This is the end...beautiful friend

This morning I got to the metro about ten minutes earlier than I usually do mostly because I have stopped doing my hair in the morning and thus I was ready to go at 8:30 instead of 8:40.  It's a good thing I got there early, too, because I had to wait for five trains to pass me before there was one "empty" enough for me to board.  I always wish there was a take-a-number system in the metro because frequently people who have only been waiting for like five minutes shove past me to get on and the result is that I am overcome with rage.  Today, as I finally wedged myself onto the metro almost leaving my backpack behind in the wake and shaking with anger I thought to myself "I can't wait to get out of this country."

The sentiment followed me all the way to school, a commute which took roughly an hour and a half, which is even longer than usual and by the time I got to my first class I was already ready to turn around and go home.  And then one of my students asked me something.

"Profe, are you going to be teaching classes here next year too?"
"No, I can't.  My contract has an end-date."
"And are you going to stay in Chile?"
"No, I'm leaving.  I'm going back to California."
"You're going back?  But then we'll never see you again."

And at that moment it hit me.

I'm doing this all over again.

I'm leaving a place and people that I love and putting a gigantic distant between myself and them.

You would think that saying goodbye gets easier after a while.  After all, in the last six years or so I've moved something like eight or ten times, always leaving people behind, always putting distance between myself and people I love.  I have to admit that the invention of things like Facebook and Skype definitely soften the blow, but the truth of the matter is that nothing compares to being able to hug and sit with someone you love and share a glass of wine and talk about everything that happened to you that day.  Seeing their face staring out at you from a computer screen just isn't the same.  Just ask anyone who's ever been in a long distance relationship (me.)

The fact is I constantly find myself in multiple long distance relationships with my friends and family and although they are not necessarily romantic they do take effort and work.  I make a point to try to be in contact with my best friends and my parents at least once a week and when I go a long time without speaking to them I can feel it and it feels unpleasant and distant.  Even when I'm at home it's the same problem because so few of my friends have chosen to stay in our hometown.  I have and have had friends in Hawaii, Canada, London, Korea, Italy, Kentucky, New York and a slew of other places that are more than just a quick drive away.  In a way I'm lucky to have such adventurous and cultured friends and it makes sense that we would all be attracted to each other because we clearly value the same things and have the same interests.  On the other hand, it makes sustaining relationships with them tricky and their always has to be effort on both sides.

This is what I'm getting myself into all over again when I leave in two months.  I always knew this day was coming.  It was never likely that we were all going to call Santiago home for the rest of our lives and unlike my study abroad program last year that had mostly California residents, these people I've come to know and love come from all over the country so that even once we're all back in the states we'll still have hundreds of miles separating us.  And that's not to even mention my Chilean friends some of whom I very well may never see again as long as I live.

Santiago is not a hub like London or even Buenos Aires and round trip tickets from California are in the range of about $1,500.  Always.  This is not chump change and it's not something that most people can just come up with.  And that's just airfare.  There's also money to be spent upon arrival.  In short, it's not a trip you can feasibly take once every few months.  It's not even a trip you can take once a year.  It's a trip that I logistically won't be able to afford for probably three or four years.  There are people in this country with whom I have formed real and lasting relationships and it is genuinely painful to have to leave them behind knowing that if we meet again it may not be for several years.

This is the life of a wanderer, a word that I often attribute to myself.  I like change and I am easily bored by staying in one place.  But there are consequences to this lifestyle.  While the people I have met here have made a lasting impression on me and I will never forget any of them, knowing that in two months I won't be able to walk six blocks and buzz their apartment with a bottle of wine and a bar of chocolate breaks my heart.  And while I'm returning home to cherished friends and loved ones, people I left behind when I decided to come here, those reunions are always bittersweet because I've scattered myself between many people and barring some bizarre circumstance in which every person I care about decided to move to the same city, I will never be completely whole because I will never have my whole heart within reach.

Just a handful of the goodbyes I'm dreading

Last year when I left I left desperately in love with someone I'd met here and it was one of the most trying moments of my life.  I've been thinking how much easier it will be to leave this time now that I'm not leaving in a brand new relationship but the closer the date looms the more I realize that that's just not true.  Sure, I great deal of my tears my last week in Santiago were for him but they were also for all of the incredible friendships I'd forged in the meantime.  I don't anticipate this departure being any easier, even though I have come to desperately miss the US, part of my heart will forever be in Santiago it's hard to know that the two parts will never and can never be totally united.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Well, another year has gone by.  This one even faster than the last one.  Suddenly I woke up and I was 24.  When did I get to be 24?  Aren't I like, 14, or 18, or 21?  Aren't I at some age where I have minimal responsibilities?  Where all there really is to do is have fun and mess around?  I don't feel like a real adult, how is it possible that I became one without noticing?

Looking back at my last 24 years I have to think about the last 10, because before that there isn't much to think about.  10 years ago I was in high school, a clueless freshman, more concerned with who I was sitting with at lunch than with anything else.  Then all of a sudden I was 17 and ready to graduate with trips to New York City, Hawaii and Italy under my belt.  (I blame/thank Napa High Choir for giving me my original travel bug.)  College came next, along with moving away from home for the first time.  Dorm life, dining halls and absolutely no one (save a killjoy RA) telling me what to do.  I was playing Division 1 water polo and trying to maintain my GPA, one of the most difficult things I've ever done in my life.   After sophomore year I was desperate to find myself, learning that perhaps UCSB wasn't right for me.  I took a leap I never imagined taking and dropped everything and moved to San Francisco with two of my best friends, got a job, and lived (mostly) on my own for the first time in my life.  I paid my rent and bills and I was really proud of myself at the tender age of 20, feeling for the first time like I was really capable of taking care of myself. 

And then it was back to UCSB because despite everything, SFSU didn't want me and well, if they didn't want me then I certainly didn't want them.  The easiest course of action appeared to me to be to re-enroll at UCSB and finish my degree there.  I was almost 2 years older and a great deal wiser and felt that I could tackle the place that had once, at the risk of sounding dramatic, sucked out my soul and put it through a woodchipper.  Yeah, I went there.  I moved in with some Swedes and somewhere between desperately trying to find a job and tanning out in the January heat wave, Chile madness overtook me.  I wanted to learn Spanish (by the way I changed my major from English to Spanish somewhere in the whole mess, for some reason), I wanted to live abroad, I wanted to experience a new culture and I wanted to DO something.  Something really cool.

And so I set out on my quest to get to Chile.  I applied to the study abroad program and jumped through approximately 3,457 hoops to get accepted and get my visa.  A year later I was on a plane to Santiago with a girl I barely knew from Spanish class.  I have never been simultaneously more terrified and more excited about anything.

Of course, Chile was everything I hoped it would be.  It was crazy, exciting, stressful, amazing, adjectives adjectives adjectives.  I made some friends that I will never forget.  I had a multitude of experiences I will never forget.  I fell in love, both with the country and with someone I met there.  In six months I had more experiences than I ever knew I could in a lifetime.  As soon as I got home I was itching to go back and between getting my heart broken and graduating with the best GPA I'd ever received in college (Dean's List, what what!) I figured out how to get back while furthering myself on the path I'd chosen for myself: to become an ESL teacher.

Which brings me to now.  8 more months in Santiago, Chile.  8 months of fully supporting myself (with the occasional generous donation from family members), of working full time as a professor of English and of learning what it really feels like to be a responsible adult.  I've made lifelong friends here this time around too and will always look back at this year with fondness and gratefulness. 

So, I guess I didn't grow up overnight.  It's been a very long time coming. 
Oh, also, for my birthday I went surfing.  I'm addicted.  Here are some pictures.