A morning well spent

Yesterday I called a friend of a friend who lives in a campo about an hour outside of Santiago.  My friend has encouraged me to visit and stay in this small town and get to know the people almost since I got here, and winter break is the time to do it. 

So with hopeful feelings and positive thoughts I called the number.  But here’s the thing about me and talking on the phone in Spanish: I’m very intimidated by it.  I usually can’t hear people when they’re talking, so communicating becomes very difficult.  I usually don’t even answer my phone if I don’t recognize the number (it is almost never for me, and more than once when it’s a guy on the other end, he’s asked me if I was married/had a boyfriend before I hung up.  Sigh.)

But all went well.  Nestor, the guy who lives in the campo, told me he’d be in a closer town the next day, if I wanted to meet him.  Well, of course!  The conversation only lasted about 4 minutes, but from what I got, I was totally welcome to come and he would meet me.

So this morning I got up, packed my backpack and headed out.  I had to take a bus out of town I never had before, so I was a little nervous.  I think it is a testament to my growing comfort level here that I was willing to do this alone, without almost any idea of where I was going or who I was meeting.  Taking it on faith. 

Yes I did find a map of the Caribbean with Tamboril
picked out.

I lucked out and sat next to a really nice woman on the bus who told me where to get off.  “You want us to drop you at the police station?  Why?”  I had a little trouble getting across that I was only meeting someone there, not that I needed the police. 

It took Nestor about 60 seconds to find me.  As pretty much the only gringa around I stood out.  We walked down the street a ways and sat in a park across from the church.  We chatted about his family, my family, the whether, our mutual friend.  Then he asked me when I thought I’d be able to come and stay at his house. 

“Well,” I responded, “I guess I thought, I mean, I can do it any time.  Today, if that works for you.”  I was a bit thrown.  Perhaps we had gotten our wires crossed somewhere. 

Yep, we had.

“Ah, well,” he said, “It’s just that I have a lot of work in the next week.  It being Christmas and all.”

“Yes!  Yes, of course.  We can totally do it another time.  I have so much free time in the next 2 weeks.  Any time that will work for you!”  This had the potential to be pretty awkward, but only if we’d let it.  Which we didn’t.

So we made plans for after Christmas (a better time), he walked me across the street where I caught another bus and that was that.  Three hours of my morning and less than US$2 and I now know a little bit more of the area around Santiago and one more person’s name.  I call that a success.