We’re ten weeks in. At some point along this journey things have settled into a routine, but I’m not quite sure when. But in light of this, and the fact that we haven’t had any grand travel adventures recently, I figured I’d post a blog about the daily gringo life.
8:20 (7:20 post-daylight savings time)– The sun fights its way over the Andes and shines in our windows; sometime days smacking me in the face as I fight to remember my last dream, and other days warming an inviting place on the couch to sit with coffee and listen to NPR. (Public Radio is a recent luxury, now that we have internet in our apartment.)
9:15 – I settle in to the ‘office’ if I’m working at home. This involves pushing the dining table an extra foot from the wall so I can situate myself and my computer in the corner and avoid the morning glare. On days when I follow Zack to the official office at Universidad Catolica, we head from our door to the elevators and wait impatiently for one to be free from rush-hour traffic. We walk with business-attired Chileans through a city that is just waking up, and arrive to campus in less than half an hour.
---- Work ---
Our day usually progresses as follows: check email, respond to email, brush up on current events (Zack), make to-do list (Anna), then focus on the day’s tasks…
Zack has been working hard to finalize his protocols before the field season begins. I’ve come to believe that until you’ve planned a field study yourself it is hard to appreciate what this means. But take our word for it: this is perhaps the most frustrating, invigorating, disheartening, exciting, and generally fickle aspect of our work.
I, on the other hand, am wrapping up my projects. This also involves a lot of second guessing, followed by jubilation over a small success in computer coding or data analysis, then yet more uncertainty. But I am making progress, and hope to have at least two articles submitted for publication before I come home. For those of you who are not as familiar with the ivory-tower, published articles are the currency of academia, and these will be the first of my career.
1:00 – Regardless of where I work, I find myself counting down to the Chilean lunch time. On good days we go to a local diner to get a completo (I’m sure Zack will enlighten you soon to Chilean completos – keep your eyes open). Other days I eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or salads made of left-overs rescued from the fridge.
--- More Work ---
5:00 (+ 1hr) until bedtime – Our evenings are the most varied part of our days. Sometimes we will meet with a Chilean friend to practice/teach languages, other afternoons we go for a run in the park that parallels the ‘river’ that borders town, and since the weather is still nice we sometimes find a café table along the sidewalk to people-watch and share a liter of beer. Evening also include cooking a good dinner, occasionally sampling a glass of Chilean wine (which we ARE keeping record of in our wine journal), continuing to read Harry Potter (in Spanish), and generally relaxing. Yesterday we also bit-the-bullet and purchased a MBL.TV package, so until October many our nights will also include watching the Giants, and hopefully not feeling too tortured. =)
If you made it through this recounting of our typical day, well, congratulations. Perhaps I shouldn’t have let the cat out of the bag, but aside from greater reliance on Skype, you can see our lives aren’t really that much different here. But then there is the fact that we are surrounded by Spanish...and living in a city of nearly 7 million…and never eating cheddar cheese…so, maybe things are a little unusual. =)
We’ll be making our next big trip up to the northern deserts next week, so we should have travel stories and photos for you by the end of the month. Thanks for keeping track of us!
No comments:
Post a Comment