This week went by really quickly, and I fly home in 3 days. I've been talking about it with family and friends, and while I am saying the words it has not yet become a reality for me. I don't think it will until I am leaving for the airport and stepping onto the flight.
The week has been spent finishing classes, packing, cleaning my apartment, and starting to say my goodbyes. I will genuinely miss my classes with my students, as it is rewarding seeing their growth in English. But more than that, it has also been great getting to know them as people. I also said my goodbyes at work and passed off my classes to the other teachers that will take them over, and that is another group of people that I will genuinely miss.
I also spent time tying up loose ends with my health insurance and gym membership. I unfortunately had two situations in which Chileans weren't being honest in order to try and make more money off of me. Luckily I had a Chilean friend that was available, and we went around and got my health insurance plan changed to a cheaper one (it turns out that the one I was sold didn't have a gym membership included as I was led to believe) and got my current gym membeship frozen for my vacation at half the cost of what it was supposed to be.
These experiences have left me with a sad but true lesson: No matter how fluent your Spanish is when you are in Chile, it is always a good idea to have a native Chilean present for any type of business transaction to prevent people from trying to take advantage of you. I am a pretty nice guy (sometimes too nice) and possibly too trusting for my own good, so this is a good lesson to be learning.
The rest of my weekend will be filled with an all you can eat buffet, going out with friends, taking pictures of Christmas trees and decorations in summer, saying some more goodbyes, and packing the last of my things.
Well, what you say about having a native speaker with you is so true...Me - a Chilean- and my husband -who is an american- have to move to Chile in two years, and I am so damn scared for him. I know my people, and there are many of them that are trying to take advantage of you all the time. I hope your experiences have not been too bad, and that you are not feeling disappointed of the country. Well, I think reading your blog is going to help me to understand all those little things that you had to deal with and me and my husband will have to deal with too.
ReplyDeleteTake care and enjoy the holidays!
Thank you for your post and I'm sorry for my late response! For some reason I don't receive notifications when somoene posts a comment. I'm glad that my blog is helpful to you, and I hope you had a happy holidays too!
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