In preparation for my return home, I've been trying to think of how to summarize my chilean experience in a few simple sentences. Still working on that..it's been tougher than I thought.
I've also been trying to figure out how to respond to common questions that I'm probably going to hear. I've already gotten a little practice by talking to family and friends online. Most questions have been simple/harmless enough. However, I got one question today that just made me laugh:
"So have you met any natives down there?"
The person who asked this didn't mean anything bad by it...but the way that the question was phrased made me pause a second to figure out exactly what he was asking. When I hear "native", I think indigenous tribe culture groups...but he simply wanted to know if I'd met any chileans.
Maybe my perspective is just skewed because I'm used to associating the word "native" with "Native American" or native tribes. Nonetheless, it's going to be hard to have patience with trying to explain that Chile is in fact in South America, not Africa, that Chile is no longer under a socialist government or a dictatorship and that Chileans have internet and watch High School Musical and even have their own version of MTV's Next (unfortunately). But patience is a virtue that I must learn some day. I've acquired a little bit of it down here...hopefully I'll be able to maintain it at home as well.
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