Somehow a part of me forgot how it felt to walk into a room and meet new people that would certainly become entwined in a life-changing segment of my existence.
How quickly we forget things that we think will always be a fundamental part of us. First encounters, the anticipation of a new adventure in a new place- a new continent, even.
How easily it came back to me, the exhilarating knowledge that life is changing drastically yet again. The beautiful exhaustion of a red-eye flight propelling me straight into a new country that will become my home quicker than it seems. These things find a way to create their own homes in my memory as they pull older, more exhilarating, more beautiful, more fundamental, memories back to the surface.
Because those older things, those fundamental and defining ones, they aren’t forgotten. They become a part of our very nature. Heard in the way we talk about our pasts, what we want from the future. They can be seen in the way we interact with newer people in newer places. They can be felt in those moments of deja vu that turn into a deep realization that places are just places, and how we let them shape our worldview is the real test.
Those things become lessons. How it was so much scarier to take my first international flight alone just last year and how the world felt much too big for me. How now I know I can find my way alone because of those fundamental moments of terrifying growth. How the beauty of those firsts made me sure that I had to chase more of these feelings, however and wherever they might come.
I have been living- a crazy thing to say- in Santiago, Chile for the past 6 days and it’s become such an important place to me so quickly. Even after spending months around the world, traveling on my own, going to school in a different part of the country, and becoming more aware of the world around me, I never would have imagined that I would feel so comfortable in this magical place surrounded by the Andes.
Having had no prior ideas of how my time in South America would begin except for wondering whether or not it would, in fact, begin (thanks Visa process) I was amazed to find a city so full of life and art with beauty to be found in everything. I had allowed myself to feel the nervous anticipation for this new journey as I tried to remember that it was an emotion I had felt before, but stronger. This is not my first time doing this, in the ways that really matter.
I’ve lived in a new city, far from everything I knew. I’ve been abroad for 4 months away from even more of the things I knew, with people and places and ideas completely foreign to me. Combine the two and here I am in Chile, taking the next logical step in my life. Taking the jump I’ve needed since freshman Spanish in high school where I won most of the flashcard challenges and prided myself on loving a language so deeply and being good at it. I’ve needed this since I took a semester off while I was abroad and lost so much of my confidence instead of simply practicing with my friends that speak the language. I knew even more that I needed this as I felt myself growing more confident and able again in classes back at Alabama.
I need this to do what I could not at home and to force myself out of my comfort zone. I will speak to everyone in the language that is theirs, I will learn from my mistakes (there will be a lot) and I will grow from my experiences. I will see more countries and learn new colloquialisms as I do. I will have a new family in those hosting me for this time and I will see the world through the eyes of others.
I will finally do what I have needed to since I began learning languages, to realize my own abilities and better them until I know that I am truly doing my best.
So here I am, sitting on my new bed, in my new room, in my new city, on a new continent after my first day of new classes. It is all new to me and that is why Chile will allow me to change in the ways that I need, to evolve my understanding not only of language but of culture and this large section of our even larger world.
I’m so excited for you guys to join me again, this time in Chile.
Leave a Reply