A Mess of Thoughts

I'm beginning to feel that my life in Chile is something completely separate from my life at home.

I mean, obviously it is...I'm thousands of miles away and interacting only with people I'd never met before coming here and always in a completely different language. It makes sense that Chile Laura would be different than Jersey Laura and Middlebury Laura - even those last two Lauras are different, although there is a little bit more overlap of those two worlds. But at the same time, I'm still Laura, and I'm still in constant contact with my family and my friends from home. Still, it is entirely different life, in that there's only so much I can share with people who aren't here. I can post pictures and blog entries and send e-mails and talk on AIM and on Skype, but I can't walk with them through the plaza or laugh with them in Chilean Spanish or sing songs by Victor Jara alongside them. It sometimes gets to the point where English makes me tired. My comfort foods and songs and words have shifted, and I know I'm going to be craving avocado and manjar and Inti-Illimani the second I get off the plane. And at the same time, I still crave without end the warmth of the holiday season I'm missing right now.

It's something of an identity crisis. Whenever I hear folk music with zampoñas and quenas, half of me feels lost in something strange and left out of something beautiful, shuffling my feet awkwardly on the side and feeling like I'll never understand the music the way a real Chilean would. And the other half feels a pull, a connection, almost a nostalgia for the same music. I'm separate from it and a part of it all at once, and it frustrates me that no matter how much I listen to or sing or play these songs, I will never genuinely be a part of them.

But I'm different here, I know that much. Or at least, I haven't actually figured out who I am here yet. It sometimes frustrates me that the Chilean friends I've made don't know me the way my friends from home know me. But maybe part of that is because I haven't really figured out who I am yet, at least who I am here.

I'm so excited to come home two weeks from Thursday. I think I need some time to reconfigure and relax and remember. But I'm excited about next semester, too, because I'm excited to find out more about this new Laura I'm just meeting. I just hope that the two can blend together, if not neatly, then at least peacefully.

All right, I'm off to a folkloric dance concert and then to ice cream with Sarah and Maddie. Ha, if that's not a satisfying mix of the old and new Laura, I don't know what is :)