My purpose in Chile

I was talking to someone the other day about this subject, and I wanted to highlight it for all of you.

As this person read through my earlier blog entries and asked me some questions about what I have going on back in the States, he came to the conclusion that this decision of mine to come to Chile was going to be just another event in my life, that after I go back home my growth and later on my stay here will have been irrelevante, and I will just continue on with my life as it were.

I just want to clarify some things.

First of all, of course I miss my family, of course I miss my boyfriend, of course I miss Seattle and all of my friends there, of course I miss everything that I have ever known in my entire life that I don't really have or utilize here. But that does not mean I am not enjoying myself here, that I'm not learning, growing, falling in love with the environment, and finding my way around this foreign culture and language. Nor does it mean that I am spending all of my free time here wishing I was back home. Please don't think of it like that.

Of course as many of you know I have traveled to eleven countries and counting, but that does not mean that Chile is just one more of them, because it isn't. I would never consider Chile another notch in my belt, but rather almost like a second home to me, because really, that is what it has been. I now know after having lived in six or seven different places in the last four years what it means to move away and make a new life for myself, or rather, open a new and different chapter in my life.

Of course it gets easier every time, because I have less and less of a history in each place that I've been staying, and because I haven't gone very far, so there is always an opportunity to backtrack and visit old friends. But I know it is going to be emotionally impossible for me to leave Chile knowing that I may not come back for a really long time, that I may not reunite myself with my family here and with the wonderful friends I've met. I have one friend right now that is a neighbor of mine, and we go out on weekends and have a good time but we also just chat about life and the world and one time we just hung out at his house and watched some program about China on the television. I know I'm going to be spending a hell of a lot of time with him, especially because he lives so close, and I know it's going to be hard to say goodbye to him when I leave. I've never really had a special neighbor friend like that that I spent so much time with.

But I shouldn't be thinking of that right now. I should keep my mind on my goals here. My purpose in Chile is simple.

I want to speak Spanish. I am in love with this language, and it is frequently utilized back home. And with that, I must tell my gringo friends here: I did not fly six thousand miles to practice English. I want to speak in Spanish.

I want to get to know the Hispanic culture. That's why I didn't go to Spain. I've already come into close contact with the European culture twice. It's time now to continue my quest for cultural enrichment and an overall understanding of various parts of the world. I want to meet Chileans, talk about holidays, explore the city, acquaint myself with the nightlife and try all the food. My friend Pablo told me he couldn't figure out why I would come to here or why I would want to travel to a country with less money than the US. I told him that in all honesty, there aren't a whole lot of countries with more money than the US. And the ones that do have more money are the ones that I could never afford to live in. Besides, what do I care if Chile is rich or not? For me, a country's worth isn't measured by its highly equipped armadas or its success in socialism or even how many Bill Gates and Donald Trumps come from there. A country's worth to me is the culture and sentiment it can offer me. I can already see that this country basks in culture, and I haven't even been far outside of the fifth region.

I want to broaden myself as a person, as an American. I know many people here in Chile are offended when we refer to ourselves as Americans, but please don't feel like we are excluding you from all of America, or that we think we are superior. The fact is, we don't have a word for estadounidense in English. For that reason and that reason only, we refer to ourselves as Americans (because the English equivalent to estadounidense would be something like United Statesan, and it just doesn't work. It's basically for the same reason that you refer to us as gringos, it's shorter, it sounds better). But either way, I want to be able to see the world and know that the US really isn't the best place on Earth; it's not superior, it's far younger and has less history than many other countries, and is undeniably not the most intelligent of world entities. And the only way for one to truly be able to admit to oneself all of these things and know that it is true is by experiencing the different ways of life somewhere else, and for more than a mere three weeks.

I want to study. I am not here for vacation. Of course I want all of the aforementioned things, but I want to be enriched intellectually as well. This is incredibly important to me. And for the record, when Seattle University says that it strives to enrich the person as a whole through diversity and all that, it's lying. It may want that, but it could never in a hundred years do that, especially not by doubling tuition during what could be close to an economic recession. All it's doing is eliminating the lower class, causing substantial problems for the middle class and filling its classrooms with freshmen that are either so rich they've never had to do any kind of work a day in their lives or that are dumb enough to take out forty thousand dollars in student loans. If you want real enrichment and development as a person, travel. I'm serious.

That is my purpose in Chile, to enrich myself as an individual, to learn things that can't be taught in textbooks, to understand the world as a whole, and to have a good time doing all of the above. That is why I am here; that is precisely why I chose Chile. And I am falling in love with this country.

Life is not about finding oneself, it is about creating oneself.

Love,
Kelsey