Oh Me God.

After the weekend in the city, I had to return to Coelemu on Monday (my birthday!!) for work. I decided to take the earliest bus (6:30am) which conveniently passed directly in front of our hotel. The day before, I had prepurchased my ticket (ensuring that I would have a seat) at the bus terminal so all I had to do the following morning was simply...get on the bus.

I woke up the next day at 5:45, was out front of the hotel at 6:29 and exactly one minute later, a bus pulled around the corner and stopped when I flagged it down (how very punctual...especially for Chile). I found my seat, sat down, and popped in my headphones.  Despite my swelling ego (mastering a foreign public transport system is always a daunting undertaking), I couldn't ignore a faint sense of wariness. I was feeling unsettled for some reason I couldn't quite put my finger on...perhaps because I have come to find that simple tasks like this in my life are never that EASY. My nerves calmed a bit when we got on the bypass going in the right direction. Also, because I had a window seat, almost no one had noticed the Gringa (that's me referring to myself in the third person) trying to pass as a Chilean.

About five minutes later, the bus attendant moved down the aisle to collect bus fares and tickets. I confidently handed over my ticket. I may be a white girl, but your bus system does not fool me! The ensuing conversation has been translated (the original exchange was his very native Chilean Spanish versus my very blatantly not-native Chilean Spanish):
Ticket collector: "Where are you going?"
A very flushed Gringa: "Coelemu."
Ticket collector: "No you're not. You're going to Tomé. This is the wrong bus. You need to get off."

I had tried to whisper to conceal my blunder, but literally every passenger was staring. Once again, cover blown.  With that, the ticket collector obnoxiously whistled as the driver, who pulled over on the side of the bypass. I squeezed passed lots of foreboding Chilean commuters, and got off. I suppressed the urge to throw a rock at the bus at it pulled away with a hundred sets of eyes still shamelessly staring at me. I also noticed 500 Chilean pesos and a great deal of embarrassment too late, that "Tomé" was advertised in all-caps on all sides of the bus with numerous neon flashing signs. Oops.

Sidenote: Chileans commonly use the word "flaite" (pronounced Fly-tay) to describe sectors that are trashy, poor, and drug-infested. Every time we drive pass a rundown neighborhood of projects, Gloria points and says "Flaite!"

It wasn't until the bus pulled away that I realized that I was standing in front of a neighborhood on the outskirts of the city that Gloria had labeled as "Flaite" on more than one occasion. And across the street? A jail.  Happy birthday...to me.  For what seemed like the longest eleven minutes (and this is no estimate, as I was checking the time every few seconds) of my life, I waited. Four or five buses passed before I saw the rickety bus with the cardboard sign on the dashboard that read "Coelemu." Every seat was taken. I had an assigned seat on my ticket but I wasn't about to make a scene asking someone to get up for me. Instead, the bus attendant took my ticket, saw that I had reserved a seat, and took it upon himself to shout down the aisle at the person in seat 9 to get up for the Gringa. I quickly assured him that I would stand and that I didn't want to disturb anyone. Now everyone was staring (story of my Chilean life).

That dumb man would just not let the situation go. He eagerly insisted for a few minutes that the very annoyed female passenger in seat 9 move. I fought back. He finally shrugged in resignation...and then produced a cushion from the overhead storage. He placed the cushion on the huge hump at the front of the aisle next to the bus driver and dragged me over to it. Reluctantly, I obliged. I began to instantly regret my decision to resist the assigned seat, as I was now elevated, riding in reverse, and facing an entire bus full of unblinking Chileans, all fixated on the new American spectacle before them. With an hour to go, I tried to act a little tired and a little bored and stare at nothing in particular. Still, it was as if I were the conductor of an orchestra sans the instruments and musical instruction.

After a few minutes, one man broke the silence with the question that was most likely on everyone's minds, "Gringa, where are you from?"

"Coelemu?" I offered, knowing full well that this answer never suffices.

"No," says the man, "Where are you from?"

I give in, "The United States." I tried to mutter. Not that it mattered...I had the rapt attention of the entire bus...including, to my horror, that of the bus driver.

"Ah, yes. So you speak English. I know how to speak in English."

In a disinterested tone, I said, "Oh, yeah?"

He then clears his throat and says proudly, "Ho me gowd."

Umm...pardon? He repeats himself a few times, clearly getting frustrated with me.

I finally realize what he was trying to say, "Ah. Yes. OH. MY. GOD."

He grins and says, "Yes! Ho me gowd!"

Teacher mode kicked in immediately. "OOOOH. MYYYY. GODDD." I fed it back to him, slowly, modulating so he could see how I was forming the correct sounds. He repeated after me and I noticed many of the other passenger silently trying to form the words themselves. I tried and again and again, and by the time he finally got the correct pronunciation down, the entire bus was echoing with a chorus of "Oh me gods!" Every single commuter (and the easily distracted bus driver) had joined in on my informal English lesson. Perhaps I hadn't been so far off base with that orchestra analogy, after all...