Consolation

I hadn't talked to my host family in a while. I'm one of those millennials who has a phobia of taking on the phone. I occasionally would just text my host mom or my host sister. But my beautiful, beautiful host sister calls me with messenger, and then she calls me again when I don't answer, and then she calls me again. Usually I just hang up and text her, but I decided on like her fourth try to answer. 

And oooh her voice! It was so good to hear her sweet voice. With its fast paced, Chilean accent, and the way it brings back so many memories. 

I miss her so much. I miss Chile. I miss all those other people from the life I led half way across the globe. Sometimes it feels like I was scooped up out of the Midwest and plopped down in Chile. Then scooped out of Chile and back into the Midwest. Leaving a hole. Like a transplanted plant. O algo simular. I have a role as a nerdy American student. A sister. A family member. And another as a gringa chilena. An ambassador. A friend. I can't fill both my roles at the same time, but when I'm talking to Camilla and doing Spanish homework simultaneously, I feel pretty damn close. And it's a good feeling to have. 

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Life is hard, but it is also good. I have good days, and I have bad days, and I have ok days (which are most days). My last post was from a bad day, so I mainly just wanted to clarify that not all of my days are that kind of day. I do struggle with finding my own identity. It becomes especially challenging in a place where everyone knows me. It's not that they only know the "old me", it's not like no one is trying, I'm just saying that they knew me before I went on exchange, and they know me now.

Ok, I'm doing a really bad job of explaining this aren't I? Well, in Chile, I had to try to be myself in a place where I knew no one, and no one knew me, and I didn't know how I was supposed to act, nor did I have any experience with how it should go. That was pretty damn hard. But it's almost harder now that I find myself trying to do the same thing in a place where just about everyone knows me, I know just about everyone, and I should, after living 15 of my 16 years of life here, know how things work and what I should be doing.

Well, this post has been a rather interesting one, and I apologize if you read it hoping for something of a glacier moving quality. But, I'm going to publish it anyway because... documentation.

yeah.

but you know what?
life is ok. And I can live with ok.