With love, from Chile

A weekly look at another country's culture and customs

'Becoming Chilean'

Charlie Remy / Columnist

I'm a very direct person. If you have a problem with me, please say it to my face. Don't use roundabout ways to try to hide your true feelings from me. In Chilean culture, being blunt generally doesn't exist. This can be very frustrating to a direct type of person like myself who wants real answers. This lack of directness also has to do with not following through ... because following through might require an answer that isn't that desirable to give to someone and that is difficult for many Chileans.

When I first arrived here, one of the teachers in my intensive Spanish course warned us about people simply not showing up for predetermined dates. Well, that was proven a few weeks ago for me. I was going to have coffee with a girl from my university. I arrived at the place we agreed upon and waited for about 20 minutes. I decided to leave, thinking she just wasn't going to show up. Unfortunately, I was right.

I saw her the next day at school and looked at her as if I had a question mark on my face. She said, "I'm so sorry ... I had a lot of schoolwork to do and just couldn't go." I think this is completely rude. She could have at least sent me an e-mail. How hard is that? At least she was a little more honest than saying "I forgot."

I met this one beautiful girl in a bookstore. We got talking and ended up going for ice cream. She's really progressive politically and I enjoyed our conversation a lot. I was happy once we parted that I had met someone so interesting and intelligent here that's my age. She gave me her e-mail address and I sent her an e-mail when I got home to see when we could hang out next. 1 day, 3 days, a week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks, I still haven't heard from her. This flakiness really bothers me. If she didn't like me while we were having ice cream, why didn't she show it? Why did she lead me to think that she liked to hang out with me? Just be honest!

I was so happy a few weeks ago that I found someone who needed me to teach her English. Her niece is in one of my classes at school and gave me her name. I was eager to make a little extra money. Anyway, I tutored her twice. Things were going well. Then, last week, she said she had to go to Costa Rica for a business trip and that it's difficult to know when she could schedule me to come give her lessons.

She says that she never knows when her employer will call her for a meeting or something (she works at home). She told me that she'd get in touch with me the next week. Not surprisingly, I just called her and she said that she doesn't have the time and that money is also an issue. O.K. ... well if you really want to learn English, what about doing the lessons on the weekend? When there's a will, there's a way.

This also spills into the business world as well. I have tried to order some books at a few bookstores which didn't have the titles I wanted in stock. I've come back to these stores for weeks now and the books still haven't arrived. It makes me wonder if they even ordered them in the first place. You'd think in such a neo-libereal, market-oriented country, these small business owners would jump at the opportunity to make some more money by ordering books for their customers.

The sad part of all of this is that I am slowly becoming more Chilean ... that is, I'm losing trust in people here in general, just like the Chileans do. I'm a very honest person and consequently, tend to believe what people say to me. More and more I am distrusting what people tell me after these experiences. When someone tells me something now, I often have a doubt. This is a shame but after getting "burned" like this time after time, I need to be careful not to believe everything that I hear.

Contact Charlie Remy at opinions@elon.edu or 278-7247.