Last week we covered hosting, but what happens when you’re the one looking for a couch to crash on. Here are some tips for how to be the best guest ever and always get invited back. It all boils down to being respectful of your host.
Contain Yourself
When you first arrive, your suitcase will probably be tucked to the side of the room while you grab dinner, relax, and catch up with your host. But as soon as you start digging through your belongings for your pajama pants or toothbrush, chances are your stuff will sprawl. So especially if you’re camping in regular living space, make an attempt to fit your belongings back in your bags and keep your bags out of the way. Your host will appreciate the lack of laundry explosion in the middle of their living room.
Be Flexible
While you as the guest may be on vacation, your host probably has a daily routine they stick to. Try to wake up when your host does, eat when they do, and don’t stay up too late with the television on if they work early mornings. The more you adapt to their routine for a few days, the more time you’ll get to spend together too, and isn’t that why you came to visit anyway?
Come With a Plan
Don’t rely entirely on your host to shuttle you around the town and be your personal tour guide. While they may offer and have the time to take you to everywhere, if you don’t have any ideas for what you want to see, you might be out of luck if they have to leave for work one day. Have a backup plan for sights you can see on your own. Even if you don’t need it, it’s better than a backup plan of Judge Judy marathons while your host and tour guide is at work.
Don’t Overstay
Benjamin Franklin once said that fish and visitors start to smell after three days. But while your stay might be longer than that, it’s important to stick to whatever schedule you established with your host before you showed up. If you say you’re going to stay until Thursday but then decide to stay until Saturday, you might be interfering with plans your host made thinking you’d be gone already. So unless your host is really, honestly insisting you stay an extra night or four, leave when you said you would.
Other Tips:
Clean up after yourself and always leave things the way you found them. It doesn’t hurt to offer to help with chores either!
When taking a shower, remember that someone else pays for the hot water. Take care of the basics as quick as possible so you don’t run up the bill.
Bringing a gift (flowers, food, toilet paper, wine, etc.) is a nice gesture of appreciation. Even if you can’t afford something fancy, just offering to make dinner one night is a nice way to say thanks.
Never forget to send a thank you card!
I've never really considered the importance of consonants before coming to South America. "Tomar" and "tocar," for instance. Almost the same word, to a foreign ear, but one should really keep in mind the difference between drinking and touching something. And let's not forget about those vowels. Only seven of them, but damn, how they really affect the significance of a word. Once I attempted to tell my Ecuadorian friend that I had just tried cui, a regional delicacy of roasted guinea pig. But I guess my cui sounded a little more like cuyo, and I wouldn't suggest telling a friend you just ate asshole when, in fact, you really did no such thing.
For this reason, I would add "a sense of humor" to the "What to Bring" list of any foreign exchange student. In addition to a Spanish dictionary, hand sanitizer ("gringo gel"), and a strong stomach, the ability to laugh at yourself is really going to come in handy. For those perfectionists who love doing everything right on the first try, prepare yourself. You too will make the mistake of adding an "o" or "a" to the end of an English word, only to find out that playing música de foca does not actually mean "folk music," but rather, the music of seals. And no, the Uruguayan I tried to pick up that night did not find my aquatic talent the least bit impressive. You will answer si to questions that require neither a yes or no, when merely your name or favorite food would've sufficed. But at least that's not as bad as answering si when you REALLY should've said no. I almost got myself a 35-year oldnovio with that one.
But these are the best mistakes I've ever made. A foreign country is the best place to make a fool of yourself, because in six months, any mistake, regret, or disappointment just fades into the collective oblivion. It's liberating, sometimes, to know that you won't be remembered. Like being home alone, when you're completely free to raid kitchen cabinets, walk around naked, talk to potted plants. I'm not condoning "experimentation" (or talking to potted plants, that's just weird) but push your limits. Try something new. Take a chance. I've embarrassed myself, offended the local culture, made people laugh for the wrong reason, but have learned from every single mistake. Everyday, the foreign becomes a little more familiar. I feel a little more understood, a little more understanding. But if a local were to ask me how to summarize my experience in South America thus far, my answer would still be si. And it wouldn't be so far from the truth.
Chilean slang of the week:
Fomingo: A play on words between fome ("boring") and domingo ("Sunday"). Because Sundays pretty much suck in Santiago.
Huevón: It's the word I hear most and understand least. I'm convinced it's the sound of a period because you'll hear it at the end of every sentence, huevon. You can call friends huevones, you can call jerks huevones, it's an adjective, it's a verb, it's a plane... it means absolutely nothing.
Hachazo: Hungover. Which makes sense, considering hacha means "axe." Gruesome.
-Christina Lacy
 Did you know they make the beds upside down in Chile? Bet you didn't. The actual beds are right-side up, of course. But there they were: my Sesame Street alphabet bedsheets made upside down on my Chilean, right-side up bed. An inconsequential observation, until I noticed the faded backwards alphabet visible through the thin fabric. Kinda symbolic of my study abroad experience thus far. They see ABC; I see CBA. Which just sounds like the acronym of some metaphoric TV channel that I've never watched. One with sitcoms of upside down sheets, backwards flushing toilet water, and a language barrier incredibly difficult to overcome. I think I need to stop looking at my sheets.
But these are the crazy things you notice while abroad. Things that appear so opposite to one's own culture, and with connotations you couldn't even begin to express to a local. Okay, so upside down sheets aren't that crazy. But a swimming school in Ecuador called "Duran Duran." Grown men and women living with their parents until marriage. Coffee shops with scantily-clad waitresses for middle-aged businessmen, scattered about Santiago - cafes con piernas, they're called. Perfectly normal things, to anyone from South America. But to this little gringo? Not so much. But how can one remain objective in a foreign country? How can one ultimately appraise their own culture without first comparing it to another? Yes, being from a country that values independence above everything else, living with your family until the age of thirty does seem strange to me. But could I honestly say that moving away from your family, the people that love you most, is a better alternative? You tell me.
But not everything is so different here. Trends and music reminiscent of the United States remind me daily that we truly do live in an integrated society. And if they haven't hit the states yet, I'm absolutely positive that jodhpur pants are coming back with a vengeance - they're everywhere! But globalization has affected more than just culture. While Chile has been estimated by the Ministerio de Hacienda as the fitfh most prepared country in the world to combat the crisis (what that really means, I couldn't say), the economic situation is universal. The construction of the Costanera Center, a skyscraped projected to be the tallest building in South America at 300 meters high, has been suspended due to lack of funds at only 22 stories high. As of now, it's just a concrete skeleton ominously referred to by Chileans as la cicatriz - "the scar"- de la crisis economica. Guess we're not so far away as we thought.
Chilean Slang of the Week:
Bacán: Awesome, dude
Cachar: to understand ("Cachas?": Do you get it?)
Terremoto: The literal translation is "earthquake," but the tastier version is a liter of pipeño (sweet, fermented wine) with pineapple ice cream. You'll understand the name after drinking it.
-Christina Lacy
Pictures (Right to Left): Empty seats in Montevide during Carnaval, reserved for 300 Uruguyan desaparcidos; Futbol game in Ecuador between Cuenca and Venezuela Cuenca won); Evita Peron's gravesite in Buenos Aires
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