Good-Byes with Mixed Feelings

MONDAY

We left our hostel at 6am today in Santiago to go to the bus station. Half asleep a group of traveled by bus to Viña Del Mar where we were going to meet our regional director, Monica, and her assistant, Elizabeth. On the way there, we had made several stops so we had no idea if we arrived at our destination until we saw that all the other passengers got off. We retrieved our luggage and looked around if anyone had a sign for us, but nothing. After about 20 minutes, Monica and Elizabeth arrived.

(At this point, several of our fellow WorldTeach familia still did not know where in the 5^th region they were going to be, but we were all dying to know. I had only received 1 email stating that I would be in Calle Larga with 3 other volunteers. All we knew was it was going to be 2.5 hours from Valparaiso (1 hour from Santiago) and wondered how far some of our fellow volunteers were going to be. Some other volunteers knew something about their family and their school name. We were told that most volunteers were not going to be in the cities such as Viña Del Mar and Valpo and that if there were volunteers in Valpo they would most likely be males as it’s known to be less safe.)

Monica and Elizabeth announced everyone’s placements and surprisingly 3 volunteers were going to Valpo and 1 volunteer to Viña Del Mar. This was surprising to me as I written in my application that I’d prefer to be near Valpo or Viña since I had a friend there and would like to be near a convenient place. But perhaps Monica read that I like the outdoors and like to hike or perhaps I was more adventurous or seemed more resilient. Therefore, I was placed in such a rural area near Los Andes. We guessed that the other 2 volunteers may had been placed there for the same reason. However, Kristy (also from Los Angeles, California) had stated that she would like to be in the city and did state that she liked the outdoors. However, she is a Kindergarten teacher and both of us had wrote that we would prefer to work with younger children. (We were told during orientation that our students would be 5^th-12^th grade).

We felt somewhat heart broken, but excited for our fellow amigas when we met their host families when they got dropped off in Valparaiso one by one. We loved the cute apartments and homes with some overlooking Valpo and its ports. Some of them had adorable dogs. However, we knew that our amigas had mixed feelings since Valpo is interspersed with sketchy areas. We did not know what to expect in our town so we became jealous of where they were living… secretly hoping that we would have cute homes and warm families to live with upon our arrival.