and the era of Independencia in America (remember: America is actually both North AND South America, not just the USA). Christain is doing a huge research paper on the role of the Franciscans during Independence and another one about Saint Alberto Huertado, the Chilean Jesuit who during the 1940s started Hogar de Cristo a huge charity organization to help women and children in Chile.

We realized that both Christain and Manuel took a class I am taking Iniciacion a la lectura de la Biblia (Introduction to Reading the Bible). They both absolutely loved the professor and we had a great time talking about it. Christian even emailed me his copy of the paper that I thought was due the next day.

We ate lunch with the whole family and his dad had a great time asking me questions about the States and telling me interesting things about Chile. Every once in a while he would be telling a story and one of the boys would correct his historical facts. Lunch and conversation lasted till about 5. Then we continued talking about music, movies, everything until 8ish when we had once. Finally around 9:30 I realized that I still hadn’t written my paper for my Bible class and mentioned that I should probably get home. After saying goodbye and thanking his family profusely, Christian drove me home, which ended up being only about 10 minutes away, without traffic. I invited him to come meet Olga since I had just spent over 8 hours with his family, but I warned him that he would want to offer his coffee and dessert. He told me he had finished all his homework, so Olga, Christian and I drank coffee and talked until almost 11:30. Of course, Olga fell in love with him and we had a great conversation about faith, Catholicism, miracles, etc… After a while, I was so exhausted I simply could not pay attention and just let the two of them ramble. I did my best, but my brain was fried and I still had to write my paper! After Christian’s mom and brother called to find out where he was, he decided to head home, but told me I could email him my paper and he’d edit it for me.

It was after midnight when I finally started to work and that sinking, heavy chest stress feeling was starting to creep up on me. I had a week of vacation and waited till the very last minute to start working. When I got online to review the assignment, I saw that it wasn’t due till Wednesday, Thank God! I was so relieved! Instead I stayed up till 3 am catching up on my journal and talking to Trevor. Yeah for procrastination!

I realized today that:
1. My Spanish is actually really improving (I communicated intensely and only in Spanish for over 12 hours.)
2. I think this is just the confidence boost I needed
3. Christian is going to be a great friend to help me learn Spanish and help me in my walk with Christ.
4. By brain hurts when I use it too much and don’t have enough sleep.
5. I really miss home.