Leela´s Monthly Update ©
June 1, 2004 – July 12, 2004
Edition 11


Last I left off, I had gone to Santiago for the weekend to get a tour with my friend Olga while I stayed with her family. On the way back to Viña del Mar, I went to the airport to meet and surprise my friend Abby (and her best friend Jenny) as they came into Chile for a visit. A lot has changed since then...

Trying to Squeeze Everything In

For those of you who know me, you know that I am usually very busy on a normal day-to-day basis. This was amplified about ten fold my last month in Chile when I was trying to spend quality time with everyone, get ready to come home and surprise everyone, deal with the effects of all the goodbyes I was about to make, keep up my normal routine, and oh yeah, pass all my classes!

I hardly slept the last month of my stay there, just because I had so much on my plate. In addition, if I had more than two minutes alone time (aside from my daily run) I would get really sad (I hate goodbyes) so I just kept going on stored up energy until the moment I went through customs at the Santiago International Airport. And it worked…for the most part.

Highlights of the Month…

Chile vs. Brazil Soccer Game

As most of you know, aside from the USA, soccer is the probably the most world wide popular sport. South Americans especially take pride in this strenuous physical activity, particularly their own respective country’s team. So you can imagine how everything pretty much shut down when there was a Chile versus Brazil game in Santiago as part of the eliminatory process for the world cup (yes they have already started it now). Needless to say, tickets were sold out, thousands of Brazilians came over to watch the match, and from what my friends who went to the game tell me, it was a complete mad house. I opted to stay home and watch it with my Chilean dad and my visiting uncle from Antofagasta (up north). Within the first fifteen minutes, Brazil had scored and everyone was in low spirits. During the last five minutes of the game, Chile successfully executed a penalty kick and shortly thereafter, national pride surfaced from all corners. We had tied notorious Brazil, who some know as one of the best soccer teams in the world.




Taking Advantage of Valparaiso

One of the goals I had during my last few weeks was to take advantage of every single moment that came my way to experience things I previously had not done within my own city. Suzy and Mari were in the same position as me, and we tried to dine out for at least a weekly lunch in some part of Valparaiso to which we previously had not been but for which we had heard rave reviews. This included numerous hidden corners and cafes, great food, wonderful company, and even entailed meeting a clown. J


A Luxembourgian Please!

One of our friends, Charlie (from Luxembourg), who we met on the infamous “Dino Tour” in Sucre, Bolivia decided to take a detour of his travels and come visit Suzy and me for a few days in Valparaiso en route to Mendoza and Bariloche, Argentina. We had a lot of fun with all of our dinosaur jokes, showing him around, and spending time together. We were sad to see him leave, although we know that we will meet up again, but probably not in Chile!


Kazu's Despedida (Going Away)

As Kazu’s one-year of schooling had come to an end (he works for a Japanese company based out of Santiago, where part of the contract entailed Spanish training for one year), we had to celebrate in style, so we had three days of gatherings, back to back. Since he was going to be throwing a gigantic final sushi party (over forty people came to eat all the sushi their hearts desired), my friends and I wanted to make a fair trade and cook for him. So a whole group of us spiced and diced some food and we all had a delightful meal followed by the casino and karaoke. Finish it off with a bang should have been the theme for his final sushi party, as everlasting sushi, white Chilean wine, and fantastic international company (and plenty of it at that) kept magically appearing throughout the duration of the evening. Maybe he has a connection with Harry Potter…


Ben's Visit

Only in for two days on his way back home from Salvador, Brazil came Ben (originally from Portland, Oregon), who studied with us in Valparaiso our first semester and went and studied Portuguese his second semester. It was so great to see and catch up with him, especially comparing the similarities and differences of the last part of our exchanges. It just made me want to go to Brazil! The neat thing is that Ben and I are going to meet up at the end of July for a day in Seattle, before he flies across the country to start his last year at Emory in Atlanta.




Weekend of Family Activities

My lucky Chilean dad (or Papa as I call him) was fortunate enough to have both his birthday and Father’s Day on the same weekend. So the family celebrated on Friday night of that week for his birthday, filled with Mama’s mouth-watering caramel filled sponge cake and other goodies, while we sat around the table for hours, talking, eating, and laughing. The next night was Francisca’s (my Chilean sister’s) flamenco performance (she is a dancer). So excited that I had the opportunity to see her last show, I watched, enthralled and amazed at her sheer talent and gracefulness, as that would be something I could never master. Father’s Day was filled with a lunch out on the town as the whole family went out for a Chilean meal.


Final Tests and Wrapping Up the School Year

With everything happening so quickly, I had to bring myself back to a reality check and remember that I had finals to take and my Spanish degree to finish. Pulling a few late-nighters and doing as all college students normally do (and by that I mean procrastinating until the absolute last minute), I somehow managed to take all my tests, write my final essays, and make sure that I had all the right paperwork for classes transferring. And with a mere 4 hours before I was to leave my city to go to the airport, I handed in the last essay of my undergraduate career with an enormous smile on my face and breathing a huge sigh of relief. It still does not seem that I am completely done with either of my baccalaureate degrees, but I guess in many ways it doesn’t feel like I am back in the USA (or ever left Chile for that matter) either. I think it will hit me when I start working and do not have to study once I come home at the end of the day.


Leaving and Saying Goodbyes

As I mentioned earlier, goodbyes are extremely difficult for me even if I know I will see the person again. I just hate the thought of not knowing when, or knowing that the next time we will physically be able to be in the same room, years will have passed. Luckily, advancement in technology, (I am mainly speaking about the Internet and email) make it so much easier to stay in touch, but they do not come close to any normal comparison of what it is like to be there in person. Although in many ways I was ready to come back home (reality can only be delayed so long) and I was excited (and still am looking forward to) seeing and catching up with all of my friends and family, leaving the country where a year of one’s life was spent is a huge emotional rollercoaster. Luckily, through my past traveling experiences, I had gone through a similar process in the past (I am mainly referring to Iran) but that did not even come close to the number of thoughts, the helplessness, the insomnia, the sadness, the excitement, the anxiousness, the feeling two complete opposite feelings at once, that I went through my last few weeks in Chile. The hardest part was that since no one knew really when I was coming home, I could not call or tell people back in the USA about my arrival, and whenever I talked to my Chilean friends or family about it, they would just get sad. So instead I kept it all inside and dealt with it myself. Luckily in my case, I started the grieving process early but about a month before I left I went on a lot of runs or walks to the beach, filled out many pages in my journal, and just thought a lot.

Although I hid it well, it was one of the hardest things I have to do in my so far short-filled life. However, most or many rewarding things in life are difficult and are a challenge, which is why maybe why one can look back at them with a sense of accomplishment. And that I have. I made it, I did it. I got to Chile not knowing a single soul, and now I have made some of the best friends in my life. Needless to say, I tried holding off on crying as long as possible, and I did a pretty good job…until customs at the Santiago airport when I passed through security and took one last peek of Guillaume and Olga through those one-way sliding glass doors. It was just so hard to leave and get on that plane by myself. I felt all alone, even though I logically knew that I was not. When the official tried to take away my Chilean ID since I would not be living there any more, I lost it completely and all my emotions just came out (he let me keep the ID by the way). I was crying like a baby and I did not care if anyone saw or heard me (which is very unlike my normal self). The tears started rolling and by the time I was done, one could say it was comparable to a monsoon hitting. However, the whirlwind of emotions, my exhaustion from not having slept well for a month, and some sleeping pills for the long plane ride (as well as some red wine) luckily came to my rescue, and by the time I knew it, it was 6:50 am and I was in Atlanta, Georgia as I swept through customs and stared in awe as people were speaking English.

As I got on the next leg of my flight to Salt Lake, I started getting really excited to see my family, especially knowing that I would be surprising my mom (she was on her way back to Idaho from Tucson, Arizona and we had the same layover). I freshened up, got organized, and the first thing I did was go and purchase Starbucks Coffee. And it never tasted so good.


Arriving in the USA…First Impressions

Needless to say, my mom was completely shocked (she did not even recognize me when she first saw me) as tear-filled hugs were repeatedly given after not having seen each other in a year. We played a trick on my dad as Saul (my brother in law) and I walked out in the Moscow home holding hands (my sister and I look alike and we thought it would be funny) and had a wonderful weekend together. We relaxed and watched a lot of movies, including the powerful Fahrenheit 9/11.

So far it feels good to be back. In many ways I feel like I have never left. All my friends I had before I left to Chile are still my good friends, no one has changed too much, and I have just been playing it on the down low catching up with the people who are important to me. It is so good to see everyone again. This month is going to be crazy, but that is the way I wanted it. I head off to Los Angeles in a few days for part 1 of a 3 part wedding series, followed by a hasty move to Seattle, and then I am shortly thereafter hopping on another plane to go to Iran for the month of August with my father, where I will see all my 300+ family members as well as my sister Nassim, who currently lives in Afghanistan. After Iran I will be living in Seattle, so if you are ever in the area, please let me know. I am excited to be there, have my own place again, live with my sister and her husband, and get ready for the next big change in my life…

The End