dont know what you got till its gone

This pic was taken the very last day of spanish for extranjeros...thatd be late ass me in the scarf, profesora preciosa to one side and another student who aint half bad and knows it (in a good way) on the other...didnt realize i would miss it so much. turns out i hella do...
...so when i was about to come hella fools was like "try not to kick it with the other students from your program, you wont learn the language" and i was all, no prob..its not like im exactly a people person...and what the hell do i have in common with them anyway?
well as it turns out i underestimated the effects of being a stranger in a strange land. we dont really need a whole lot in common, for example the first of the other students i met who was my roomate at the hotel, came in and threw down her bags and said she needed a bloody mary asap and couldnt wait to go shopping...i found myself thinking, wow i have nothing at all in common with this middle class really tanned 20yr old from chico state..but i was thrilled to see her, she spoke the same fuckin language, and this in case you havent noticed, is cool. even when she made some awful comment about how she heard chilean dudes are really cute and not "all dark like mexicans" i was thinking about how under other circumstances we would probably have nothing to say to each other...but i still see her now and then, and its wierd i have this like affection for her. I think its the same way the other way around too, i think once i told her a little about me she didnt quite know what to make of me...but the thing about it is that although we dont like hang out, we are genuinely happy to see each other. all the kids from the program are. i cant explain it but even people im just not crazy about, it feels so darn good to see them..
And I didnt even quite get it until my two weeks of spanish ended...
that the class, and my little group of extranjeros, and the routine, not to mention the oh so adorable profesora...had all become like a little home away from home. It was this safe space where it was ok for my spanish to be all stumbly and i was encouraged to try and nobody rolled thier eyes and Natalia was like, ok, good...thats not correct, but good..you know what i mean? like she was smiling all the time and telling us silly stories and when one of us didnt know the answer everyone else would help out...
It was like i was this puppy unthinkingly rolling around with the other puppies and getting dragged about by the scruff of my neck until some jerk grabbed me out of my cozy cardboard box and dumped my ass on the pavement. i got a little taste of this when i moved out of the hotel, but then there was school every day and trips to the museum and the vineyard. I got to see the same kids who could actually speak my language every day, and if i absolutely couldnt come up with a word Natalia would say "dime en engles". man now i gots no get outta jail free cards..if i aint got the word..i just aint got it..
Now i been dumped in actual classes, sin profesora, who i catch a glimpse of now and then around facultad de letras...
And I feel like a big dumb alien. people look at me, and i mean like stare!!!! practically all the time, not as much at school...more like on the metro or the sidewalk...at school theres enough foriegn students that nobody is too surprised to see us...there im just some stupid gringa who can barely speak...
But i still do get stared at at school...i am apparently among la mas extraña de los extranjeros..this wierd big white person with strange hair...
and its not like im really that big...i just feel so clumsy and clunky...people here are smaller than in the states so im just a little shy of normal, whereas at home im more like diminutive..
im only actually large here in comparison to kids and little old ladies, the cute little old chilean women who they apperently manufacture by the dozen judging by the numbers i see. they little. and next to them i am a huge loud white person, capisce?
this one time in a grocery store i thought this little kid was saying something to me, and i was like huh? (or rather, como?) and the kid gave her parent person this look like please make the big scary lady leave, and i searched my head for words to explain that i thought she was talking to me, realized that it wouldnt matter by the time i figured them out, and just said sorry.
well i guess my point is that ive been pretty down for a few days...really missing my peeps and feeling really alone. now my whole day is dictated by wether or not i get what people say to me. this clerk in a grocery store, who was just impatient and obviously not a nice guy to the person ahead of me...i dreaded him asking me some question that i wouldnt understand...which of course he did...i think he asked if i had change or wanted to donate to some charity or some such shit that happens at the conclusion of checkout...i handed him some random change and he was like what and i was like its really early..and then i left and cried all the way home cause i am a big fat deafmute retard here.
i want to assure people that im really not this dumb but i just cant fuckin communicate that...so instead i pore over these crazy complicated theoretical texts defining poetry in spanish and long for the days of spanish for extranjeros...

me gusta
the mexican kid in one of my classes who i can totally understand!!!
seeing the cordilleras ringing the city in the distance
riding the metro with my headphones on
the shapes the leafless trees make

no me gusta
all the smelly mutt dogs who try to jump on me and get my shoes dirty
trying to figure out when and where im sposed to be
getting lost like daily
the fact that i still cant figure out basic shit like how to mail a letter