Here are the steps to how we, the students of the International Studies Abroad program in Valparaiso, Chile, reverted to what can only be described as "a preschooler-like state", and how with one big bang we all came back.
1: The Language - We, much like preschoolers, are only just learning finer points of the language being spoken around us. Most of us can hold a basic conversation, but with some difficulty. Our words are disjointed, we make huge grammatical errors, we often have to ask what some bigger words mean, and our attention span for the language has severe limits. I've heard many people admit (myself included) that after listening to someone speaking rapid Spanish for a few minutes, we have a hard time staying focused on understanding what they're saying, and after a while longer, the translating parts of our brains shut down entirely. This has made the big people explaining things very confusing and has led to our dependence on them for lots of things, especially reminding us of where we have to be and when.
2: Host Mothers - As with preschoolers, we don't exactly know how to get around on our own, so our new families have been helping us the past week get onto the right busses, take the right taxis, turn on the right corner, and (if necessary) hold our hand while crossing the street. We walk with them on our way to school, and wait for our name to be called by our program director so we know they're there to pick us up after. When my host mom asked me tonight if I was going to be able to get to the meeting point for our program tomorrow, I had to prove (for about 20 minutes) that I knew where I was going and what types of transportation to take.
To make matters more preschooler-ish, we're packed sack lunches every day this week as we're still getting oriented to everything, so when it's time for almuerzo we all pull out our lunch boxes and ask, "So what did your mom pack you?" Yesterday, I even heard someone say, "I'll trade you my chocolate marshmallow for your apples and manjar!"
3: Fatigue - This is perhaps the largest factor that made us revert to our younger selves: We're all so tired! Since we're coming from the United States in the peak of summer, where the days are long, switching to the southern hemisphere means we're arriving in the dead of winter. Because of this, none of us are receiving the amount of sunlight and therefore, as our program director explained to us, the melanin in our skin isn't helping our body metabolize as much Vitamin D as we're used to (and if you didn't know, Vitamin D is key to alertness, vibrancy, and general good temper) . Since the shift is normally slow from summer to winter, we don't notice it like this, but the shock has us all a bit sleepy, even if we get 8+ hours of sleep. Not to mention, since we've arrive, we've been hyper busy! Since we've arrived we gone on like a zillion walking tours of the city, ridden on who-knows-how-many buses, seen innumerable streets, famous landmarks, majestic vistas, and had only a little free time. With all of this going on, I began hearing many complaints that people were tired of doing things and that they just wanted, for once, some time to sleep sometime in the middle of the day rather than doing something we didn't want. That's when I knew the transformation was complete. We were all cranky preschoolers who just needed our naptime.
4: The Descent - Today, we were visiting different buildings of the university, being shown one tall grey building in a distant area of the city, riding on a bus for about half and hour, then seeing another one and being led around it a bit. We were all grumbly about it. No one saw the point, since they'd given us a sheet explaining everything anyway, and we were so tired our brains weren't really translating at their peak and what we understood was likely to be forgotten. When we made our final stop, they were about to lead us around when one of the guides looked at us, rapidly tossed out a soft Spanish sentence to the other and then announced that instead we were just going to go back to our meeting point at the main office of the International Program. One girl commented, "I think they all saw our grouch faces and decided something better." So we all piled back on our buses, ready to go back to the office for yet another orientation meeting. We were all grumbling about the prospect of forcing ourselves into a semi-awake position for another hour of meeting when it happened.
5: The Comeback - The bus lurched to a stop. We'd been travelling along fine until all of a sudden, in the middle of the highway the traffic came to a halt. It was odd. It wasn't rush hour. It didn't seem to have any reason to it. I knew when I rode to the office that morning there was more traffic built up than usual, but I just accredited it to peak hour traffic. Word quickly passed through the bus that someone heard from someone that there had been a crash some miles ahead. Apparently (and I never heard real confirmation of this), there had been an accident somewhere near our destination where a public transit bus had collided with a bridge or an overpass support or something and they were afraid to move it because they didn't want anything to collapse so they'd shut off the street. We weren't sure what to do this information, since, by the time it passed to everyone, we'd been blocked in on all sides by the gridlock.
We were stuck.
We were told that our meeting had been canceled for the afternoon and pushed to the next day. Needless to say, no one was upset by that. Then, without much addressing the issue, we began to fall asleep. One by one we curled up in our bus seats and took in sunlight, and sleep, two of the things our bodies had been craving. A few of the sliding windows were slightly open, letting the cool seaside breeze blow through the bus, making us all curl up inside our coats and scarves (that our mothers always insist that we wear even thought it's really not that cold).
No one seemed too sure how long we actually slept, but as the traffic began to move again, many people were commenting that they felt like they'd slept for hours and much more rested. We ate our packed lunches on the bus and with that began having a brief respite from all the Spanish and had conversations about things other than how tired we were or how little we wanted to go to the next meeting. Instead, we talked about our families, the things we'd liked on the trip, what we were looking forward to. The bad mood and childishness had broken. The cranky preschoolers had gone and the college students had finally returned. It just took a crash and a traffic jam to bring us back.
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