An amazing phenomenon happens around the 1.5-year mark...

...Suddenly, life is normal. Mundane, even. You walk through the same neighborhood to work every morning. Days pass and you forget your other world exists. You forget to call your family; anyone you’re not confronted with in your routine is pushed deep in the recesses of your mind.

Even things that were very abrasive to you when you arrived as an outsider have gradually been worked into this new normal. Struggling to communicate still happens, but subsides, becomes less frequent, and no longer feels difficult. You’re accustomed to converting Celsius to Fahrenheit, pesos to dollars, kilometers to miles; more often than not, you don’t need to convert at all to get the gist. Even among other foreigners you stop using words that are strictly American, like grocery store and college and automatically use supermarket and university instead.

The things that were initially special have become commonplace. You get used to taking the bus to the beach every weekend to see your boyfriend, even though the ocean was never a normal part of your scenario in your other world. You watch the sun peer over the mountains from your bedroom window each morning, but this sight no longer floors you. Walking or biking several miles a day is comfortable, and riding in a car feels like a luxury.  The vendors selling watermelon and juice out of a shopping cart on the street is no longer a quirky novelty, and neither are the vibrant fuchsia flowers that climb up houses and over walls and graze the sidewalk.

And then, every so often, a jarring moment sends you back to reality, reminds you: that the sidewalk you’re on is a world away from the one you were walking down 2 years ago, 5 years ago, 10 years ago. That you’re in Chile. That you’re not home.

The reality check is hard. You feel a lump in your throat start to grow as everything floods back: that you can’t give your mom a hug, that people don’t “get” you like they do in your other world, that your bank account is much emptier now than it was 2 years ago, that you’ll never quite fit in as a local here.

Maybe you cry in your bed for a few minutes that night, but the next morning you’ll wake up again to a strange new normal.