- Is he Chilean? (Sometimes quickly followed by, is that the right way to call someone from Chile?)
- How did you two meet?!
It all started in that fate-filled June of 2009. My parish had sent me to Chile to learn Spanish in a 6 week immersion program at a school we will call La Escuela (literally, the school). La Escuela was located in an oceanside town of about 30,000 called Concon which just so happens to be the same town that Andrés lived/lives in! It also just so happens that Andrés and his family had signed up to be hosts for one of us gringos. Do you know who got placed with them?... Not me! (Were you surprised?) A great guy named John was place with Andrés' family. I had briefly met John before in college but I don't know if I could say we were even acquaintances at that point. The day we arrived in Chile we were driven straight from the airport to La Escuela where we were split up and taken to our host homes. When we reached La Escuela I was shaking like a leaf because I was having to split off from the 13 gringos I had traveled with to go to my host home where my host mom didn't speak English and I didn't know any Spanish really except "Donde esta el baño?" During this leaf shaking I remember seeing Andrés standing next to John and I thought he was one of our teachers. I didn't say anything to him or really to any of the chilenos- I was SO nervous!
Flash-forward about a week to our first meeting where we actually spoke to one another. The date was July 1, 2009 (Is it sick that I know all the dates? The truth is that I promptly recorded all the dates I could remember of our "firsts" right after we officially started dating so that I could remember them forever!). Every Wednesday night La Escuela had a cultural taller (pronounce tah-yair and it means workshop) and usually they went pretty late into the night. Our first taller was contemporary dance- we learned salsa, merengue, other things I don't remember and my favorite: reggaeton! I think we got done sometime between 10 and 11pm and since I lived farthest from La Escuela (a forty-five minute walk if I was alone, over an hour if I was with others) Andrés kindly offered me a ride home when he came to pick up John in his family's truck. During that 10 minute car ride I think I learned his name, how old he was and that he was in college. He was not extremely talkative but I was very grateful for the ride home and at this point in time I didn't really have an opinion of him.
The next time I saw Andrés was two days later. It was Friday night and all of us (16 gringos, some host family members and some Escuela teachers) were going out to El Huevo to celebrate our teacher Daniel's birthday. El Huevo (Mr. Egg) is a giant nightclub that has five floors and each floor has a different type of music to dance to. We got to the club at about 11:30pm and stayed until 4:30am! That was my introduction to Chilean nightlife and although I was extremely tired at some points, I mostly had a blast. One minor downer of the night however was my interaction with Andrés. Disclaimer: I'm pretty sure Andrés does not remember this but it did happen. Andrés and his sister Daniela had come with and for most the night we all danced in a group together but at one point I was dancing just with John. Then he gave me over to Andrés who had been with Daniela and John took her to dance. Andrés danced with me for a total of maybe five seconds and then dropped my hands. It was so awkward! And so I walked away and danced with the rest of the group. I was a little upset but didn't care too much that this chileno didn't want to dance with me- I didn't even really know him. Little did I know...
You'll have to wait for Part II to learn how we actually built a friendship and to see how I started falling for him. Until then I'll leave you with a couple pictures.
Starting off school with some morning prayer and praise
Dancing at El Huevo- both Andrés and I are there
In the next post find out...
How I surprised Andrés with this
And how we bonded over completos! Yummy.
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