My 7 links

A slight digression from my usual posting topics as I appear to have joined the world of the bloggersphere by being tagged in this '7 links' thing that's doing the rounds.

Thanks to Rob W of the South America Blog (this is the chap who runs Woodward language school which brought me up to a passable level of Spanish, Chilenismos and all) I have to rifle through the archives of my blog for 7 posts that are the most beautiful, popular, controversial, helpful, surprisingly successful, lacking the attention they deserved and that I am most proud of.

This actually turned out to be quite a fun task, as I got to rediscover stories I'd forgotten about and I enjoyed feeling incredibly proud of my blog and realising what an interesting historical record it is for me. So without further ado, onto the 7 links.

My most beautiful post

Difficult to define a beautiful blog post. Although on the whole I am pleased with how I write, I'm not sure any of the posts are exquisitely crafted literary masterpieces. So if we take beautiful to mean photography and subject matter, it doesn't get more perfect than A sprinkle of magic - the story of Frutillar and one volcano that made a last minute appearance to give us the most phenomenal setting for a pastel coloured sunset.

My most popular post

Judging by stats alone, this award goes to The most beautiful place on earth about our visit to Bariloche in Argentina, before it got covered in ash from Volcan Puyehue. A worthy winner. That said, I never tire of this view has been hanging around at the top of my most visited list since I wrote it way back on 20th October, so I think it deserves a mention too.

My most controversial post

I don't really do controversy on this blog, but I guess that Civil unrest is the closest I've come to any kind of political statement, or for that matter, to writing anything negative about my experiences here. 

My most helpful post

My very first posts, First impressions and A day of small victories stand out for me simply because various friends I have met here have told me that they felt reassured reading about my rather wobbly experiences in Chile at the beginning. So I'm nominating these for helping people know that they weren't alone in feeling adrift in this strange new place.

A post whose success surprised me

New heroes was the first time I received feedback from Chileans about my blog, with many of them in agreement with my admiration for Michele Bachelet. This was a turning point for me, where I discovered that my blog was being read as much by my new friends here as by my old friends back home. The amount of attention my Food post got was also a genuine surprise - it seems eating is what my readers are really interested in!

A post I feel didn't get the attention it deserved

Looking through my archives I found it difficult to find a post that didn't get attention, but eventually I opted for Museum of Memory and Human Rights because I don't remember getting much direct feedback on it. Maybe the subject matter was too painful for some, or maybe the history is too distant for others. Either way, I thought this post would get more of a reaction than it did.

The post that I'm most proud of

Trying not to sound too cheesy, I can honestly say that I am incredibly proud of my entire blog. I only started writing it because I fancied having a go at blogging and a couple of people had suggested it might be an interesting thing to do. But as I said at the beginning, it's turned into fascinating record of my time here; I love reading it and I hope others do too. Selecting one post, therefore, is pretty hard, but I think I'm going to plump for Immigration. Partly because it made me and a lot of other people laugh, partly because I enjoyed writing it and working on getting the humour across, and partly because I'm really proud of what I achieved that morning!

So now I have to pass on the tag to five other bloggers. So 7 links on their way to:

1. Callie Mills - Ruffle Your Feathers
2. Carolina Leseigneur - GoodCatt's Random Musings
3. Pepe's Chile Adoration Page
   
   Next was going to be fellow Chile blogger Angie Clifford with Angie's life, but she's already been tagged so instead we change topic to...
   
   
4. Ruth Lund - Cherry Coloured Twist
5. Emma Fassio - Emma Fassio Knitting

Immigration

Today was a big day. Today was the day I did the scariest thing I've done so far in Chile: renew my tourist visa.

It may not sound like much, but I had been warned of mountains of bureaucracy and hours of queuing. And more pertinently for me, I faced three big fears:

• language - not understanding what I was being asked;
• orientation - not knowing what I was supposed to do and where and when;
• expulsion - a personal paranoia, but a fear that I may do something wrong and have my request to stay refused.

So, I got up early, armed with insider knowledge about the process from a colleague of Carlos' but without my usual trusty translator, and took myself down to the extranjería or immigration office.

Upon arrival, I quickly located the queue I'd been warned about - it reached out the door, snaked around the landing and started to go up the stairs. I cleared the first hurdle of asking the person in front of me if it was the right queue and lined up alongside the other, mainly Peruvian, migrants.

Thankfully, the queue moved quickly and within around 15 minutes I was issued with a number and told to go downstairs to the tourist department. Being one of the first, I was soon called by a man who seemed reasonably friendly, slightly bored, but with quite a stern face. I timidly bid him good morning and sat down asking to extend my tourist visa.

Annoyingly, I cannot say the proper word for an 'extension' as it involves both a single and a double 'r': prórroga. This is the worst possible combination of sounds for me, which my poor tongue just can't get itself around. But I think he got the gist as he started to type into his computer.

"¿Estado civil?" he asks me. Oh! I know this one! "Soltera" I answer, relief evident on my face.

"¿Profesión?" This flusters me a little. I don't have a profession, and I certainly don't have a job in Chile otherwise I wouldn't be applying for a tourist visa, right? Eventually, I plump for "Editora". Now that didn't look suspicious. Much later, I remember that in Chile people still have the concept of a profession - i.e. they go to university to train in a particular field and that takes them onto jobs within that field. They are qualified as a journalist or a specialist in a public relations etc. but there are no sideways career moves. They don't study English Literature and then wander into marketing via copywriting and web management.

Anyway, next question. "Blah blah blah... en Chile?" This could be how long are you planning to be in Chile but this is a formal procedure so I'd better not guess. I ask him to repeat: "blah blah blah... en Chile?" Oh god. I still didn't catch it. After what feels like an eternity of mumbling and bumbling, I manage to bluster: "la pregunta es...?" ("the question is...?") and look at him inquisitively. "Di-rec-ción" he says pointedly. Ah! Address! The street name trips off my tongue. Then - oh no! - I've never given my address in Spanish before. How on earth do you say one thousand four hundred and five again? Big numbers are not my strong point.

I get through it and then with one last moment of hilarity, which finally manages to crack a smile on this poor man's face, I tell him the last digit of my phone number is "snow" - "nieve" instead of "nueve". It could have been worse.

After this there's a bit more to-ing and fro-ing, having to walk to a nearby bank to pay the admin fee, then go back to the same office, but this time without a number as I was told I didn't need one, just to go there directly.

Being British, I didn't like to stride back up to the desk, so I sat at the back of the room for a while trying to suss out my tactics, until a kindly French girl (who showed up my linguistic inadequacy by talking to me in English when I didn't understand her Spanish) told me that unless I pushed in I was going to sit there all afternoon because without a number I was never going to get called. So I mustered as much latina as I could and plonked myself back down in front of the same guy. And was finally rewarded with my extended visa!