Living in Chile for a little under six months has given me a lot of skills, changed some of my behaviors, and forced me to reflect on many of my previous attributes. This probably sounds as if I have undergone drastic personality change. I am still me – just with a side of Chile.

Even though I am currently in Chile I can reflect on my time here from an outside perspective. I realize my normal behavior here will not be reflected normally back home. They will be eccentric, possibly seem like unstable activities. Okay – I am exaggerating. However it is a two way mirror, when I came here I often caused my house family to pause and then proceed to laugh at me. This is all why I love traveling, learning the norms of every culture and realizing fitting in is way over rated

Firstly, as a warning  I will be adding salt to my salad now. I loved salt before but never knew it went together with lettuce. Just add olive oil, lemon juice and salt – you are golden.

Side walks aren’t really meant for walking on. They are more guidelines, they are another option for walking from one place to another. If I walk on a side walk I begin to feel claustrophobic and will proceed to the street.

Punctuality? I already was failing at arriving on time before Chile, so it is great! No stressing here, as long as we stay chill, everything always works out and waiting for 10 minutes really doesn’t effect your life at all. Keeps you level headed.

I will be communicating about a quarter of my thoughts with my hands now. I was told before part of Chilean Spanish was using your hands, they were right. Also I had a lot of practice gesturing from the beginning of the trip when I could not communicate in Spanish.

There will be many more that I do not even realize, however there is one thing I wish had become apart of me, but alas I am a gringa. Chilean people are naturals at being cool. The majority of them, make it seem like they put no effort in at all. Especially in Valparaiso, the coolest hippies I have ever seen. If I tried to pull of the mullet dread (I suppose that is just for guys though) but nonetheless, if anyone can pull off the mullet dreadlocks they earned every cool point there is to give. Chileans are just born with a sense of style. I am actually surprised they have such style, because honestly they are influenced by the 80’s which is not a decade correlated with fashion. They have tweaked it perfectly though. Enough about style though, this was just a warning that I might have a few small Chilean traits that I will cherish, but I am not sure what the world will think….