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Lorena, a fourth-year, biology and
Spanish double major, attributes the majority of her love for Chile to her host
family, but confessed that the experience, as a whole, could never be replaced.
“Chile, as a whole, was wonderful,” Lorena
said in an interview. “My host mother, the friends who studied abroad along
with me, and the friends I made in Santiago all contributed to my newfound love
for Chile.”
In
Santiago, Chile, Lorena lived in Providencia, a comuna part of
Greater Santiago. A comuna, like several U.S.
cities, is like an American version of a district, Ulloa said. Providencia
is ridded with plazas and parks, which Lorena took advantage of during her
downtime.
However, Lorena's Mondays through Thursdays started very early in
the morning. Her love for 8 a.m. classes did not change while in Santiago.
Thus, Lorena usually woke up at 6:30 a.m. to get to class on
time. Because her classes were on the opposite side of the city of
where her host mother worked, Lorena relied heavily on public transportation.
“I remember the buses always being
packed. Sometimes the buses pulled away
from the bus stops with people hanging out of the bus because it was so packed
inside,” Lorena recalled with a smile.
Weekends in Chile were longer than
in the States because she didn’t have classes on Fridays. With their three-day weekends, Lorena and her friends sometimes took the opportunity to
escape the city and explore the world outside of Chile. But when she did stay in the city, Lorena
spent a lot of time cultivating stronger bonds with her host mother and her
extended family.
Her host mother indubitably changed
the way Lorena perceived her world.
“Being at Grinnell, I lost contact
and became out of touch with my Latino roots,” Lorena admitted. “But my host
mother taught me why I love being Latina and she taught me the value of my
Latino roots.”
But her biggest challenge was to
open up to strangers.
“Chileans are very open and warm and
they want to make people feel part of the group even if someone may look or act
differently than the norm,” she said. “In the beginning I felt really
uncomfortable with people being too nice. I always asked myself what people’s
true motives were for being nice. But my time [in Chile] really taught me to
talk to people regardless of their age, but it ultimately taught me how to
really develop stronger relationships with people.”
Since her arrival, Lorena has noticed
a difference in her dynamic with other Grinnellians.
“I definitely participate a lot more
in class and am much more vocal now than I was before Chile. Also, as a
Grinnell Science Project (GSP) Student Assistant, I had to show some level of
enthusiasm, which, at times was hard for me to explicitly show because of my
[introverted nature], but I find that it was much easier than if I wouldn’t
have gone to Chile,” she said.
One of Lorena’s priorities now is to
find a way to get back to Chile once she graduates from Grinnell and maybe
study at the graduate-level in Chile.
But if she can’t go back to Chile, she definitely wants to give back to
her community through teaching. She attributes her success thus far to her
teachers and she wants to offer what other people gave to her to other people.
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| Lorena (right) takes a picture with her host mother (left). |
