she made it

Anna's flights all worked out okay, with some re-booking and useful delays, so she got in yesterday morning as planned. She's in South America. How weird is that?

We're staying at Hostal Caracol, which I can't really oversell for how beautiful and comfortable it is. It's old, dark wood, lots of glass in between rooms, everything decorated in perfect, saturated, solid colors. There's an enormous modern woodstove in the living room, that puts out tons of heat and has a huge window to see the fire.

(It's a Bosca Chimenea 650. It is awesome.)

I want a house exactly like this.

Anna's being here is a bit disorienting on all sides. There's a superficial pressure to make the time be really intense and active, because it's just a few days and we haven't seen each other for a while. So first we're setting that aside, because it doesn't make any sense: we don't really like having time be really intense and active.

That said, yesterday we had lunch with my host family up at the house, then went to Heather's host parents' 20th anniversary asado over in Quilpue. Today we're more determined not to do much of anything: a bit of a walk, maybe some coffee, and I have to do some lesson planning and materials prep.

It's weird. I've been spending the past few months, in particular the months since coming to Valparaíso, adjusting to teaching, which is new and challenging, and to living and working in a foreign country, where yes, I do speak the language, but it's a difficult dialect, and people rarely take the time to listen carefully and make sure we're understanding each other. It pretty much takes all my attention to make this work, and I don't have anything left over for WorldTeach deadlines or paperwork, or traveling on weekends, or a whole lot else.

Now, however, Anna is here, my life at home flown to Chile for comparison. It turns out that my life here is actually kind of hard for me. I've just been too busy doing it to notice.