Christmas. Again. - Blogabond

So because I crossed the international date line, I had the strange experience of leaving Auckland at 5pm on Xmas Day, and arriving in Santiago at midday on Xmas Day. And it was a bit of a chalk and cheese experience. NZ - nice brunch with KP, Brad and his family; Chile - in a bedroom that resembled a jail cell, no shops open so nothing to eat, and seemingly nobody who could speak English! Sniff, sniff.

It´s clear straight away that my Spanish is going to have to improve. Very quickly. Which shouldn´t be difficult seeing as I´m starting from a base of three words - Hola, Gracias and Que (and the third one is only thanks to Fawlty Towers). It´s not like being in Europe where you can be fairly sure that most people will know a bit of English, at least in the cities. Here, they don´t know any. So even the British method of just talking in English slower and louder is going to present problems. So I spent most of the second half of Christmas listening to Michel Thomas language tapes on my iPod and poring over the Lonely Planet Spanish phrasebook. Not necessarily one of my most memorable Christmas days, but needs must. And on the plus side, I´d learned enough after a few hours to book myself a bus journey over the Andes into Mendoza in Argentina tomorrow. At least I think I did. If no more blog posts follow this one then I obviously buggered it up!

written by

phileasdogg on December 26, 2008 from Santiago, Chile

from the travel blog: Planes, Trains & Taxiwallahs

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