I’d like to start in saying that I’m glad I got here early. Having those first couple of days to adjust, get to know my surroundings, felt good.
We are in a strange time on year in Chile where the US and Chile have switched in and out of daylight savings, so there is a 5 hour difference betwen Chile and California, whereas if it were summer in the States, there would only be a 3 hour difference. The time difference caught me off guard, so I’ve been having a strange time trying to sleep. On top of it all, the sun doesn’t go down until almost 9 p.m. in summer here, so I ended up laying in bed around 10:30 WIDE AWAKE and thinking, “I gotta sleep… I gotta sleep…”. But I managed to get up at a decent hour and make my way to church my first night.
I had written to someone at another church who was able to send me the address of a church close to where I’m staying, so I ventured into the subway to make my way there. Not hard. Santiago’s subway system is super easy to figure out. The problem was walking almost a kilometer in church shoes from the metro stop to the church. I got to the church at the end of Sabbath school, and realized that everyone was really… old. Which is strange, because it’s right next to a university. I decided next Sabbath I’d go to the Ñuñoa church, because the last time I went there were more people my age.
I wish I could say that I met some interesting people at church to spend Sabbath afternoon with, but it didn’t happen. I did meet a family from Riobamba in Ecuador, which is a nice area that I got to visit briefly while there last year, but other than that I didn’t meet anyone interested in doing anything, so I came back to the pension, had lunch and slept most of the afternoon. The pension owners had planned a dinner to ring in the new year, and it was fairly relaxed. There was a family of Brazilians who had been staying at the hostal for vacation who kept us chatting and laughing the entire time, we raised a toast (with pepsi, ha!) at midnight, and I tried to go to bed, but the time difference along with the long nap was still affecting me so I didn’t sleep until around 3 a.m.
The next day I just wandered around the house, kept myself occupied, and Monday was when everyone else showed up. Sylvia arrived first, without one of her bags, so I lent her a towel and some soap so she could shower, and Dan and Sarah arrived at around 9 a.m. They rested most of the morning, and at noon I took them around a small part of town where we’re living, they got some groceries, and then Patricio offered to drive us by ECLAC to get an idea of where it is. It’s not far, and once we saw how easy it was to get there we decided that we could stand walking in the mornings. Sylvia thinks were crazy, because it is pretty hot, but in the mornings it isn’t bad. In the afternoons there’s no way we’re walking.
We returned to the pension and Jessica, Patricio’s wife, offered to take us to a “parque” (park). It was so lovely how she described it, with plants and a ”laguna” (pond), and we thought it might be nice to just find a nice place to chill, so she drove us. Except it wasn’t a park. It was Parque Arauco, a mall, and the “laguna” was actually a fountain out in the front. There were a lot of plants, but they were mostly crawling vines covering the walls. Figuring, what the heck, and needing a few items, we ended up wandering the mall. Sylvia found a pharmacy to get some toothpaste to last her until her bag showed up, and Dan and Sarah bought plug adapters. We went for lunch, which was when jet lag started setting in for the three of them and they were acting a little silly. Dan couldn’t talk straight, Sarah kept spilling her water. We eventually got back home in one piece and everyone rested the remainder of the afternoon.
Tuesday we went to meet Cas, our professor, at ECLAC. Dan and Sarah and I decided to walk, and it was nice but Sarah and I were wearing the wrong shoes, so it was a slow walk. Sylvia decided to take a taxi. We met up with Cas, went through the long process of getting cleared with security, and met the director of the English translation department. We sort of wandered around during the morning meeting people, getting to know the lay of the land, and in the afternoon we were given a presentation on what kind of sources they use for their translation, and then HR gave us a bunch of paperwork to fill out, and we got our OFFICIAL UN BADGES!!
Spiffy, right? Sorry ’bout the quality and the fact it’s backward, but I forgot my camera in Monterey and my webcam is the best I can do. And I’ve deleted some essential info, like my last name. Gotta insist on anonymity somehow.
Sylvia and I will be translating at FAO while Dan and Sarah will be at ECLAC. More later…
