ESL with Jannah

I’m sitting here in a creaky wooden chair in one of my favorite coffee shops in the charming neighborhood of Barrio Lastarria in Santiago. January’s summer breeze is floating in lazily from the open door. I’m enveloped by a humming marriage of fellow patrons’ Chilean Spanish and British-accented English. I’m picking apart the remains of a bagel that they loaded with salmon, but really skimped on the cream cheese. And I’m reflecting on my first 6 months of Chile.           Living abroad in Santiago has not been glamorous, and don’t believe anyone who tells you it is. What you see on social media is a curated second in a day filled with 86,399 other seconds (source: Google) of sore feet, under-caffeination, over-priced restaurant lunches, lack of air-conditioning, homesickness, loneliness, insecurity, and more miserable things I can’t think of right now. Without a doubt, this has been the most emotionally and mentally challenging 6 months of my life. It’s...

Hi. Welcome. This has been a long time coming, I guess. I'm a "writer" who doesn't write, like a lazy, inflexible yogi. I don't know how to think about writing anymore. I don't know how to give words to my thoughts anymore. But here I am, daily both tested and inspired whilst suffering from an overly-caffeinated, overly-stimulated brain. I think it's time I train myself to be more intentional with my thoughts. By this point in the post I had probably already written several paragraphs, then deleted them because they're too serious. I actually just want to be this person who makes you laugh with her snarky remarks and then you realize as you're crying real laugh-tears that, wow, that was actually really deep and poignant. That's a good aesthetic to have. People seem to like it. You see, I suffer from cool-girl syndrome. I just want to be hella chill and endearingly quirky, but in reality that's not me. I have screwed up too many relation...