I woke up with a start. I had that feeling, you might know the one, where you open your eyes and instantly know something is off. That feeling that its lighter than it should be when you're supposed to wake up. The one that lets you immediately know you've overslept. I looked at my small black alarm clock on the nightstand next to my bed. "8:17," it read. Two minutes after my first class in Chile had started. Wonderful. I changed. Made sure my hair wasn't a birds nest. Grabbed my things. Quickly explained in to my host mother that I was late and wouldn't have time for breakfast. I ran to the corner, hoping the right collectivo would pass by soon. A minute or two later I hailed the right cab and hopped in, 500 pesos in-hand to pay the driver, and requested to be dropped of at the university.
Finally having a moment to sit down in the collectivo, I realized that something else was wrong. My face felt weird. And my stomach. And my head. "Oh great," I thought to myself, "I'm sick aren't I?" Sure enough I was sniffling the whole way to the college, my throat felt like it'd been thoroughly scrubbed with sandpaper, and my head was pounding something horrible.
When I finally arrived at the building. I had a very difficult time finding my room. My class was in G 4-1 meaning the Gimpert Building, Floor 4, room 1. However, the Gimpert building shares an atrium with another building (which I don't know the name of, but it's initials are RC). So it's very easy to accidentally go to RC 4-1 instead of G 4-1 and then realize you're in the wrong classroom, and have to excuse yourself sheepishly. Once I finally made it to the room I was about 20 minutes late. Though, as we found out in orientation, Chilean classes are a bit more chill about this since they, as with most of Latin America, don't care so much about punctuality. So despite what would be terrible tardiness in the U.S., I wasn't even the last student to arrive to class. In the end there were five of us in that class. I was the only Gringo. Because of the small class size, the professor expected us all to respond individually to his questions. This made me feel very stupid. Normally I can understand most people when they speak Spanish, or at least catch most of what they say. Not in that class. The students especially spoke with very, very mumbly, thick Chilean accents. I was struggling to keep up the whole time, and my illness wasn't helping me focus at all.
When the class finally ended and I felt sufficiently miserable about myself I had about an hour between classes, but my second class (one which I wasn't very interested in and which I was fairly certain wouldn't transfer as useful credits to my home university) was all the way in Viña del Mar, a good 45 minute drive or so from the main building and offices of the university so I tried to get there in plenty of time. I went to the information desk and asked the men there how I could get to the building I needed. I showed them my documents and they confirmed that the classroom I needed was in the building I'd presumed. They instructed me to buy a ticket from the cafeteria for one of the University's busses that go between the two locations. They told me the bus came every ten minutes or so.
I followed their instructions to the letter. I bought a ticket (which cost me about twenty cents, American), I went to the place they told me to wait, and I watched for a white vehicle with the university's logo on it. And I watched for a white vehicle with the university's logo on it. And I watched for a white vehicle with the university's logo on it. For about 30 minutes. By that point I KNEW I was going to be late for class. I went to the International Studies office across the street and confirmed that I'd done everything correctly. They said I had and that a bus should be coming. So I went out into the semi-warm of Chilean winter and waited for the bus some more. When it didn't show up for another 15 minutes I walked to the nearest metro station (only 2 blocks away) and took the train home. I knew that I'd probably end up dropping this class anyway since it wasn't very useful for me. I'd only signed up because we were instructed to sign up for more classes than we could take, since in the Chilean university system, it is normal to take tons of courses then trop them. This was one of my backups in case another class didn't work out.
The train ride was short and I trudged back to my house, getting a little lightheaded from a couple of the uphill stretches and quickly arrived back in my bed. I took a long nap, and felt significantly better afterward. It was one of those moments when I remembered a few of the things I'd been told.
First from orientation sessions: Interchange students often get sick when arriving to a new country, especially when switching between north and south hemispheres. The stress on one's body is often too much and it will force you to rest it. I saw it happening all around me, but assumed I'd be immune. I wasn't.
Second from previous students I'd talked to: The first three weeks are the worst. I don't know if they meant of the whole trip or of classes, but I'm hoping that was bottoming out there. Everyone I've talked to says the first few weeks are just confusing and stressful, but somewhere around the 3 week mark, everything really clicks and begins to make sense on a consistent basis.
Third from my dad (that fountain of wisdom): He emailed me the following quote from C. K. Chesterton this week (without knowing what was going on in my life at that moment): "An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered." It doesn't make the sickness go away, but it makes it more bearable. It's another piece of the adventure. I mean you can't have anything exciting without a little bump along the way now and again.
It's been an oddly disappointing feeling, especially after I thought I was doing so well. Though it wasn't the fact that I was having a problem that bothered me quite as much, it was the particular issues I was having that got me down. I knew I'd have some difficulty with the language but I'd hoped I'd pick it up faster (though I have to keep reminding myself I've only been here barely two weeks). And as for getting sick, I thought that if I'd have a "bump in the road" while on an "adventure" in South America that I could at least manage to have a little more interesting difficulty than the common cold and being late for class. I mean, I'm not asking for any more misfortune (since as my friends can attest, it seems to find me regardless), but I guess I'd imagined the problems being something a bit more adventurous, like having to face a criminal warlord while trying to decode the last clue to find the sunken ship my new friend's ancestors had lost (yes I recently saw "The Adventures of TinTin," why do you ask?).
So I guess what I've learned from all this is that (A) no matter how good things seem, they can turn around in an instant (with one flip of an alarm's switch), and (B) adventures of all sizes should be embraced, be it a big or a small (though you might not want to share the small ones as much as the big ones, since to be honest, they don't make for very interesting reads. In fact, I'm surprised you've gotten so far in this blog post) So, here's to adventure. Here's to changing outlooks on life. And here's to whatever combination of the two might be just around the corner (waiting to smack you in the face with a baseball bat).
http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3qdcrj/
No comments:
Post a Comment