Kyle Hepp

Day 10:

The first picture is my office. The second picture is me inside at night wishing I could still be outside working in my office Those are from yesterday, later on I’ll upload Day 11. This whole picture every day and blog every day thing is a lot harder than I had expected!

Anyways, I feel like I have a lot to update since yesterday’s post was a mini…

I have had a great week! An AMAZING week! At my online job, I received not one, but two mini “promotions” or added responsibilities and even a little more money. I am thrilled! Honestly, I never had any idea that I’d start working as a celebrity gossip blogger in Chile. I wasn’t specifically looking for online jobs or anything like that, I just randomly came across the job posting and applied on a whim. I got hired 10 weeks ago as a ghost writer. Aside from writing stories, I’m now selling ads for the website, doing the weekly newsletter and my boss just asked me to be a sort of stand in editor for days when she can’t be around to double check and upload everyone’s posts. I have learned a massive amount about what being a professional blogger is all about (it’s way more work than you can imagine) and I just feel really happy that I have been given all these extra responsibilities. It’s nice to know that my boss trusts me and I take pride in knowing that whatever I do, I do it well. So I just wanted to share that because I’m too thrilled not to tell everyone!

The highlight of my week was going to watch Chile play at Ruby Tuesday’s (yes, I went there twice in one week, hahaha). My husband had an interview near the restaurant and of course he didn’t want to wear his “nerd clothes” to work so I told him I’d meet up with him and bring him a bag filled with his interview outfit if he’d treat me to lunch. After we ate, he left for the interview (which went swimmingly by the way) and I decided to move to the bar to watch the Chile v. Austria because I couldn’t see from the table I was sitting at. The bar was already almost full and there wasn’t a single woman sitting at it. I approached and pulled up a stool and the look on every man’s face pretty much said it all, “WTF is this girl doing trying to join the Boy’s Club?!?” I sat down and ordered the girliest thing I could think of, a coffee drink with whipped cream and chocolate drizzled on top. The guy next to me (obviously assuming that I couldn’t understand him) told his friend, “My wife won’t even let me watch soccer in the house….and she would NEVER go to a bar alone to watch a game!” As if going to a bar alone is some kind of sin that a woman should never commit. Whatever. If those guys don’t want femininity in their boys club than they shouldn’t be sitting there drinking Amaretto Sours! Order a beer, mother trucker, if you want to be macho, don’t try be intimidating by giving me the evil eye so I won’t sit next to you.

The entire first half passed and nobody spoke to me even though they were all conversing amongst themselves. There were two older guys to my left and the guy who had made the wife not going to bars alone comment to my right. I got up to go to the bathroom and asked the old men if they would watch my stuff and save my spot. They obliged and when I got back I asked them how they felt about the game. They were shocked that I spoke Spanish and even more shocked by how much I know about futbol. When I told them where I was from, one of the old man, said, “NO WAY! I thought you were German for sure!” I asked him why and he told me that I speak Spanish too well to be gringo. Europeans always manage the language much better. Talk about a backhanded compliment…jeez! This same guy also told me later on that I did not look older than 15. Seriously, he had no filter.

Anyways, by the end of the game I had the whole bar asking me questions about women’s soccer. Most of them had no idea that the Women’s World Cup even existed and when I told them that the U.S. team is like the Brazil of the men’s World Cup they were so shocked. Someone also wanted to know if the rules for women’s soccer were different so that the females playing wouldn’t get hurt…after all soccer is a violent game, not something that ladies are used to.

I made sure they knew that their idea of women and sports was extremely convoluted.

I’d like to think that I opened a few chauvinistic eyes, but I’m sure they forgot all we talked about before the game was even over. Oh well, you can’t say I didn’t try.