Claire Hour six in the Santiago airport. We found Gate 27 for our flight to Punta Arenas, and after that, everything was a bit of a blur. Lynn and I had gone over to the check-in counter to take a picture of the sign that said "Punta Arenas." All of a sudden, two girls came up to us and started asking if we were part of the Antarctica expedition!
Their names were Estrella and Reynalda, and they seemed very excited to see us. Soon after they found us, more and more teachers and students from FAE (the Chilean science fair) started migrating over to us. There were three Chilean teams there in all - the others will meet us in Punta Arenas.
Here's where my level of "overwhelmed" went way up. I think I knew about this at one point, but I was completely unprepared for it: Chileans greet one another with a kiss on the cheek. Talk about culture shock. When Estrella and Reynalda and the other girls did this, I just pretended I knew what I was doing, and it was okay. You don't actually have to touch your lips to their cheek, do you? Hopefully not.
Well, I was surviving, but then Felipe (the only male student we met) came over and greeted me in the same way. Being from the US, I felt very uncomfortable. I know this is acceptable here in Chile, but I still went very red, and I think Estrella and Reynalda saw my reaction and were laughing about it. We definitely have a much bigger cushion of personal space in the States.
I feel like I might be able to get used to kisses as a greeting eventually; it is a nice gesture. I'm just definitely not at that level of comfort yet. I've decided to make that my goal for the end of this trip: become more comfortable with saying hello in ways other than a wave or a handshake.
Luke Taking off from Atlanta, GA, at 10PM, I knew I would be waking up to a whole new world. Well, my predictions were accurate. The first thing I noticed stepping off the plane was the balmy 70 degree air hitting my face-such a contrast to the freezing Madison weather I had been dealing with just a day earlier. Walking into the airport I noticed that pretty much everyone had dark brown hair and was at least 10 shades darker than me. There certainly wasn't a red head in sight. A little boy in his mother's arms pointed to my hair and whispered to his mom. I was something of a new species to them. The second thing I noticed was that everyone was talking in Spanish.
Some of the other cultural differences occurred when we saw some of the Chilean students who were going on the trip with us. We ran to greet each other and were slightly surprised to be greeted with lots of kisses. The guys shook hands but the girls greeted with quick "air kisses" on the cheek. A little bit different but I didn't mind it. We started to talk to each other, but it was pretty hard to understand each other. When envisioning this trip I had sort of overlooked the problems a language barrier could bring. But over the 24 hours we have been here I've learned a couple of new words. One being benka or bad and bakan which means cool. So i'm on my way to fluency.
Comments