Rotarian in the Making

After I got back from Argentina, I was all set to go back to school regularly and go back to the routine of seeing Rotarians once a month at meetings. However, a few days later, my host dad Cristian asked me, "Jennie, are you busy this weekend? Because some gringos from Ohio with the Rotary Group Study Exchange (GSE) are coming to Chillán for a week and the four Rotary clubs in Chillán are going to be taking turns hosting their daily activities. My Rotary club is in charge of them over the weekend and we are going to take them to a rodeo and Las Termas de Chillán. Would you be interested in coming with us and translate? None of them speak Spanish." And of course I said "yes" because I hadn't been to Las Termas before to go in the natural thermal pools--I had only gone when I went hiking to the Laguna Huemul and I still hadn't seen a lot of the cool things there. Plus, since my own dad is going to go to Russia on a Group Study Exchange with Rotary, I thought it would be cool to see what the program was like.


<--These are the famous natural thermal pools of Las Termas, a tourist spot owned by my city, Chillán with the mountains in the background. After swimming we had a delicious lunch at a nearby restaurant--it was amazing.




That was how it began. Then my host mom, Cristina, asked me to go to the bus station on Wednesday night to meet the GSE people so that I could translate and explain to them which Rotarian's house they were going to and what time they had to be ready in the morning, etc. She said, "It will take less than an hour". Well, the Rotarian that gave me a ride to the bus station thought it would be a fantastic idea to take me back to his house with the gringo he was hosting for dinner so that I could keep translating. He then invited me to pack a suitcase and stay in his house for the rest of the week while the GSE group was there and when I politely said that it would be better for me to stay in my own house, he insisted that I at least come in the morning to his house before the scheduled daily activities to eat breakfast with them. As I might have mentioned before, Chileans are very welcoming and warm people.

The GSE team was comprised of 4 people, one Rotarian in his fifties named Chris and three "young professionals": Kieran Hurley (lawyer), Joshua Roark (professor), and Sonja Johnson (teacher). They were all nice, and we got along really well. It was so cool to see them go through the same phases of adjustment that we as exchange students went through when you still haven't gotten used to the culture and are discovering new things every day. They had a hard time understanding that "gordo" (fat/fat person) is used as a term of endearment. Many couples call each other "gordo/a" affectionately.

<--The GSE team in the local newspaper building seated at their newscaster desk. From left to right: Sonja, Chris, Josh, and Kieran. Sonja definitely noticed the lack of diversity in Chile. In Chile there are hardly any foreign-looking people; they all basically look the same.




So Sonja got some pretty hard stares walking the streets of Chillán. I was personally ecstatic to see a black person for a week after going eight and a half months seeing only one ethicity: Chilean.

However, I could definitely understand why the Chileans were upset that they were allowed to participate in the GSE without knowing a shred of Spanish. If I hadn't been there to translate while they were touring, it would have been a painful experience to try and get the point across.


<--One of the tours we did was of a celulose plant where they process wood to make paper products and wood products. This plant is one of the biggest in Chile and is very environmentally conscious. To prove how "green" they are, they grow wine vines right next to the factory.




To make a long story slightly less long, I was hired by all four Rotary clubs to be the desginated translator for the whole week the GSE team was there. At first the whole thing caught me by surprise and overwhelmed me, but as I got to know the team better and participated in their activities, I really enjoyed it. First of all, I had been here for eight months and hadn't seen hardly ANY of the local touristy things, so I got to do those things with the GSE team.




<-- Me with a statue of Bernardo O'Higgins (Chile's George Washington) in Chillán Viejo's municipal building





I met the mayor of Chillán and Chillán Viejo (Old Chillán), toured the famous Cathedral in Chillán's square, saw the new Claudio Arrau Museum, toured the local newspaper building (and talked on their radio station and was in their newspaper), swam in Las Termas's natural thermal springs, saw Chile's biggest distribution company's storehouse, and toured the biggest celulose/paper plant in the region. Definitely not a bad way to spend a week!