Learning Experiences Part 1: Success

This weekend was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

Where to begin. Friday maybe?

Sure, we'll start there

      Friday: After we finished up with our final orientation sessions and registered for classes (hyper stressful!) our program director, Lizette took those of us who were interested to a youth group meeting at her church. We arrived to find the praise band singing and it was a really great time.
      Then was the message. It was also good, but less so. Not because it was bad or boring or wasn't relevant or anything. I'm sure it probably was. I just couldn't really understand it. I mean, it was in Spanish. It was fast. I tried my best. I didn't get it. I felt better when the other Americans couldn't either. I understood it was about time because he kept saying "tiempo." That was about it. We got a quick summary from our director later who explained it was about how our timing and God's timing are sometimes very different. Afterwards there was a quick meeting of some of us exchange students and the youth leaders. After this, some of us Americans and a few of the Chilean youths went out to eat  at, where else, McDonalds.
      I ordered "Mac Nooguts" as they call them and fries. The McDonald's was actually really nice for a McDonalds. Maybe foreign ones are like that. I don't know. I don't visit overseas American fast food chains all that often. Anyway, as I went upstairs to join the group. It was such a good time. We were laughing and talking. We got along like we'd known each other for years. Everything was clicking. Translating was easy when it was so natural. For those of you who have learned to speak another language, may you'll know what I'm talking about when I say that when learning a language, at first you have to hear in one language, but think in your native tongue. This is how it's been for me most of my Spanish-speaking life (about 8 years I think?), but that night I wasn't hearing Spanish and having to translate in my head to what it meant in English. I heard in Spanish and it just was in my head in Spanish. And I could respond without thinking my response in English first, translating, then sending it through my face hole. It felt like all my years of Spanish studying had finally come to mean something. I was elated.
     I was especially happy, because that night, I understood my first real joke in Spanish and, for the first time, made a joke in a foreign language. Now, when I say joke, I don't mean the formal type that follow the lines of "A [blank] walked into a bar..." or "What do you get when [blank]," What I mean, is I added a piece of humor to our conversation. Now for those of you who know me personally, you might understand why this is so important for me. Being able to make jokes and be humorous is a HUGE part of how I communicate and form relationships with people. I feel like if I weren't able to joke with people, they wouldn't be able to understand who I really am. It's exciting and encouraging to know that I'm sort of regaining this ability.
     Later that evening, my friend Christina and I were heading back to our homes in the same neighborhood when she, apparently in as good a mood as I, said, "You know, I think I'm starting to love it here." I couldn't have put it better. We had walked the few blocks from the McDonalds to a main central plaza where we could hail a collectivo to our homes. We navigated the city like pros. This place, like the language, was beginning to feel less foreign and more familiar.
     The next day was a glorious relief. The week up to that point had been scheduled to bursting, with seemingly every minute packed with some thing to do or another. But on Saturday, there was nothing. I slept in. Walked around the city a bit. Chilled. It was great. That afternoon I received a text on my new phone. (Oh yeah, I have a phone here now. It's super simple, no camera, no full keypad, just the necessary buttons to call and text. Since most Chileans use a pay-as-you-go plan it's super cheap to own too, which is especially nice.) It was one of the Chilean girls from the night before. She said a few of the exchange students were going to go to her house that evening to watch the first two Christian Bale Batman movies. I agreed (of course) and later that night found myself yet again in good company.
     At one point in the evening, after we'd finished "Batman Begins" and then agreed that we didn't really want to watch the next one that same night, one of our American friends, Jordan, found a spider on the ceiling. It was kind of small and dark brown with long spindly legs. It descended from its perch on the rough white ceiling and began to descend slowly on a strand of silk. Jordan, being a brave individual who likes creepy things like spiders was about to reach for the spider to pick it up and play with it. I've always kind of admired people who can do that. I can't. I hate spiders. I think they're interesting to examine. But only when dead, under glass, or online. Anyway, as he reached out, several of the Chileans exclaimed "Araña de Rincón!" Directly translated, this means "Spider of the Corner," and Jordan didn't seemed bothered that this spider had come from the corner and didn't really flinch.
     Because of my (somewhat) irrational fear of the eight-legged monsters, had Googled "Chilean Spiders" before the trip, just to know what I'd be up against here. There are numerous spiders in Chile, but only a few really notable ones. There is the Mouse spider, The Chilean Rose Tarantula (I didn't even have the courage to open the wikipedia page on that one, thinking that some things are better left unknown), and the Chilean Recluse Spider, or as it's known in Spanish: La Araña de Rincón. It's a more deadly cousin of the North American Brown Recluse Spider, and can cause necrosis of the skin around the bite, leading to possible tissue and muscle death which can lead to gangrene and may require amputation of the affected area. It's also been known to cause death in several cases due to renal failure or other complications. So basically it's horrible. And he was about to touch it.
      Knowing this, I calmly looked at him and stated, "WAIT NO THATS A POISONOUS SPIDER ITS THE CHILEAN RECLUSE IT CAN KILL YOU OR TAKE SOME FINGERS DON'T TOUCH IT." That did the trick. We killed it with two placemats. Ever since, anything that brushes against me or moves in the corner of my eye causes me to flinch. And I have to check under my covers every night, just to make sure there's not some vengeful relative of the dead arachnid, looking to seek revenge (What? What do you mean I let my imagination run away with me?). We had a fun time the rest of the evening though, playing Dutch Blitz, a semi-obscure card game I had grown up with and was apparently fairly popular in Chile (who knew?)
       On Sunday church was good (the music was great, while the sermon, yet again, lost me). I talked with my parents that evening and went to bed early. Classes would begin the next day, and I had a class at 8:15. I knew I would want to be early and there on time. I made sure my alarm was set to the right time and switched the on/off switch on the top of my small batter powered alarm clock so I'd be ready for the next day. I fell asleep quickly and slept soundly, calmed and reassured by my recent progress and the relaxing and fun weekend that had just ended.

Regression and Return

      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.

Los Cuatro Fantasticos

      In the past few days, I've been picking up on some of the, como se dice, quirks of Chilean society. Of course there are the little ones, like how the women kiss people they've just met on the cheek, or how they add "po" as a sort of semimeaningless syllable to the ends of random words, but I've made a big discovery. The Chileans love The Beatles, or should I say Los Bitols. Now, I suppose you're thinking, "Well everyone likes The Beatles," or "Of course, they were a worldwide phenomenon," but I'm not talking, small scale, was-a-big-thing-in-the-60s-and-70s kind of thing. I'm talking about a cultural obsession with the fab four. 

     How did I come to this conclusion? Well it all started a few days ago in Santiago. Our student group was eating in the central market of the city at a fish restaurant, where I had a strange soup con mariscos varios (various seafood), which basically meant a random assortment of mussels, clams, shrimp and a few pieces of fish, stewed in a warm broth. As we were eating, I noticed two Chilenos approach the massive group of tables, toting guitars. They started playing and I realized I knew the tune. It was "Love, Love me do," and the duo began singing a slightly 'Chileanized' version of the song which was beautiful and a little sad. They finished and a few people clapped and they began another song, this time "She loves you (jah, jah, jah)." I thought it was a little strange that they were playing such old songs and that we'd come over 5,000 miles to hear someone play such non-traditionally Chilean music.  I don't know, maybe that's just me, but I mean, when you think being serenaded by men with guitars in an open air restaurant in South America, you don't exactly imagine them singing "You know it's up to you / I think it's only fair / Pride can hurt you too / Apologize to her." I assumed it was just an isolated thing, I mean they were older gentlemen, and the thought passed as soon as they started coming around, asking Gringos for some money for their performance.

     A couple of days later, the group went to a beautiful little bohemian artisan's camp in an old monastery outside Santiago. There were tons of little shops, all selling handmade trinkets like little pieces of jewelry or small toys or fantastic brick-oven-baked-empanadas. The buildings were old and Spanish-looking with clay roofs and a quiet brook running through. There were also numerous cats and dogs that belonged to the shop owners and a good number of trees along the soft dirt paths so there was always ample shade. When we entered however, there was a man outside one of the shops near the entrance who was sitting behind a large harp. At first, the almost surreally tranquil setting had us mesmerized and the harp was just another pristine facet to the jewel that was the artisan's camp. Then I realized he was playing a song I knew. He wasn't singing, but he was playing both the melody and harmony to "Hey, Jude." It was funny. Different people covering The Beatles twice in only a couple of days. I didn't mind. When he got to the "Na na na," part it was actually really cool sounding. I walked around the camp with some others and then we returned to the entrance to meet our group. The man and his harp had gone, but in his place there was a concert band, complete with trumpets, flutes, tubas, and all the required instrumentalists. The first song we heard them playing "When I'm Sixty-Four." 

This was especially endearing since it's a fairly clarinet heavy song already, but also because the band was made up almost entirely of senior citizens. It was fun to listen to, but by that point, I was starting to realize something was up. When they finished, they played a few other songs, including the Star Trek Theme which was pretty cool as well as a few other well-recognizable classics.

      In Valparaiso, my suspicions arose again. I was talking with my host brother and he was talking about a band they went to go see who was very good but also very funny. It was a Beatle's tribute band who was Chilean, but pretended that they couldn't speak or understand Spanish and that they were actually British. Then later I was talking with my host family about music. I told them I sang in the choir, and my school's jazz group. They asked what kind of music we played and I told them it was mostly vocal jazz, but also a bit of popular music. To that my host mother exclaimed "¿¿Como Los Bitols??" I explained that it was more of a modern popular music sort of thing, but she loved the idea that we sang Beatles songs and we talked about some of their hits for a while, including "Hey Yude," and "All ju need is Love." 

It was curious. I'm not sure I have an explanation for the continuation of the British invasion here in South America, but the fab four's fanbase is still alive and well here in Chile. For example, there is a large amount of very intricate graffiti here in Valparaiso, especially when representing social uprising and change. In several of these street murals I've seen images of John Lennon, which isn't terribly surprising, but at the same time, there are more influential people in the realm of social change they could've chosen. Another time I was listening to a Chilean radio station on one of the busses we were riding from place to place, when I heard the modern British boy band hit "What makes you beautiful" by One Direction, immediately followed by "Hello Goodbye." I don't know if someone recently distributed a ton of free copies of their Number One Hits album or if it's always been this way, but regardless, the British invasion made it to Chile, and it's apparently here to stay.

Valparaiso, the Jewel of the Pacific

     I think I’ve decided that occasionally this blog might have to be in Spanglish because I don’t know all the words I need and can’t quite express every idea I have in Spanish, but I find the latin lexicon rapidly creeping into my interactions with other students. So if I include a few spanish palabras o frases don’t be sorprendido. 

     After three and a half days in Santiago, the group travelled to Valparaiso. We left yesterday in the afternoon and arrived in Valparaiso and Viña del Mar just as the sun was setting. I was swept away by EVERYTHING. The buildings were so different than anything I’d seen. It’s like the Chileans have collected things from all over the world and made a city out of it. There are buildings that seem to be inspired by German architecture while some seem to be Asian or Victorian or French or Spanish or Latin American or from somewhere in the Tropics or the Old West or from Modern America. And no two buildings are exactly the same color or shape. Red, orange, yellow, blue, green, indigo, violet, magenta, cyan, chartreuse, fuchsia, tan, maroon, cerulean, goldenrod, and everything in between. The full spectrum can be found on the hillsides of Valparaiso. Bathed in the light of the setting sun, the whole spectacle shone even more vibrantly. Then there was the ocean. Golden. Sparkly. Awesome. We finally reached our destination at the Pontifica Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso (PUCV) where we would meet our host families. 

      My host mother met me there and we took a taxi to my new home in Viña del Mar (which is just to the north of Valparaiso, but really still the same city). It was nothing short of astounding when I arrived. It is on the bottom (but not ground) floor of an apartment building and very large. What’s more, its just a stone’s throw from the ocean. There are many windows that face the ocean to the northwest. I can hear the sound of its waves and the whoosh of passing cars blending together as I type. While getting introduced to this new house I met part of the rest of my host family, while several others are out on vacation. We were eating dinner together with my host mother Ester, my host brother Luchito, his apolola (a Chilean term for girlfriend), Javiera, and their friend Marco. After we finished eating we went up to the rooftop terrace to look at the city. It was a breathtaking sight with the lights of the city all around us, but more surprising, we could see the stars overhead. I realized this was the first time I’d seen any of these stars being in the Southern Hemisphere and all (and in Santiago it was so smoggy and bright, you couldn’t really make any out).

     This morning I got up in plenty of time so that mi madre chilena and I could take a collectivo (a cheap shared taxi that follows a certain, preset route) to PUCV. There the group of students reunited and took a Spanish placement exam to find out what level of classes we could take. I felt horrible about how it went afterward, knowing I’d done horribly. Everything on the test was things I know I’d heard of or sort of known at some point, but it was all very specific and tough to answer. Many of us commented afterward that our brains just shut down about halfway through, being too fatigued from the assault of Spanish grammar on our still adjusting minds. Later in the day there was a short tour of one of the city’s piers, a quick introduction to the tsunami evacuation route (yikes), and plenty of time for walking around, just soaking in the city. After that, some of us prepared for our Oral Exam where we knew we’d have to answer a few questions before receiving our test results so we quick looked up some obscure difficult verbs we might throw into the conversation to seem more proficient if we felt it was going badly (my favorite one we found was mojar meaning “to wet” or mojarse meaning “to wet oneself” and I imagined trying to work that into the interview at some point, but later decided it was probably ill-advised). When the time came, it was pretty simple. One professor from the college was there and talked to us one-on-one about our family and our home and basic stuff. 

     Then we got our results which were given to us in Spanish which, given how they present the information, it was an odd mix of ups and downs, made more confusing by the language barrier. I found I’d gotten a 38 on the test. Then I found out it wasn’t out of 100, which was a relief. Then, I found out it was out of 68, which wasn’t so great. But THEN they decided to reveal it wasn’t graded like a normal test (at least in The States) and getting 50% was about average, because they made it to be exceedingly difficult. So since I got a 55% that was actually pretty good and that I’d tested into advanced level classes, which is what I had been shooting for. Needless to say I came out of the little meeting, both confused and relieved...I think. I’m actually still not totally sure how to feel about it. Pretty good. I think. No lo se.

     All in all, the past few days have been a crazy blur of more and more new things. New sights to see, new people to meet, and a new language to learn. But with all these new things there have been quite a few mistakes that we’ve made along the way.  But that’s a topic for another day since I could go on and on about this, but I've already gone on long enough. Tambien, estoy cansado y necesito dormir. Pues, hasta luego!

First impressions.

     Though they say they offer more legroom, airlines lie to those of us taller than 6'5". My night on a Delta flight from Atlanta, Georgia to Santiago, Chile erased any doubt from my mind that "more" legroom was meant anything real. This "more" is probably the same "more" that pizza chains use to advertise that they now have "more" cheese on their pies, or the "more" insurance companies assure you that you'll save. Yeah. It wasn't so bad until about hour 3 of the flight when serious knee and thigh cramping began. This was about the time everyone on the flight fully realized that we would have to sleep on this flight and call it a good night's rest (good and rest both being relative terms).
     Our flight left Atlanta at about 11, the night of Wednesday, July 18. After a cramped night we arrived in Santiago at about 8 in the morning. Running on minimal sleep we bumbled off the plane, grumbled through the immense customs line, and fumbled through the cash exchange as we quickly tried to convert how much 483 pesos actually meant (more or less one dollar US). We were greeted by a representative from the International Studies Abroad program who spoke to us only in Spanish and greeted us with a customary kiss on the cheek.
      As Gringos (slang for white non-latinoamericanos, sometimes derogatory, sometimes friendly, sometimes neutral) the other international students and I responded with adequate levels of discomfort to this kiss. I apparently pulled away too soon and was corrected in Spanish "Solo es un beso" and that apparently we weren't done since we hadn't made sufficient contact...I guess. Another guy in our group said he went in for a second one on the other cheek, also apparently wrong, as was it for one female student to "bear hug" our director who only wanted a little peck on the cheek. There has also been the problem getting accustomed to Chilean Spanish, which is, in a word: slurrysuperfast. At one point I was asked, "¿Como fue tu abuelo?" meaning "How was your flight?" I heard "¿Como fue tu vuelo?" meaning, "How was your grandfather?" Thinking this must've been some customary thing, I responded what roughly translates to, "Well, I think he's fine...?" I wasn't the only student with a vuelo/abuelo confusion, since one girl (the bear hugger) was asked her flight number by a customs agent and she responded by giving her grandpa's name. Needless to say, we all have a long way to go before we're anywhere near fluency.
    All in all, the past two days here have been nothing short of incredible and overwhelming. So far we've ridden the metro twice, visited the Presidential Palace (where the tour guide was all but unintelligible to most of us), gone to a mountaintop to view the city/see an chapel/view a massive statue of the Virgin Mary, eaten bread with oil and vinegar about six times now, seen the incredibly massive Catedral de Santiago, and repeated about 1000 times the phrase, "Guys....we're in Chile."
     So far we've mostly been doing orientation-style things, with a few excursions in between. So far we've been meeting our fellow international students here in Santiago, but we'll be moving into our host family homes when we arrive in Valparaiso/Viña del Mar on Sunday. I'm looking forward to so many things on this trip, I can't even begin to express my excitement! As for now, it's late and I need to go to bed because breakfast here, unlike in The States, is just about mandatory since people don't eat a noon meal here. It's more like a 1:00 or even 2:30 meal, so even if you catch breakfast you're still feeling pretty peckish by the time lunch rolls around. So, hasta luego, adiós!

So this is my life now. Okay.

     For the past few months, I've been telling people my plans. At college, if anyone asked about summer plans I'd mention it. When I got home, every person at church asked "So are you home for the summer, orrrrr....?" and I'd have to explain. When my friends would forget, and I would have to remind them, I confirmed these plans. I've said it so many times to so many people; I've said it with such assurance, too. So...how did it not hit me until today? Maybe its the confirmation I (finally) received from the consulate, or maybe it's the realization that I need new luggage, or the fact that the number of days has finally hit single digits. Whatever it is, the reality of the situation has hit me: in seven days I will leave my home in southeastern Nebraska and fly to South America, where I will be staying in Valparaiso de Chile for the next four months.
     I had that moment where I had to sit myself down and say, "This is actually happening. It's a real thing. It's a really, really scary real thing." I'm going to be in a country where I know no one. It's a country where I only sort of speak the language (my mother says I'm more fluent than I give myself credit, but no matter how much I've studied, I don't feel quite ready). Not to mention, I'll be living in a city larger (and filled with far more petty theft) than I've ever lived in for any period of time. But as my dad pointed out today, even getting to this point, has not been exactly a cake walk, but God has had his hand in every step along the way.
     First, there was the application. I showed interest in the study abroad program this semester, but didn't know what to do. So I talked with my Spanish professor about it. We agreed it would be good to talk with my advisor as well.  However, by the time I'd been able to meet with my (truly wonderful) Spanish professor and then the two of us meet with my (equally wonderful) advisor I barely had time left to get the application in, but I had just enough time to get it in before the deadline. I received my acceptance from the International Studies program, leaving just enough time to finish all the paperwork and required orientation material from my college's International Studies Office.
     But that wasn't all, no not nearly. Then there was the waiting. Waiting for the FBI Background Check to come back. As soon as I was able, I sent the application form away. They said 4-8 weeks. That's a huge window. And the bigger the window, the longer to start to worry. At three weeks I was hopeful that the clearance would arrive in the mail in time. At four weeks I was a little nervous. At five weeks I was downright anxious. By six weeks I was a little more than a (very disappointed) kid at Christmas whenever the mail would come: "Is it here!?!! Is it here?!!!" Finally I was given a phone number to call to check on the status. They told me it would be another week or so, but the deadline for the visa application was approaching so I knew I had to do something. I talked with my contacts at the international studies program and they said that if I talked with the consulate, they would often work around the lack of an FBI clearance if I would bring it with me upon collection of the Visa. I called the consulate. They would indeed.
     So, yet another application was mailed away, this time to Chicago, where they said I would receive email confirmation of the packet's arrival. The USPS was tracking this package and they said it arrived in two days. This was fine since it was well ahead of the final deadline for visa application submission. I didn't get any confirmation from the consulate though. So I emailed them, sure that they'd have some information. Nothing. No response came. So I waited. And stewed with worry. My FBI background check came in the mean time, but I had bigger fish to fry at that point. And of course by fry I mean worry about. And of course by fish I meant application packets. A good week passed before I finally received any response from the consulate. By that point, the deadline was ONE day from passing and I was praying that I would be able to go. They finally told me it'd been received and that it was marked the day it arrived so if the USPS said it was there a week ago, they'd be sure to consider that when looking at deadlines. Then they said the processing time would be about two weeks.
     Two weeks?! I could only hope that by two weeks they meant from the time the packet was received, because if it meant the day I got the email confirmation of the packet's delivery, I'd be spending the entire 24 hour period before I left for South America in transit between my home, Chicago (since you apparently have to pick visas up in person, who knew right?), then to Omaha where I was scheduled to fly out!
     Let me tell you, I was a worrying machine. If worrying were an Olympic event, I'd be in London right now, preparing (probably by worrying about how I'd do). It was then, about two days ago, when I  was emailed by the consulate telling me my application had been approved that I finally could breathe a sigh of relief. But it wasn't until my dad said something, that I remembered how wrong I'd been going about this. He said that maybe all this stress before hand was God's way of showing me that he was in control. That he would take care of me and that everything was going to work out. I had been praying that it would all work out, that deadlines would be met, that I would be in the right place at the right time, but I realized, I wasn't so much asking as I was openly worrying at God. Instead, I should've trusted His timing, not hoped that my own hyper-vigilance would somehow save me. I needed to let go. I was reminded of that one passage in Matthew chapter 6:


²⁵ “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? ²⁷ Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

Could I, by worrying ensure the safe arrival of the applications? Could I, have gotten myself to Chile by stressing and making myself sick? No. That part just made me worried, stressed, and sick. God had my back the whole time.

I know this has been said a billion times, I've heard it about half a million as many and I'm sure to hear half a million more iterations, but the things that really matter (and the things that really don't) are all in God's control. I needed to put my life in His hands. I mean it already was, I just had to accept that. So when I sat myself down today, suddenly struck with the reality of my situation, I said to myself, "This is actually happening. It's a real thing. It's a really, really scary real thing. But God's got this. So this is my life now. Okay. I'll let You take care of me, because you always have and always will." So though I don't know what He has been preparing me for with this ordeal, I don't need to worry about it. God will make sure that it all works out, according to His plan. So this is my life now. And I'm not worried.