An Overdue Update

Earlier this week, for the first time since I arrived in Santiago, it rained. It poured, actually, as if the rain had been held back for weeks by some invisible blockade that finally gave way. I stepped outside the library on campus the following afternoon to a clear blue sky and toxin-free breeze that my Chilean friends promised would come. I stood motionless in the novelty of the situation for a few moments, as one usually does when they finally, after sustained search, find that something they've been searching for.

It didn't rain the day after that, the smog re-claimed its blanket post over the city, the novelty ebbed. That's OK. School work has kept me shut up indoors anyhow. I did leave for a bit this morning, though, to buy a bus ticket to Mendoza, Argentina. That trip starts next Thursday, a holiday here. The bus ride is something like six to nine hours, depending on how long you're hung up at the border. Being a North American and thus a potential carrier of the swine flu (and the fact that I've been living in a country where there is no swine flu being entirely irrelevant) , I could be subject to a number of tests that could take a while. But from what I've heard from friends who have already made this trip, the buss must cross the Andes, and the views are worth the fare themselves. (The fare, by the way, is less than $20 dollars each direction, nearly half of what it costs me to bus from Maine to New York.)

Apart from the Mendoza trip, I've got visitors coming to Santiago in two weeks. Dad, Mom, Gena and Holly arrive in early June for a weeks stay. Needless to say that I'm on edge for their arrival. They'll get to live, if only briefly, like I've lived. They'll see what I've seen. It's an incredible feeling, and one that few exchange students hold.

But thought of their arrival stirs another feeling, and that's the feeling I get knowing that soon I'll be home. I've been responding to this feeling in discontinuous ways. Early on the semester, at times when being foreign was almost too much to bear, I dreamed of going home. I counted the days on my calendar, calculated the hours, minutes and seconds left until July. This was before I had Chilean friends, when my Spanish was shaky and my confidence low.

All that's changed now. Three months came and went, and these last two will go even faster. There's too much left to do, too little time and resources to do it. When the time comes I'll be happy to go home. I'd also be happy to stay, but I've got to get home and get situated for my senior year. What? Senior year? Reality kills. So does looking too far ahead in time, which is why I'll sign off now.