Aneya: Making Friends

Making friends already! And they're all Chilean! (Except Stephen).

A couple weeks after the earthquake, my mom was concerned about me. Not because of the constant, terrifying aftershocks, or the tsunami warnings or the lack of food. No, she was concerned because she realized that all I really had in this country was Lauren. Of course, I had Daniela to lean on too. But she was busy helping her own family calm down, and working for World Vision. To be in a foreign land, all by yourself, after a major natural disaster is a really scary experience. Not having your family or friends to reassure you that everything's going to be ok. Of course I was skyping both my parents constantly, and all my worried friends were taking over my Facebook wall. But still. It's not the same as having them all here in person.

"You need to go make some friends, Aneya" My mom said to me one day, on the phone. "You and Lauren are too isolated, you'll drive each other crazy, soon enough. You should take a Spanish class, or find some Anglo hang outs. Something! Start going out again. You need this, you shouldn't be cooped up in the house all day, it's not good for you."

She was right. Lauren and I were, frankly, kind of scared to leave the house. What if debris and pieces of buildings fell on us, and killed us? What if there was another big aftershock, what if what if what if. But finally, we decided to venture out, and we never looked back.

I've been thinking about my mom's words now, months later. When you're traveling with a friend, it's easy to cling to them and only them, and not really want to branch out. But it's not healthy! It was then that we made a conscious decision to try harder.

On St.Patrick's Day we went to the quintessential Anglo hangout, California Bar, and where we met with more young, blonde, American girls than I'd ever seen. We chatted and laughed and drank beer. Lauren and I couldn't get over it. These girls? In Chile? They all had that, ditzy valley girl way of speaking, and most of them seemed extremely annoying. That's when we realized something: we didn't want to meet the same, boring girls we could meet in the US. We wanted to befriend Chileans! And that we did.

Since then, we've made many friends, some Chilean, some not. We don't see them all the time, and yes, it's still mostly just Lauren and I. But I realized something. Making friends is not that easy. It takes a certain amount of effort and you have to leave your pride at the door. When I met one special friend, he immediately introduced me to a whole network of people, and they all greeted me with open arms, even if my Spanish wasn't up to par. It was scary, but completely worth it in the end.

-- Aneya

Lauren: Chivalry.

There are so many ways that Chile resembles 1950s America that really bother Aneya and I, which we've gone into a bit (people smoke everywhere, men decide how much and what you drink), but there is a bright side to this. Men are chivalrous, much more than in the United States.

Here are some examples of things men do that would never happen in the U.S.:

-- Men always hold your hand, helping you down out of the large charter buses (not so much out of the speeding municipal ones).

-- If a man sees you carrying groceries he will definitely help you carry them, even just holding them in the elevator for you.

-- A man never sets foot in an elevator if there's a woman waiting to get on. I would almost think this was a law or something because I have never seen a man get on an elevator before a woman. It doesn't matter if a man is carrying furniture, 80 years old, holding your groceries, anything. If you are in line for the elevator, he will definitely wait for you to get on first.

-- At times, men will help you cross the street, no matter what your age is.

-- AND they always hold the door open for women.

It is really sweet and something you definitely don't see as much in the States.

-- Lauren

Lauren: Line drying.

Since moving to Santiago, there have been a few lifestyle changes, which is to be expected. But something I have discovered and fallen in love with is line drying. I thought it was something reserved for romantic movies about people living on farms or New York apartments, but when we arrived at our new apartment there was an accordion-style drying rack in Aneya's bathroom. I was astonished to know that people actually use these things. I never saw a drying rack before and had to ask what it was.

The only real inconvenience to the wonders of the drying rack is that I have to annoy Aneya to come through her room to her bathroom to get my clothes. But other than the temporary infringement on Aneya's privacy, everything else about line drying is miraculous.

It's environmentally friendly, a huge sell. Just set up your clothes and let Mother Nature work her magic. Your clothes retain their shape better and (this could be my imagination) but they don't seem to fade in color as quickly. It's safe. I've never hesitated to leave the house because I left clothes out to dry, unlike the dryer which you have to be home to watch. And because it takes a few hours for your clothes to dry, it actually feels quicker. You're not bound to the house because you're doing laundry. After the wash, just hang up the clothes and you can continue about your day. It's amazing. I can't believe I haven't discovered this before.

Certain things obviously won't fit on our little drying rack, like sheets, comforters or anything you want to use the same day really, but other than that, this little line drying thing is extraordinary.

Oh, yeah. It's free, too, after the initial investment of a drying rack. I feel my cleaning life has been changed forever. I'm installing one of these things in the next place I live.

-- Lauren

Lauren: The Earthquake.

I can't help but feel that writing anything about the minimal inconveniences we experienced yesterday is extremely narcissistic and trite. Although we were touched by the yesterday's catastrophe, it was in the slightest and most insignificant ways.

No, we still don't have gas and can't cook, we're short on food, and we were trapped inside our apartment the majority of the day yesterday, but we have our lives, our friends, and we had the option of sleeping in our own beds last night, which many people living in Chile can't say. I say that we had the option because neither of us slept more than a few hours, and stayed up until about 4 a.m. constantly refreshing the different news and social networking sites and for the latest news.

Is it just a rumor that supermarkets in our area will be closed for two weeks? Hopefully the number fatalities has stayed the same. How are our friends around the city? They were OK two hours ago, but how about now? Did that last aftershock do any damage, hurt anyone else? Simultaneously we were glued to all major news stations and sites, and still repelled and scared by what we saw.

Yesterday's earthquake was the most powerful natural disaster I've ever experienced. Aneya and I came home about an hour before the quake, and immediately feel deep asleep. We both woke up during the earthquake an hour later, but didn't think too much of it and we both stayed in bed, waking up at a leisurely 9:30 a.m.

I woke up before Aneya, and walked out to the kitchen where I found the fridge about two feet from where we had left it the night before, the first reminder of the quake that we had quickly filed away as a minor temblor not worthy of getting out of bed for. I went to the bathroom and found out the electricity wasn't working, and decided to check my phone where I saw several frantic texts and missed calls from my mom and our Chilean connection Daniela. If she was texting, she was OK.

I looked outside and saw an apocalyptic-looking brown sky, and opening the window introduced smoky smells and debris into the apartment.

Aneya woke up and we decided to place a few international phone calls. The first to France, then Vegas, then LA, where I discovered my mom had an Embassy search party out looking for the two of us. The electricity was restored about 11 a.m. when we decided to contact our respective family and friends with a quick update "We're OK."

Still things did not seem frantic. Ambulances, police, and firefighters were zooming by every few minutes, which was a bit unnerving, but of course they would. We were in a large city and certain precautions needed to be taken. Trying to make breakfast we learned that the gas had been cut; we later learned it was all of Santiago Centro that was without gas.

It wasn't until we tried to venture outside that we discovered we were stuck. The deadbolt of our apartment had jammed in all the shaking yesterday, and no matter how we fiddled with it, our door was not going to open. We called the doorman who informed us the woman we sublease from was en route with someone else who would free us.

Thirty other residents in our building had similar problems with their deadbolts, many having the door broken down and were now without front doors. Marta came and with her dad, hacked away enough of our door to free us, which is what began to set us both on edge. The loud, almost deafening pounding of them trying to get us out of our apartment, the images of rubble on TV. Things were starting to feel more real.

The business of getting us out of the apartment took about 30 minutes and left us with a hole in our door, so standing outside you can see into our apartment through a smallish crack. Not too big, and the door still shuts so lots to be grateful for.

We asked how other people who were locked inside were getting out of their apartments, were the police breaking down doors, and Marta said the police were busy, it was either other neighbors or they would be stuck inside for a while, which was a horrible feeling I have to say. Being stuck inside was it's own kind of torture, but when we finally could we walked down the ten flights of stairs to get more information, see what had happened to our new home Santiago, and get provisions.

Santiaguinos have always, from the moment we got here, had a very happy, peaceful disposition, which never ceased to amaze us. They were always so good to us, and so nice to each other it almost made me suspicious. Why are you people so nice? But walking down the streets yesterday, there was a serious change in the atmosphere. People were really depressed, and the strangest people were out on the streets.

A blind woman who clearly wasn't used to walking alone was vehement about finding this one street, so Aneya and I helped her cross the street and she just took off quickly down the sidewalk. In Santiago, anyone passing by would have helped her, people here are just like that, they would never just pass a blind person by, but yesterday she clearly had to wait for someone to point her in the right direction.

Where sometimes the jotes were slightly offensive, there were really forward men out, which scared us. They would come up to us, not just shout from afar. The night before we learned about botellerias, bottle shops that served liquor, wine, and beer. At night, after about midnight they close their security gates and do business through them so no one tries to rob them. Yesterday at 4 p.m. these shops had their gates pulled tight, and were negotiating through the metal bars. If these big liquor store owners didn't feel safe enough to leave their shops open, maybe we shouldn't be in the streets. Aneya and I decided to make a quick stop for provisions and head home.

Little bits of debris were around the city, sometimes large chunks from hundreds-years old buildings, which was concerning because we didn't want anything loose to fall on us in an aftershock, which were numerous. A small aftershock every couple of minutes.

Nothing was open. Nothing. It was a ghost town, with a few people walking the streets, clearly assessing the damages to their city just like we had. We found a small German store that sold a few readymade meals, crackers, cookies, and soda and we bought five of everything. Potato salad, arroz con pollo (Aneya would eat the chicken, I could have some of the rice), a liter of Coke. No one else in the store seemed to be hoarding though, which astonished me. Was it just us? Was this uncommon behavior? We had nothing to eat so we needed as much of everything as we could have.

We were so tense, I couldn't tell if I was shaking because my body was so tight it was trembling or if it was the ground. It was usually the ground, but sometimes it was just me. I felt like I had run the marathon, especially after the 10 flight journey up to our apartment.

Aneya and I always joke that we have no friends here. There's Daniela, Valeria, and Sebastian, but really the only people we see very frequently are Daniela and each other. Once the earthquake hit and we realized how powerful it was, I noticed there were so many people in this country I cared deeply about.

How was tio Jorge in the south, who helped me find a hospital when I was sick? Madre Elysia who made us breakfast at the monastery? Gloria whose wedding we just went to, was she OK? I heard Mendoza had been bad. We had heard from Dani, Val, and Seba, but how were they now? Did an aftershock do anything to them? And their families, who had been so good to us. How were they? The other tio Jorge who taught us tango lessons? And his super sweet wife Isabel, who made smoking look cool again. How were they? The dorky engineers we salsaed with the night before? How were they? They were near old buildings that clearly bore the brunt of the earthquake.

The customary kiss on one cheek amazingly makes you feel different kind of kinship for people. You're allowing a stranger to get very close to you, in a very personal way, and it just makes a connection a handshake doesn't. How many cheeks had I kissed in this last month? At least a hundred, and I started imagining all the people I'd greeted in this way and thought of all of them. How are they now? The guy in Carahue who let us use his outhouse. Our sweet old neighbor who comes to visit her daughter on our floor from the fifth floor who showed me how to use the dryer to dry my sheets. How are these people holding up? Did they know someone who had been hurt?

It was a bit unnerving to think about and the frequent aftershocks were just really making me tense.

Each one had the potential to bring loose rubble down from tall buildings and all these people who I had just assured myself were safe, had a new threat with each small temblor. How were they now??

Chileans had been so good to us. People in cities across this country had looked out for us, been inexplicably nice to us, and we identified with them in many ways now. We walked streets with Chileans, Chile for an indefinite amount of time has become our home. And to see the people that have looked out for us and just been tremendously kind crying on TV, sleeping in lawns outside just wrecks emotional havoc. These are our neighbors. We know these people. This can't happen. These are our friends.

While I was concerned about people in Haiti and the health and infrastructure issues there, this hit closer to home -- because for now Chile is home.

Neither Aneya or I could sleep that night and at 2 a.m. I used our electric water boiler and made us instant mashed potatoes and we drank wine hoping to finally be able to sleep. It was amazing how hungry we were from a day of doing very little. After realizing that no matter how many times I click "Refresh" the LA Times and New York Times were not going to update and no more friends were going to change their Chile status on Facebook, it was time to try to sleep. We were awakened four hours later by a strong aftershock.

Not having gas to cook with or stores that are open has been no picnic, but we have so, so much to be grateful for it seems so insignificant to even mention what we don't have.

We have our lives. We still have a front door that can close at night, unlike many of our neighbors in our building. We had Aneya's iPhone for contacting our family. We were able to reach most of our family and friends through the internet before most of them even knew what had happened. And of course, we had each other to keep ourselves sane, when debris was floating into our window, the sky was brown with smoke, and sirens were blaring outside.

Thank you for all the love and support.

-- Lauren Williams