My First Day in Santiago, Chile

     It was my first time in South America, and I had come to stay a while. My thoughts raced about this new experience and what it would mean. The other host moms slowly picked the other students up and my heart started to race as I waited alone; what if she never showed up? I didn’t have a phone, know where I was or where I was going. Would I like my host mom? Would she like me? There were so many unknowns. When she finally showed up I was immediately distraught, I thought I spoke Spanish but I had no idea what this 65 year-old woman was mumbling rapidly at me in Chilean Spanish, which I now know is practically it’s own dialect with words I’d never heard. Two minutes into the car ride, she ran a stop sign cutting off a police car, beginning the adrenaline rush of the 4 minutes this Chilean grandmother, who I had just met, tried to pull off the getaway of her life. After many twist and turns and going the wrong way down one-way streets she pulled over to hide, let out a big sigh and said something more I couldn’t understand. Right then and there the police came from both sides and I quickly decided I was ready to go home. In the US it is a bigger crime to run from the police than to run a stop sign. I was very nervous to see what would happen. My host mom had to get out of the car, she went to talk to the police and I sat in the car with my thoughts and fears about what the next six months would entail.

My host mom is a very charming 65 year-old woman and still to this day I don’t understand what happened that day but I do know that to the very last day I saw her we always looked back at it with a laugh. My first day started out so rocky yet we ended up being so close. That first day took a lot for me. I am not saying this is an experience typical of Chile, I am saying it evoked sentiments typical of studying abroad: fear, unfamiliarity, excitement, resilience.

To me resilience means being able to find your way no matter how many times life seems to turn you around. Studying in a foreign country can often leave you very turned around whether it be physically trying to find a mailbox to pick something up sent from your home country, the struggle of finding housing, culture shock or quite literally getting lost. I’ve spent a fourth of my life abroad at this point and had my fair share of turnarounds but it is resilience that keeps me going back and trying again. I believe resilience is one of the most important skills you can have because to have it you must also have self-awareness, optimism and grit.

As Lopez et. all express in their presentation, BEFORE, During and After: Enhancing Resilience in Students Engaging in International Experiences, “studying abroad for educational purposes and service learning is inherently stressful” (11). Leaving your home country is challenging in so many ways, but you’ve chosen to do it for a reason and staying aware of what your goals and intentions are is essential to being resilient as it gives you something to work with, a rope to pull you up when you’re feeling down. Balance and effective ways of managing stress are so important. As Lopez et. all states, “coping skills decrease intensity of distress and increase resilience for students traveling abroad”(11). Lopez demonstrates two quintessential parts of any education abroad situation: it is innately stressful and coping skills increase resiliency.

In my own experience studying abroad I noticed that many students go through nearly identical trainings, environments and extrinsic factors. However, everyone reacts differently to them. I think what characterizes the group of people who thoroughly enjoy their time studying abroad, whether it be in my six month experiences abroad or the interviews I’ve done, it’s self awareness, optimism and grit. This is essential when looking at and evaluating the host culture. It cannot be compared to your own culture, because it is not. Resilience is having an experience, processing it, making the best of it in any way you can and using it as a stepping stone in the right direction, no matter if it was an awful or amazing experience. Having resilience means being able to stand up and step up stronger from any experience. Studying abroad is always challenging but it is also rewarding, it teaches resilience which builds us as stronger versions of ourselves.

Works Cited

Lopez, Katie. BEFORE, During and After: Enhancing Resilience in Students Engaging in

International Experiences, University of Michigan, forumea.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Resilient-traveling-slides-FINAL.pdf.