Special somedays

From new friends to social blunders, this should cover the last 5 weird days. I'm starting with the positives.

Positives:

• I went to a medical student party in Linares Friday night to celebrate a student's birthday!!! Linares is a small town about 45 min south of Talca and its hospital is where students from Universidad Autonoma do their rotations , so its further from Santiago but its got a ton of friend potential :) So we partied hard into the Saturday morning hours with drinking games, birthday cake, and dancing!!
  
• A friend helped me discover that Talca has a tiny bouldering climbing wall :)
  
• The same med-school friend was thrilled to learn that ultimate frisbee is a real thing and wanted to learn how to play! mwuahahahaha
• I was the only medical student working with my doctor in the rural clinic of Pelarco on Friday so I got to do 1/2 of all the work instead of only 1/4 or 1/5 :) Such a fulfilling clinic session!
• Our family moved to a new house on Sunday. The house is bigger and has heating!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• I started reading El Principito (the little prince) in Spanish as a new vocabulary project. Hope to translate 10 pages a day.
• They're switching me from primary care patients to the prenatal+contraceptive patients in Pelarco for the next two weeks. 

My vent session: 

• Friday night while driving in taxis to the club, I thought some of the accents people were suddenly using sounded German, so I said so. Suddenly people were heiling hitler in the taxi. Mortifying. I told people to stop but they didn't. Then the boy squished next to me in the cab told me that the US was obsessed with 9/11 and that life is supposed to go on. Given the viscerally shocking aggressions + being drunk, I got upset. My friend who has been to NYC took me to the bathroom to help.
  
  • Apparently the German thing was a misunderstanding, they were using the Barcelona accent with lisps when I told them that it sounded German, and in their defense they started to heil hitler to show me that German was different than Catalan. Still offensive, but I found a way to forgive it. 
  • Apparently people here remember where they were on 9/11 but no one really understands the significance. So I just need to get on their level about it and not be sensitive about it. Ok. 
  • Somehow had fun the rest of the evening. 
• We moved to a new house on Sunday. Its still "in Talca" but its 100% suburbia. Every house looks exactly the same and we're far away from everything I've gotten to know and I don't have a car. Now that I have internet its better but wow I felt entirely disconnected from everything on Sunday. It was anxiety provoking. 
• I love this family but man it can get a little heavy handed sometimes.
  
  • "Don't get lost!" "Where is your jacket?" "Do you have your keys?" "Do you have your phone?" "Why doesn't it work?" "Be back before it gets dark" GUYS IM 27 YEARS OLD I WILL SURVIVE A WALK AROUND THE NEIGHBORHOOD. 
    
  • "Does your family serve salad at dinner with the dressing already mixed in?" -- "We don't eat salad at dinner." -- "You don't eat salad?!?!?!!!" -- "No thats not what I said." -- (next day) -- "jajaja Ryan hates eating salad" OH MY GOD.
• I discovered a cute cafe in the new area we live in on Sunday. Its takes up the first level of a square house. Taken aback by its cuteness I immediately snapped a few pics. I then got scolded by an owner and a relative for taking pictures of a "private place". I tried to explain but had no spanish words for everything I wanted to say. I deleted the photos and bought a cookie to show I meant no ill will. I felt really really off about the whole thing, and knew that my gringa-blunder would be the featured story at that family's dinner. 
• I got a manicure today in the new area we live in today (Monday). It was bad. The manicurest was an amateur who needed practice, and she was being taught by a Venezuelan lady who could not have cared less and was on her phone the whole time. I don't mind being practiced on but what didn't help was that the manicurest was deaf and mute. I took out my notebook and pen to communicate with her which she loved <3. I had to cut one of my own cuticles and showed her how to do it. Then the other lady took a jar of old dried exfoliating cream, told the manicurest to rub the cream on my hands, and then have me wash my hands. I don't think I have to explain how the actual painting-job turned out. At the end of my manicure, I wrote on a piece of paper to my friendly manicurest that this salon was too far away and her boss was too aloof for her to gain actual experience there. This all went down while the owner of the salon and this Venezuelan woman had a candid conversation about the shooting in LA and the Venezuelan woman brushing it off saying, "people die in my country all the time!" Dear US Congress, pass some goddamn gun laws so that our violence does not get equated with Venezuela's violence!!!!!!!!!!! 

Last positive: you've made it this far in the post, you deserve good news. 

• I met a cute chilean medical student nicknamed Barry on Friday. We kissed. When he was in his last years of high school he did an exchange for a year in Minerva, Ohio so speaks a good deal of English. We've been getting to know each other. DO NOT ROLL YOUR EYES MOM I SEE YOU.