Marriage Licence

(Written around March 11)

“Seek ye first the Kingdom of God…”

Fridays in Chile, or at least for our school tend to be a day of relaxing with little to no scheduled things and what is scheduled is pretty strictly in the morning with the rest of the day free.  Our first Friday in Vina was very important.  We went down to our government to start the process of getting out Chilean ID’s.

We arrived at 8:00 to make a line outside of the office even though it didn’t open until 8:30.  By 8:30, however, there was a line more than a block long to get into the small office.  Inside, it looked like the room of the DMV where you go to get a new license plate.  There were desks on 3 out of 4 sides and a reel where everyone had to take a number before waiting to be called.  There were, of course, babies crying, impatient people waiting, and us, a pack of semi-dazed Gringos who had woken up early after a PACKED, dizzying week of orientation and talking to our families (Chilean and Estadiounidense, the Spanish and more politically correct word for citizens of the Unite States, since we’re technically all “Americans”).

As we waited to have our pictures taken at this horrifying time of the morning and our fingerprints taken once again, my mind drifted, and so did my eyes.  I took notes on the people I saw: young, old, families, singles, and tired people, some happy, most impatient.  And the people I especially enjoyed watching were those in line for their marriage license.  How happy they were, how young, and how dependent on one other they looked.

God had already begun working on my heat by this point.  With the Aunt Bec’s engagement and the beauty that came of her waiting, with not one but two sermons about the lover relationship we are supposed to have with God,  the themes of faithfulness, purity, and dependence had already begun swimming around in my head.  Even in talking to my host mom and hearing her testimony and what she calls her “fracaso matrimonial” or, literally, marital failure, I’m realizing that marriage is even more beautiful and even more scary than I had ever really imagined.  My relationship with God is even more beautiful and profound than I can even try to aim for, but then there’s grace, as in a marriage between two people, compromise.   Compromise is actually the closest word that we have in English to “engaged” in Spanish.  How much more beautiful is “compromiso” than some word that sounds as if we are ready to shoot a gun or a cannon.  We’re “engaged,” the bullet is “engaged,” the United States is “engaged” in a dispute over foreign policy, Bill Clinton “engaged” in some relations with that Monica lady.

“…and HIS righteousness…”

God is already whispering in my ear.  He’s got secrets to tell me, and sweet nothings to share.  I just hope that I can be giddy over my relationship with Jesus and remember to allow him to be the man in the relationship.  He’s at the helm.  He makes the plans.  He loves me already for who I am, not who I try to be during group orientations.  It breaks his heart to watch me seek after the love of a man without first letting him define pure, prefect, fairytale love the way he designed it.

It doesn’t matter if the man-interest I left at Messiah is recently “with girlfriend.”  It doesn’t matter that I’ve never had a real boyfriend or that I don’t have any prospects.  I didn’t come to Chile to find my husband, either (even if that might be a secret and unfounded desire).  The fact that I even have to “like” someone at all times is rubbish.  God has every intention to romance me this semester and I’m acknowledging that here in public for a little accountability.  I want to be giddy for God.  I want to long for God the way he designed me to.  What good is a Christmas present if you’ve already peeked?  What good is searching and finding a boyfriend who is wrong and won’t last when in the meantime I can can grow in God and trust him to provide?  Isn’t God as big and as powerful, and even more, than I claim he is?

“…and all these things shall be added onto you.”

Language Gap

(Written around March 3)

folkloric dancers, welcome program for international students

One thing that struck me from the beginning, even before my fascination with windows is the idea of communicating in Spanish, my second language, with someone who it in the same boat, someone who also speaks Spanish as a second language, but who does not share English as their first language.

When you start learning Spanish as a child, you learn the 20 countries and capitols of the countries that have Spanish as their national language.  You start dreaming; maybe my Spanish will take me to Tegucigalpa.  No, maybe I’ll go to Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, or Ecuador, maybe even Chile.  Next, you learn vocabulary to talk about an experience in a market, buying wool sweaters on the slopes of Macchu Picchu.  You learn to say Chichicastenango and pledge to go there just to say the word, never you mind, the locals just call it ChiChi or something like that.  Never, however do you think about the other children starting Spanish in other parts of the world who might be thinking the exact same thing.

I do remember thinking, unfairly, what if I saw an Asian person speaking Spanish, or what about an African person who had learned Chinese or Japanese… I imagine thinking how strange that would be.  Isn’t it just as strange for me to be speaking Spanish?  Sure, It’s the language of my neighbor country, heck it’s almost the language of my neighbor county, but it’s not my language.  It’s not the language of my ancestors (German, Irish, English), but it’s hardly different than someone from Asia learning the language of their neighbors on the other side of the Pacific….

What’s been EVEN cooler to me this week (international orientation week), though, and even my first day has been to talk to other students from Germany, Denmark, Ireland, Mexico, and other countries that I have only read about by speaking Spanish.  Everyone here has had to work at learning Spanish.  Our orientation program, like our classes was purely in Spanish as that was the best guess at the language that all of us would understand probably equally.  

Dancing with one of the Folk-dancers during our orientation welcome program

Even out of the Chileans that are already here, there are differences in languages taught in the schools.  There are British Schools, Arabic Schools, Argentinean Schools, and many more.  Even passing shops here that sell Arabic food like shwarma have really helped to put me in my place as just another foreigner.  It’s not really that special to come from the United States. In Latin America, it’s almost less special because of some of out poor choices in foreign policy, but that’s another blog…  

The history of the world, like humanity is flawed and we’re all just trying to find our place.  It was really cool, though to talk to a German boy, who knows the city in Germany where my mother was born, but to talk about it in Spanish.  More windows than I could possibly imagine have been opened through Spanish!

Click to see more pictures of orientation

Caught up in the, "He said, she said"

(Written Feb 13)

“You will be tired; you will be very tired.” A friend advised me when speaking of her first month in Chile.  She warned me that there would be days that I would go back to my house in the evenings and simply want to shut myself in my room.

I hit this phase and I hit it hard, but it was a lot easier for me to hide it as I was still with my grandma Sherian and Paulina, so I was sill in between English and Spanish, but there were days that I woke up an understood neither English nor Spanish. I felt like I was loosing grip on two worlds.  Paulina and I spent a lot of time translating like I mentioned in the beginning, and even sometimes, I hear the Spanish and just not register the words even though they were simple words I hac known almost my whole Spanish career.  For the first time, I wanted to withdraw into myself, to do absolutely nothing, but I knew I was growing every day I applied myself, every day that I tried.

            I watched four movies in Spanish with Paulina: Megamente (Megamind), Comer, Rezar, Amar (Eat, Pray, Love), Dia de los Enamorados (Valentine’s Day), and Endreados (Tangled).  I felt so lost watching Megamind and questioned weather I even knew Spanish at all.  Again, I learned like a child watching Disney movies with his parents, watching the cartoon, listening to the ride and fall of the characters’ voices and trying to figure out who were the “good guys” and who were the “bad guys.”  The next two went much better as I had already seen both of them in English, but like movies in English, I fell asleep for parts of them.  By the third movie, however, I finally understood the characters, laughed at the jokes, laughed at the subtitles for being wrong (they were also in Spanish), and understood the story. What a rich experience it was to understand!

            By the time we got to Santiago, then I was able to talk to the chicas of ISA in Spanish and to really understand and be understood!  What a fulfilling experience it is to understand literature, feelings, and people in their native language.  I have run in to so many words that just don’t translate well.  There are feelings, experiences, and ways of saying everyday things that you just can’t get if you only speak one language.  Even in watching those movies, or even watching movies that are subtitled in “my two languages,” there are things that are lost in translation; there are things that are just more beautiful to hear in their original language.