I've(obviously) made it home safe and sound.
It was weird coming home. I hated it, actually. I was surrounded by Spanish and people who were not Chileans.....which is what I had become utterly used to, so it was kind of a shock being thrown back into an old life I seemed to have forgotten a good amount of. I don't mean to make it sound like I forgot my old life, I didn't at all. It was just strange to be in an old environment with a head full of a foreign language, and doing foreign things that suddenly made no sense at all.
It was wicked weird. On one hand, it felt like I had never left, but on the other hand, it felt like I had been gone forever and a day. I picked right back up with some friends. I got a job, which has been keeping me busy...
..5 days a week, hurrah! I've actually kept fairly good communication with my host family. Ignacio's not doing very well at all, which is worrisome....I'm hoping to get a chance to see him again. :(Oh. I did manage to get everything packed. One suitcase came in weighing 17 kilos, the other was 25. I was wearing my blazer, and wasn't charged anything. My weight limit for both suitcases was 23 kilos each, by the way. haha. I know, I know, I'm fairly amazing.
Saying goodbye was utterly hard and full of tears. Then it was a long bus ride to Santiago. Mauricio and I were picked up by a friend of his and we then got utterly lost looking for the airport. Made it there eventually though. Checked my baggage, then hung around until it came time for me to go. It was hard.....I've never had such a horrible feeling in my entire life like the feeling that I had as I sat on the runway in Santiago. It was horrible, made even worse by the crew on the plane, who flat out refused to speak anything but English.
Buuuut I made it home, and I'm safe. Happy? Well, I haven't quite figured that out. I suppose it's really more a matter of giving myself time to fit back into life here. It's hard because I created an entire life for myself in Chile that I really really really liked, and was then forced to leave all that behind. It's harder because I've come back changed, and most people refuse to see that, and just want me to be the old Kelsey(sorry. NOT happening.). For the time being, I'm okay, I suppose. I just feel....foreign and out of place most of the time. I can tell you that the most uncomfortable feeling I've had my whole life was the feeling I had while waiting to board my plane in Dallas/Fort Worth. I was sitting there, in the United States, my "home", surrounded by Americans and English, but honestly, I have never felt so foreign in my entire life. Even being in Chile, I never felt as foreign as I did then. In my own country. I still have a habit of referring to myself as a Chilean. Often I talk about Chileans and use the word "we". Somehow it just makes more sense to me.
Anyway. I'm OK. Dealing. Working hard to return back to Chile, hopefully for an even longer amount of time. I think almost constantly in Spanish, so please excuse errors I make or have made in this entry.
Hmmm. Not sure what else to say.
I guess *sniffsniff* that this is goodbye. I don't really see a reason to keep this up, since this blog was about me going to Chile, I've gone, I've returned, it's served it's purpose. So I suppose, to all you faithful readers (haha) that this is The End. Thanks for reading....I know I'll see some of you around. Most of you, really, since you had to have met me in some form or other in order to have stumbled upon this page.
Anyway. Thanks. I hope you enjoyed reading my blog and all of my outrageous happenings in the best country by far, La República de Chile(why yes, my keyboard IS set to Spanish). Bueno. Gracias. Thank you. Chao. Goodbye. Adiós. Peace.
