adventures, mishaps, lessons

I was recently re-reading the Chile guidebook, which makes a bit more sense now that I've got a better feel for Santiago and the country as a whole. It said something about how the people here are friendly (but really, how many guidebooks say that the locals are assholes?) but that foreigners are always foreigners. I found myself nodding, because although I have felt right at home with the expat community, with Chileans...not so much. We invited a number of people to Vivi's birthday BBQ, and I found it curious that none of the Chileans came. We had a German, Spaniard, a bunch of Brits, a Dutchman, and some other Americans (I think...) but no Chileans. The concept of foreigners is odd to me, as an American, because in a place like Los Angeles, and increasingly in more of the country, no one is a foreigner. I think about the people I worked with in Pasadena. I had colleagues from Nigeria, Jordan, Mexico, all over Central America, South Africa, and others (that I often times wasn't aware of their original origin, or didn't even notice and think to ask) and I never thought of them as "foreigners." They were, like me, Americans. It's things like this that make me realize why it's difficult to ever feel like you fit somewhere. I wonder if those colleagues sometimes didn't feel like they fit, because there was an attitude that was different, that they just couldn't get used to. I like to think that they felt like Americans, but now that I've been the "foreigner" it makes me wonder how they felt different from me as Americans.

I also had a "I just don't fit in" moment at the supermarket. I had done a big shopping trip, with Vivi with me, and we were at the checkout. The checkout, at any store here, moves very, very slowly. The checker didn't seem to care that people were tired, restless, and doing their best to entertain small children with what little help existed at the checkout stand. (Whoever said a pack of gum isn't a good toy?) There were drinks nearby, so I grabbed a Sprite and opened it, glad to have some relief from the heat generated by so many bodies waiting to pay and get out of there. I said aloud, which I find myself doing more and more (the freedom of most people not understand you) that I would pay for it only if I hadn't finished it when it was my turn to check out. I drank the drink, and I was still waiting, so I put the can next to the conveyer belt, but not on it. I realized at the time that this was something I would NEVER, EVER do in the US. I had lectured my students many times on how shoplifting raises prices for everyone, and it's not fair to everyone else who pays.

And you know why I didn't pay for that drink? Because this isn't my country. I don't care about whether or not prices go up in the long run. I'm leaving in two years. I don't care if soft drinks cost $20 each and the entire country dies of thirst (well, I do care about my expat friends. But Chileans...not so much).

I know, I know , it was wrong. I'm setting a bad example for my child. But just give me a chance to explain what else I learned from this experience. If the Chilean policia read this and come after me, I at least want evidence that the experience gave me insight into the psyche of shoplifters.

I realized that all the times I had conversations with my students, and after my lecture about why they shouldn't shoplift, they shrugged and said, "I don't care." Now I know what they meant! They meant, "This isn't my place. I'm not part of it, so I don't care what happens to it. I'm just trying to survive and get what I can out of it." Wrong or right, I believe this is part of the reason for crime. People are looking for a way to make a place theirs, whether that's with graffiti, or gangs, or they don't care, so they do things, like shoplifting, with a feeling of disconnection.

So there's my lesson. I plan to pay for my next drink. And I have given larger than normal tips to the baggers at that market since then as a way to compensate ($ doesn't go to the store, but it's more coming from me). And I hope that the insight I gained from the experience will make me a better teacher, parent, and citizen of wherever I am in two years.