Group post: Why I moved to Chile and why I’ll eventually leave
It’s group post time here in the Chilean corner of the blogosphere. This time we’re talking about what made us leave our comfortable, English-speaking homes for the chance to live here at the end of the world and how long we plan to stay here. A lot of us have similar stories – studied abroad, met a guy, came back to Chile, plan to leave in a few years – but the details differ. I think regular readers probably know more or less why I’m here, but I don’t know if I’ve mentioned why we plan to go back to the US in the future.
For those who don’t know what brought me to Chile, I’ll recap. I grew up knowing I would study abroad – my mom spent a year in France during college, my family had always traveled, and study abroad seemed like a great opportunity. I studied French for 5 years and spoke it well enough that I decided to switch to Spanish my senior year of high school. By the time sophomore year rolled around and I was looking at study abroad destinations, my French was a bit rusty, but I felt like I had a good enough base that I could pick it up again later in life. My Spanish, on the other hand, was good but not totally ingrained, so I decided to study in a Spanish-speaking country through a UC program that would let me get credit for my courses. Brazil and the promise of learning Portuguese held a certain appeal, but in the end I decided it would be better to speak Spanish well than to speak both Spanish and Portuguese equally poorly. UCLA offered programs in several cities in Spain, Mexico DF, San Juan, Costa Rica and Santiago. Thanks to my English connections I’d already been to Spain and knew I would be able to go again – it’s just a quick, inexpensive flight from the UK. Mexico was too close to California and DF for whatever reason didn’t capture my attention. I’d love to go to Costa Rica on vacation but didn’t think it would be quite the right place to continue my political science studies – they don’t even have an army. Santiago, with its promise of distance and dictatorship, struck the right chord.
I arrived at the end of June 2005. I was never really homesick, and I made friends quickly with my amazing host family and a great group of people on my program. I broke up with the boyfriend I had left at home in California, but that would have happened anyway – we had run our course, and several thousand miles only made that clearer. In short, life was good. That said, I never particularly loved Santiago. I loved what I was doing, the adventures I had, the things I learned, and of course you can’t deny that Chile is a beautiful country. Somewhere along the line, Rodolfo and I met in a history class, and suddenly I was thinking about staying. When it turned out that I’d missed the deadline to prolong my study abroad, my thoughts turned to coming back over my summer. I knew that even if he and I broke up in the interim, I would miss my host family and want to come to see them. But it was always about the people rather than the place. That’s not to say that I disliked Santiago, but it wasn’t as much of a draw as its inhabitants.
In total, I’ve been here for a little over 2 years split up into 6 months of study abroad, 2 months of internship and a year and a half of life. I know that here on the blog I often vent about things that I find frustrating or difficult, but that’s in large part because “life is normal, I am content” isn’t a very interesting post. Overall, I like the life that I have here. Parts of it drive me crazy, and parts of it are better than what I had in California. When I moved down here in September 2007, I told people I was planning to be here for “a couple of years.” One year sounded too short, and more than two years sounded scarily long considering that I had no idea how things would go. Now I say we’ll be here for 5 years or so.
Sometimes I can almost see those 5 years stretching into 10 and waking up age 60 only to find that I never left. But most of the time I’m pretty confident that we’ll leave Chile before we start thinking about having kids. There are two main factors to the decision to live more permanently in the US: money and culture. Decent jobs in the US allow for yearly (or even more frequent) international plane flights so that we can visit family and friends in Chile. Decent jobs in Chile do not. It would be hard to live and Chile and get back to the US very often. Simple as that, on the money front. My point about culture is more complicated, and it’s not something that I can fully express. Sometimes Rodolfo agrees with me, and sometimes he finds it offensive – understandbly, since I’m telling him that I don’t want to raise our children in the society in which he was raised. For the record, I think he turned out just fine 
So many of the things that frustrate me about Chile, like the lack of regard for other people or the lack of a work-life balance, are things that I see as real societal issues. I don’t like the classism and the fact that if we were to live comfortably here we would probably end up isolated in the barrios altos with a live-in maid. I think education, both public and private, is better not necessarily in the US as a whole but definitely in the areas where we’re thinking of living. I don’t want to live in a city forever, but in Chile I don’t think I’d want to live outside of Santiago – I know there are people who would violently disagree with that statement, but for me Santiago offers jobs I’m interested in and the modern conveniences that I like. I am NOT saying that the US is perfect, but its issues and disadvantages are ones that I’m more comfortable with because I’m more used to them. Luckily even if Rodolfo doesn’t agree with me completely, he does agree that as things stand right now, the US offers certain advantages to us that Chile cannot. For the moment though, we’re happy to be here, and on those days when I’m not so happy I try to remember to take advantage of my time in Chile because once we leave, whenever that ends up happening, I’ll miss this place.
Others’ posts (updated March 23 with more links!)
Abby
Aimee
Amanda
Andre
Clare
Emily
Emma
Irini_Ta
Isabel
Jessica
Kyle
Leigh
Lydia
Miyaunna
Renee
Sara
Shannon
Tamsin
Tyffanie
“I know that here on the blog I often vent about things that I find frustrating or difficult, but that’s in large part because “life is normal, I am content” isn’t a very interesting post.”
AMEN, haha, I sound so cranky on my blog sometimes! but certainly its a little fun and interesting to bitch about stuff…
very sensible post and reasoning
Enlightening! Thank you.
I really get what you are saying…the same reasons you would think about moving back to the US are almost exaclty why we choose to live here and have Chile as a 2nd home to visit. S noticed the difference in work life balance on his first trip to visit me. He said that the pace was much different and he enjoyed it.
I agree with what you say about complaining. Who wants to read “Well, things are great and I’m blahdeeblahblahblah…” It just doesn’t have the same dynamic.
reading your story I realized I actually didn’t know the back story to you choosing Chile initially! It’s funny, it’s almost like we just skipped that whole part…yeah, I studied abroad…blah blah blah. Always learning something new
And don’t let yourself be 60 before you come stateside!
Good to see you are generally happy here. Also nice to see why you actually chose Chile for study. Are you still keeping up with your French? You also seem to be truly international with relatives both in “sarcastic Britain” and the US.
I go through the same thing with Boyan about whether or not we’d want our children to grow up in the states or in Europe. It’s a tough call. On one hand I want my kids to experience the richness of the culture that Europe affords, but on the other I can’t imagine my children not having the childhood I experienced. Maybe moving around a bit is a good thing, lots of different enriching experiences and good education everywhere you go. =)
What I do know is that there is no way in HELL my kids are growing up in L.A. That goes without saying.
catching up on all your posts. You write so informatively on many topics Emily!
I love learning more about the personal lives and thoughts of the people behind the blogs I read. This was a very cool post.
It was nice to trip across this post. It was like I read it at the right time. Because being in Santiago, living here, and the whole experience being new, to know that there are people who have been through generally the same thing.
I suppose it is always hard being away from everything you knew and everything that was familiar.
I have no connections here except for my husband,who works more then full time ( So yes I get the work-life balance thing completely!) and I often find it lonely. No one else completely understands because they all grew up here. So somethings that make me uncomfortable is foreign to them.
I am from Canada. I have been to the States numerous times, its pretty similar. Chile… Beautiful, but its not the same.