Some Spanish from the street. I know this means something somewhere to somebody.

After joking that I might just end up being the one girl who moved to Chile and didn’t learn Spanish, I recently told you I’ve finally enrolled in Spanish classes. I know what you’re thinking. Move to Chile, wait four months, then get down to the business of learning the language. Smooth move, Jenn! Well, I have a rationale behind this.

When you move abroad (as with many larger-than-life changes you decide to undertake), you might also discover that there needs to be a new order of operations. You are no longer the person you knew so well a matter of days or weeks or months ago: a person with a lot of friends, who knows her city inside and out, who can get in her car and go whenever she needs to, who can speak the language to anyone, and who can pick up the phone and call her mom/cousin/best friend on an unscheduled whim (and receive said spontaneous calls as well). Well, for a while there, I had to pretty much cross all that off the list or otherwise alter each identifier in significant ways. As you might have guessed, making friends remained at the top of my personal list of how-to-adapt-to-Chile. Sorting out directions, technology, and language skills could all come later.

I still see you, SF, and all the dear friends who live there, when I walk the streets of Santiago.

So I set about Operation Find Friends in Chile. I emailed friends of friends, signed up for women’s professional groups, tracked down spouses in similar situations as mine, and eventually started a TEFL program that would earn me a job as well as new friends. Along the way (and thanks to one of those random emails), I made a dear new friend my very same age, on a similar page in life, and well established in the ESL industry. She taught me how to order my first ever Piscola (evidence below), and as we both happen to be reading/creative writing junkies, she had the brilliant idea of forming our very own writing group. And nothing makes me feel quite so at home as a writing group!

We rallied up two of her other dear friends, who also happen to be poets, and the Language of the Birds was born! Our name appeared fairly obvious to us at that first-ever gathering over my first-ever Piscola. For one, pigeons were darting about the outdoor terrace, one of the poet’s was reading and had in his possession At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’Brien, and I introduced Portlandia’s “Put a Bird On It” video as a must-see. For these, and a few other writerly coincidences, we officially christened ourselves and have been meeting every two weeks ever since in order to give feedback on our respective stories and poems. Leaving the bar scene to, well, the birds, we gather in a most lovely Santiago backyard, where yes, a bird or two has still been known to join us. As you might have guessed, any number of bird/nest/flight-related puns are included among our creative endeavors.

First Piscola = Pisco + Ice + CocaCola and serve.

In addition to the puns, the group has also given me a purpose beyond English vs. Spanish when it comes to language. It has allowed me to rewrite past stories from a new vantage point, and best of all, generate brand new ones that get to take off from the city I’m writing from.

So, now that I have friends, a job, Skype/Gmailvideochat/Google+/FaceTime for communication overseas, and a handle on at least two of the metro lines in this fair city (not to mention the whole moving in with my husband bit!), I knew it was time to learn how to say it all in Spanish. This week, Paolo and Chacha didn’t make an appearance in class, but you know I’ll keep you posted.