Feliz Año Nuevo!

Hellooo loyal followers - happy new year!  I hope everyone has had a good start to 2013, and that you’re not all too cold.  I’ve been watching the news and following the weather, and it seems to be total crap up there.  I’ve been at the beach almost every weekend, and sorry, I’m not sorry.  I lived in Germany for three years which meant 47 total hours of summer.  I’m going to enjoy every minute of this weather!

Still, I’ve been much busier this year than I was last year.  I was working for Eduardo last year and tutoring a bit, but I still hadn’t found my niche.  It’s hard moving to a totally new place, and making friends outside of a school environment can be tough.  It’s even tougher when you have the language skills of a 3 year old.  This year, though, has been pleasantly busy.  I have a few private students who I’m teaching, and I’ve also connected with a company that provides business English classes in professional companies so now I have a few “professional” students as well.  It’s fun, and it keeps me on my toes, although it frequently means starting the day at 7:30 AM and finishing around 9:00 PM.  Still, I’m gaining experience and money so I’m not complaining. 

Another fun “work” opportunity came from a friend of mine who works in the press department for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs here in Chile.  She told me that there was a summit coming up in Santiago, and they were looking for some people to help out for the week of the summit.  I said sure and went to a meeting at the Ministry for a large group interview.  For whatever reason, they thought I was qualified so I was hired for the week.  It turns out that the summit is actually two summits: the CELAC summit and the CELAC-UE summit.  CELAC is the organization of Caribbean and Latin American countries, and the UE is the European Union (Unión Europea).  This summit is like a who’s who of head honchos in this world.  Heads of state from almost all of the 61 countries involved are here, and they are talking about very important things, like trade agreements, sustainable development, human rights, women’s rights, and probably other things like who has the best football team.  I was really excited to be involved, until I saw that my role was “translation assistant”.  I had visions of some emergency situations in which I would have to translate something personally for Chancellor Angela Merkel into German from Spanish, while TV cameras rolled and probably something was on fire.  

I'm sure creating this picture puts me on some EU watch list. 

As it turns out, I’m just helping with the translation of photo captions, television captions, biographies of the Heads of State, and some occasional speeches.  There are two head translators who are fluent in English and Spanish, so they are the ones that are taking care of the heavy stuff. 

However, yesterday I was called upon to translate some German, and my visions of flames and TV cameras started again.  Basically, some journalists from Spain came to our little room and asked if anyone understood German.  I said that I did, but that my speaking skills were limited.  “No problem, that’s just what we need.  Come on! Rapido!”  They told me that they needed something translated from German into Spanish, and I figured I could do it as long as I did the translation to English in the middle.  Well, it wasn’t so simple.  It wasn’t a written document; it was an audio recording of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and they needed it translated like, now.  I spent 30 minutes listening to the audio trying to transcribe it in German so I could begin to figure out what it meant.  Fortunately, the recording was only 1:40, and I’d like to thank Ms. Merkel personally for speaking slowly and clearly.  However, I’d also like to give Ms. Merkel a dirty look for speaking super lofty, metaphorical German.  Even after I had transcribed it as best I could, I couldn’t make much sense of it.  Part of the problem is that I was trying to write spoken words, and I wasn’t always sure where the sentence breaks should be.  This wouldn’t be a problem, except that in German practically all the verbs are at the end of the sentence so breaking it in the wrong place could be the difference between Ms. Merkel speaking about increasing cooperation or fighting cooperation.  Of course, it’s also a problem that I don’t understand all the colloquial phrases in German, although I’m bright enough to know that I shouldn’t translate “the students want a goat outside their window” literally. I ended up scouring my skype contact list for help, and help came from my German friend Stefanie.  (I’m lucky she lives in Vancouver now, or the time difference would have ruined it.)  I sent her my transcription and the recording and she fixed my mistakes.  Then she saved the day by simplifying the text and writing what Ms. Merkel meant, not specifically what she said.  This made the translation 17 billion times more simple.  The Spanish journalists were thrilled and hugged me multiple times, so I guess it’s ok that it took an hour and a half.

Other than my daredevil dabbling in German translations, I was also given a speech to translate from Chilean President Sebastian Piñera.  (It was his speech; he didn’t personally give it to me.)  It was long, but I found it so much simpler.  My Spanish skills are infinitely better than my German, and it helps that so much Spanish vocabulary, grammar and structure are similar to English.  It also helps that this was a very simplistic speech, full of empty rhetoric. (I kid, President Piñera is a genius and his speeches are nuggets of gold, as are all politicians’ speeches.)

I’ve been working at the summit all week, and we’ve got just a few more days.  It’s been challenging at times, but also loads of fun.  I’ve met a ton of nice people and I might have even made some friends. (!)

Apart from working, we’ve also been enjoying the summer weather.  Whenever possible I’ve gone mountain biking, which is really hard and I’m pretty slow, but it’s also really rewarding. There’s a decent sized hill near our apartment which is a big park, and there are trails that go all over the place.  I always stick to the same trails because I’m still not so confident and I don’t want to fall off the side.  Going up is slow and challenging, and it took many tries before I could make it all the way up without stopping.  Going down, on the other hand, is fast, speedy, rapid, and many other adjectives that make me nervous.  I don’t mind it so much, but the brakes work differently in the dirt, meaning that they sometimes don’t work at all.  There have been times that I’ve just fallen off my bike for lack of any other way to stop.  I also frequently curse at the hill, as if it’s out to get me.  Eduardo has competed in quite a few mountain bike races this season, and he’s become sort of a pro.  I decided to sign up for one last weekend for the heck of it, although I was convinced that either I wouldn’t make it up the hill or that I would be too scared to come down.  I also figured that I would be the least experienced person in the race, and I imagined everyone else zooming past me while I struggled to stay upright.  As it turns out, I was more prepared than a lot of people there.  The course went up to the top of a hill, but it wasn’t all up up up and then down down down.  There were inclines and then a slope back down and then another incline and then a flat area.  Many people had to stop halfway up the inclines and walk, and some didn’t even bother to try riding; they just got off and walked their bikes at the first sign of a hill.  I managed to ride up every single hill (albeit extremely slowly) except for one, and that was only because there were so many people walking their bikes there was nowhere for me to ride.  I finished the 25 K in less than 2 ½ hours, which I thought was pretty good.  (Of course, Eduardo finished 50 K in 3 ½ hours, but whatever.)  I was pleased just to finish, so imagine my surprise when I found out that I came in sixth among women in my age group and eighth among all women!  Most importantly, I got more comfortable with riding my bike in the dirt, and I’m itching to do another race.

I’ve got a busy month coming up, filled with teaching and travels and visitors.  I may or may not have a visitor coming this next weekend; the following week Eduardo and I are going to Easter Island; the week after that I’m going with a friend to Uruguay; and the last week of February my mom and sister are coming to visit. It will be so great to have them here and I’m really looking forward to sharing a little bit of our life here with them.  Plus, they’re bringing Christmas presents.

I’ll try to keep the blog updated this month, so stay tuned.

Until next time, Buena suerte!