Just two gals trying to get by in the big city

We were told that our year abroad would turn us into more tolerant people. This was inaccurate.

Don't get us wrong, we love this country; there are so many amazing things about it and I'm sure we'll write about them soon.

However we are British, socially awkward and we like to complain so firstly here is a post about some of the key cultural differences and difficult moments we’ve experienced here in the last 2 months.

1. The language barrier

Chilean Spanish is very different to what we’ve learned from European Spanish. Not only is the accent difficult and there are more slang words than la chucha, but even basic words are different; turns out accidentally informing someone that you’re going to make love to a taxi is a conversation killer.

It’s also pretty awkward having a name that in Spanish literally translates to him/he (‘Elle’ sounds the same as ‘él’). E.g If you tell someone you were chatting to Elle, it just means ‘I was chatting to him’ and they give me a weird suspicious look as if they're trying to verify what gender I belong to. My Starbucks coffee cups (middle class white girl) have said ‘El’, ‘L’, ‘Ellel’, ‘Ellen’, ’Helena’ and ‘Elnor’ so now we just make up a name every time to spare the awkwardness.

As accurate as it gets

2. General incompetence

We subjected ourselves to wearing dirty laundry because we had too many questions about the Chilean laundrettes. No more, no less. We don’t wish to expand on that dark time.

After incessant warnings from locals and our placement tutor back home NOT to walk around alone in the middle of the night in unknown territory, we successfully got out the taxi at the wrong place with a drunk smug belief that we were in the right destination and a bid farewell to the driver, who was trying to inform us of our error. ‘That’ll do, good sir!’ was our response and we waved him into the night before eventually bumping into course mates who, in this same time, had walked home and eaten a KFC.

There are too many incidents to mention for this one, including Ben getting charged £25 for a £2 journey in his taxi (he likes it when we tell people this – go tell all your friends).

3. Things we miss

• The 'slut drop' (No we do not want to salsa dance on a night out thank you, we do not know how and the Pisco won't stay down if you insist on spinning us around like that. Just let us act like the scatty drunk Brits with no dance skills that we truly are).
• Flushing toilet roll down the toilet.
• Dry shampoo (not a single Chilean retailer sells this, except for one pharmacy which never has it in stock, and made us feel ashamed for suggesting it because it's apparently for very sick people who can't make it into the shower. Maybe we should just be sanitary human beings and wash our hair as much as we're actually supposed to).
• Non-compulsory attendance to lectures (90% attendance here otherwise you fail).
• Sensible numeracy.

This is the 1 peso coin ladies and gents, and it has a relative value of 0.1 pence. Discuss.

Thank God for the extra 1ml.

Bit by bit, however, we’re all slowly adapting to Chilean life. In Bath, if you haven’t left by 2am latest for McDonalds then you should reassess just how much you’re enjoying your night out in XL nightclub. However, we are now just about able to handle getting in from a night out at 5am. This is terrible news given the time difference – it’s advisable to avoid Snapchat stories and conversing with people in the UK where it’s 10am.

And some things don’t change. We still end up in McDonalds. Here’s to embracing the Chilean culture.