When the wheels of my plane touched down at the Dallas/Fort Worth airport a big smile came on my face. I was back in the US!!! It was just like a scene from Lost were the plane lands and Jack is no longer on the island. Already my CSC experience is starting to seem more like a dream rather than a reality.. The second observation is that while we were the foreigners in Puerto Montt, it really did not seem like it. This was especially true in the beginning when we moved in bigger groups. We tended to be our own little island of English speaking people. I often wondered what the local Puerto Montt people thought of us. I remember feeling uncomfortable on day 2 when we went to a local restaurant for lunch. With Piera, Eric, Dan, and Marcia we were a group of 16 very loud English speaking people sitting in the middle of a busy restaurant. I remember thinking to myself that if I was back home in a restaurant with a table of loud non-English speaking people nearby that I would not like it. I thought I’d learn Spanish while I was here, but that was not the case. Often people did not understand what I said in Spanish. When people said something I actually understood it too me too long to comprehend what they said. I think I was better at speaking Spanish before I left on my CSC assignment than I am now. Some team member could speak a little Spanish, but for the most part we got along knowing a few basic phrases, like hello, goodbye, please, check, and how much. In the latter case the answer was often communicated using a calculator. Ordering lunch or dinner was often done by pointing at a menu. When ordering food I always assumed the next question was what do you want to drink? When ordering fast food there was always a third question: here or to go? Generally I would answer by motioning. Whenever we were asked something we did not understand we just smiled with a confused look on our face. I did a lot of smiling in Chile. I often tried to make an educated guess at whether the answer should be yes or no. I could usually tell if the answer was right or wrong based on what they did next. Generally if they asked another question it meant I gave the wrong answer. Asking questions to people was even more difficult than answering. Some team members like Evan would use their smart phone to translate a few simple words and then point to them. In general the people of Puerto Montt did not speak English, but they were very willing to try to understand us and communicate with us. Maybe that's a function of being a tourist town, but I think it was more of function of their friendly nature. Well, should be boarding that final flight soon. That it for now. As I start this entry Day 30 has just started. I am 28,000 feet high, somewhere between Santiago and the equator. My CSC adventure is over. The only thing left is the last 18 hours of my 26 hour trip home. Hopefully I’ll be able to post this entry when I reach the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport. In the afternoon of Day 26 Evan, Gayathri, and I delivered our detailed presentation and executive presentation to Canales. We delivered them a day early because Cristóbal had to go out of town. In the morning on Day 27 we trained the Canales staff on how to build an M&E system (Monitoring and Evaluation). On Day 28 we met some of the Canales staff for a small breakfast and then proceeded to the Final CSC presentation where each team provided a summary of their project. After the Final CSC presentation many of us went to a Peruvian restaurant with Aldo and Marcia. Later in the evening we had a dual purpose celebration in my room: to celebrate completing our CSC presentations and to celebrate Zuzana’s birthday. Zuzana’s birthday was actually on Day 29, but we went by the start of Day 29 in Slovakia. On day 29 we went our separate ways. In all likelihood I will never see most of them again. The experience was over far too quickly for most of us, but that’s what made the experience so special. Knowing that we only have 23 or 24 days to develop a solution for something we knew very little about on day 1 was a large part of the experience. It forced us to learn how to deal with the cultural and personal differences of our individual teams and the bigger team. Knowing we only had 3 weekends to experience of the beauty and wonder of the Puerto Montt area motivated us to be very active on the weekends. It’s really hard to explain the CSC experience without living it. That’s why when I get home I’m going to encourage my wife to apply for CSC, although I’ll also warn her that CSC is not for everyone. I was lucky; Chile 5 was a great team and Canales was a pleasure to work with. The best way I can describe my CSC experience is to say that on a interpersonal level it was very similar to high school, except think about squeezing your 4 years of high school into 4 weeks. Just as in high school there were “classmates” I got to know extremely well and others I barely got to know. Just as in high school I developed some close friendships. Just as in high school, I also knew that after “graduating” we would go our separate ways. Unlike high school, I know that the likelihood that I will ever see any of my CSC classmates again is low. Some of us may keep in touch, but I doubt we’ll ever have that CSC reunion that we talked about at the party. In my case, the 4 week nature of the assignments seemed to intensify the friendships that were developed. This made saying goodbye more difficult than I expected. Perhaps it was a bad idea to have a party in my room on Day 28. When Dee suggested it I thought we were all going out somewhere afterwards, but as it turns out we did not. That meant I watched my new friends leave one by one until there was nothing left but a bunch of dirty dishes, balloons, confetti, and me. Somehow as each person left it became more apparent that our CSC assignment was really over. After everyone left I finished cleaning up and tried to go to sleep, but I couldn’t. I started to debate whether CSC really is a life changing event. If it is, what does that mean? How will it change my pre-CSC life? Will I be bored going back to my normal job? Will I miss the city life? Will I now want to travel the world? Will I ever visit any of my CSC friends? If I do will the friendship seem the same? Will I ever come back to Puerto Montt? If I do, will it be the same? Many questions were rushing through my head. Unfortunately I had (and still have) very few answers. I guess time will tell. If I did not like watching everybody slowly leave my room on Day 28, then Day 29 was not going to be much better. We left the hotel in waves. I got up to see the first group off because I did not get a chance to say goodbye to Julia, Colin, and Waran the night before. The first wave left around 7:00 am. It had Julia, Tricia, Dee, and Zuzana. The second wave left around 9:45. It had Waran, Kapil, Masahiro, and Gayathri. The final wave left around 2:30. It had Colin, Anjana, Evan, and me. The flights out of Puerto Montt were delayed by two hours. That caused problems with my connecting flight. While I was working that out Colin slipped away again without saying goodbye. The secure and unsecured sides of the airport were separated by clear glass. We did recreate the Spock/Kirk hand scene in the end of the Star Trek II movie. Anjana, Evan, and I waited with Aldo and Marcia until it was time for me to report to the boarding area. After passing thru security we parted. Anajan and Evan went to their gate and I went to mine (originally all three of us were on the same flight, but mine was switched to get me to Santiago on time). Now, here I sit: on a plane heading home. It feels great, but at the same time it feels sad. Well the topic of this was supposed to be miracles do happen because Evan and I actually learned to compromise today :). Somehow I think the tsunami warning trumps that. Yes I know everybody is probably saying, crazy IBMer doing his blog as a potential tsunami is approaching. Have no fear, if a wave develops it is an hour or so away. Prior to today the going theory has been that Puerto Montt is relatively safe because it is in a protected bay. Well at least that was the theory until I spoke to Masahiro at little while ago. Coming from Japan, he is fairly tsunami savvy. Things are a little eery here. Some of the team members are getting tsunami warnings on their cell phones. The police are driving down the road announcing something. The only word I understand is tsunami. I've also gotten an email from SantiagoUSA about the warning. We just had a team meeting with Aldo and Marcia. Aldo is the primary contact for 2 of our sub-teams. They assured us that there are several islands that are between Puerto Montt and any wave. There is little chance of any real danger. My room is lower than the official safety threshold. In theory I am supposed to move up to the 8th floor. I might do so as the estimated 1st wave time approaches. Now back onto the work topic. We worked on our presentations the last two days. Today we've finished creating our detailed presentation. We present it tomorrow afternoon. We give an education session Thursday morning. We give our final presentation on Friday. We are more or less done with creating all the presentation materials. There is another presentation that we need to deliver as part of our final package. That has been created as well. There is still some additional work that we need to do to document our meeting minutes, but we are definitely in the home stretch now. Today I noticed that some of the mountains by Puerto Montt now have snow on them. They look very nice. It's strange that in Owego we are moving from winter to spring and here they are moving from summer to fall. I'm not going to be all messed up when I get back home. Oh, by the way. Those are not tsunami waves. The waves just happened to be rough today so I took some pictures of them. Well. time to wander up to the 8th floor. Just about 10 minutes from the predicted arrival time if I am reading the email I received correctly.
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