Monday, September 27, 2010

Sharing

Right from Kindergarten we've been taught to share with others and to not be greedy. Here in Chile I find sharing taken to a whole other level.

Example 1: Food
You share ALL your food, ALL the time! Especially at school your food is fair game. During breaks if you have a snack or buy something you can guarantee to only eat less than half of it because everyone comes up, asks, or just takes a piece of whatever you have. Even if its just a piece of bread, cookies, chips, juice, sandwich, whatever, you bound to share it with at least two other people. At lunch your food is also free game. At my table there's usually forks going everywhere, trying bits of every one's food, and asking if your going to finish it. I find if you ask who wants to finish your food its divided up and gone pretty quickly! But also its polite to offer food to people as well, its just the culture.

Example 2: Space
Ok so it's not the same type of sharing as the food example but living in Santiago, a city of approx. 5 million, sharing space especially in transit is special. I've now experienced the "sardine-can effect" on the metro and it was not comfortable for me. Or also on the buses when you have people falling into you, again not pleasant. Having so much space and the "personal-respectful space" in Canada its been difficult adjusting to touching a few random people everyday on transit.

This week there's a Pastor from the USA who will be preaching everyday at school. He talks and then its translated for everyone else. Hearing opinions and thoughts that differ significantly from mine can be frustrating at times, especially when I can now understand it. He's very good at what he does and is very strong minded, I'm actually looking forward to hear what he has to say everyday.

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