I’m sure that expats everywhere have those days when you all of sudden TRULY wonder just what the hell you’re doing in your host country. Any backwards, freaky, scary or frustrating experience can trigger it and though I have days when I am pretty convinced everyone in this country has got it all wrong, last Wednesday I hit a limit with Chile and was about one online purchase away from hopping the first one-way flight back to SFO, bulldog in tow (naturally).

I’ll spare you the details and play-by-play’s of what happened that consequently pushed me over the edge, but suffice it to say that it entailed Chileans and their oh-so-wonderful ways behind the wheel and on the road. I made detailed references to some examples of their bad habits back in June but on Wednesday it was so bad, so rude, so frustrating and so unfair that I couldn’t imagine living another day in this country, with these people who apparently go out of their way to make you feel bad. Mind you, this is how it felt on Wednesday when it was literally happening just like that: some guy going out of his way to make me feel bad for something that wasn’t my fault. Do people like him really exist out there and why is it that I have to have the misfortune of crossing paths with them? To make matters worse, it would seem that about 85% of the men in this country are convinced that women are hands down horrible drivers. So you can imagine my horror, my raw, irrational frustration with this guy who not only wanted to make me feel bad but who also went wild insulting my gender!

Of course there are all kinds of drivers and the term “bad driver” is also really relative. I happen to think that someone who manages to maneuver around cars in order to cross a recently-turned-red light is a pretty bad driver. Maybe some idiot guy would think that’s a “capo” (capable) driver. Po-tay-toe, Po-tah-toe. Back home I happened to think anyone could fall into the bad driver category: me, you, women, men, African Americans, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Malaysian, Greek, Jews, Italians – and so on. I was an equal opportunity labeler of bad drivers and gave no regard to sex, religion, race or political party. The problem in Chile then is that it’s SUCH A HOMOGENEOUS country they can only categorize and label based on sex: man = good driver; woman = bad driver. This annoying belief which happens to be embedded into the psyche of the general male population here is what truly had me at the point of packing my bags less than a week ago.

When I lived back home, I remember meeting expats from Chile who had relocated in California because of jobs, schools or in general, in an attempt to better themselves one way or another. Many of them found California, the Bay Area, to be really backwards. Gringos were considered “cold” and “too busy” to bother with each other. We were the type who seemed to only care about money and our jobs and didn’t take time to be with family or with our neighbors. Many were surprised to realize that they would never really know if they had neighbors in their U.S. apartment buildings or not. They were also taken aback by how restrictive California seemed: last call at bars at 1:30 a.m., no smoking anywhere and don’t even THINK about littering or jay walking or a ticket would surely slap you silly across the face (in fact, my mom got a ticket for jay walking once, after having lived there more than 20 years). “Que cuaticos son los gringos!” or basically that we make mountains out of mole hills and dramatize even the smallest of things. So we were square, workaholics who didn’t like to really party, who cared more about our environment (and dogs) than we did about forming bonds with the newly arrived Chileans who were calling California their home. In fact, I remember many Chileans I had met going back home to Chile only to later find out from one of their family members that he or she “just couldn’t adapt to the U.S. way of life.”

Aside from the horrible way Chileans drive and the despicable view on women drivers, my problem with Chile is that I don’t quite get their priorities. What makes them work? What’s really important (and of course I mean besides faith and family because I realize that’s a given here.) In the Bay Area I can tell you it’s about being the most successful, the healthiest, the most giving and socially conscious you can be, the customer is (almost) always right … all that and of course vacations are a big deal to Californians too, whether fancy or simple camping. Many other things are important but these are some examples. What’s a big deal here in Chile? … it’s so bizarre what people will truly give you a hard time about and THAT’S what makes living here so hard sometimes.

Why is it that at Starbucks they make a fuss about giving you a sleeve for your coffee, stating that only customers who order drinks “extra hot” are entitled to said sleeve? What part of their brains makes saying “no” to a customer whose hand is burning such a priority? And what part of their brains justifies offering a whole cup to put under the original cup as the solution? Don’t they know that a cup is much more expensive to the company than the sleeve? What’s the priority there? Who are they making the priority? Why spend the 15 minutes arguing about this when handing a sleeve is all it would take to make the customer happy and to get him out of the employee’s face STAT?

Why is it that when I run on the path designated for bikes (for all of a few seconds so I can run around others who are in the way of my regular path), twice already I’ve had people yell at me to get off since it’s “for bikes only.” Why do they care? Since when are rules so respected here that I need to get yelled at repeatedly for making my way around those who are going a tad slower than me?

Are Chilean societal priorities like restricción vehicular? [In Santiago there is a system known as “restricción vehicular” where private vehicles may not be driven on certain days, defined by the final digit of their license plates. Failure to comply with this restriction is punishable by fines.] See, if I had the legend to when certain things are enforced and when they are disregarded here, I would probably have less and less “F-U Chile, I’m peacing out” moments. In fact, it would make adapting here a much smoother process for expats like me and trust me, it would make us less “weird” to everyone else. If cars have a legend that tells them when they can and can’t be driven depending on the day of the week, I’m sure we can come up with something similar so that I can go about my daily life in a much more relaxed manner.

Here’s what I’m envisioning as regular, daily enforced priorities: