orientations, and in spite of the prior experiences with AFS
orientations, I was looking foreward to it. All of the AFS students
south of Curicó would be heading to Valdivia and I was hoping that
would be interesting.
Although the orientations were unsurprisingly useless, it turns out
that all of the students were extremely interesting to talk to and the
best conversations were definitely the ones between students that had
to communicate in languages that aren't their native ones.
Conversations ended up being half in English and half Spanish for me,
and I think for quite a few people although some also had people with
whom to speak their native tongue for the first time in at least a
month, such as the Finnish and Thai girls and those from German-
speaking countries, but I was surprised how little of those other
languages I heard.
We all shared our experiences and the nationalities were pretty mixed,
I did spend some time with the Italians although they seemed kind of
exclusive as a result of their only being able to communicate in
Spanish and some peoples reluctance (or inability for some of the
students that have only been here slightly more than a month) to speak
purely in Spanish, though also because they didn't try to mix too
hard. We all had a lot of experiences in common and had made a lot of
the same observations, but the differences between families or cities
waere interesting.
Over all, the majority of the students that came to Chile at the same
time as I did are also getting used to the situation, although some
are still struggling with the language. It was fun, and a bit sad that
we spent so little time together, but even though I was not speaking
all English, I am glad that I got back to a fully Spanish surrounding
because I am pretty sure that being able to go into English mode too
often wouldn't help my Spanish development.
