Kyle Hepp

June 9, 2009

No, I unfortunately don’t have any pictures of me getting run over. Nor do I have pictures of my lifeless body flying 20 meters through the air or my head on the pavement bleeding everywhere.

However, I do have a couple shots of me at the hospital. Not nearly as exciting, I know.

This is me the day they started letting me use the computer. MISTAAAAAAAKE:

My last day at the Clinica Santa Maria:

You can still see a little bit of my black eye. And my hair looks like that in part because the nurses blow dried it and didn’t know how to style short hair and in part because there’s blood crusted in my hair cut. EW.

Please don’t judge me for the sweatpants and flip flops. I can’t wear tight clothes on my knees right now and my toes are so bruised I can’t wear closed toed shoes either.

The bruise looked MUCH worse in person. My leg was green and bruised down to my ankle.

34 Comments

June 8, 2009

Here are other people who have done this group blog, feel free to join in!

Margaret at Cachando Chile: First Impressions of Santiago Chile (Santiago, 1991)

Clare at Clare Says: First Impressions (of Chile) (Rancagua, 1996)

Vicki at Futalandia: Chile September 2006- First Impressions (Santiago and Chile’s deep south, 2006)

Lydia at Just Smile and Nod: First Impressions of Chile (Santiago and Valparaíso)

Abby at Abby’s Line: Thoughts on my First Day in Chile (Santiago, January 2007)

Eileen at bearshapedsphere: Pucha I don’t speak Cellphone! (Santiago, April 2004)

Emily.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I came to Chile the summer in between 8th and 9th grade, so I was maybe 13 or 14 years old. That would have made the first time I stepped foot on Chilean soil to be more or less in the year of 1997 or 1998 (Mom, can you confirm?). Don’t quote me on that because I’m not totally sure.

My first thoughts upon arriving to Chile, were very similar to my first thoughts upon being ran over by a car the other day.

“No way!!! Is this really happening?”

I was overwhelmed by the fact just that my mom had, indeed, made me get on the plane. We always spoke so half haphazardly of me studying abroad that I didn’t think it would actually happen. But, sure enough, I got on the plane, smiled kindly at the flight attendants who spoke to me in English and then got off the plane on the Chilean end where my host family, and future First Daughter of Chile, Natalia Compagnon, were waiting for me. They had a sign that said, “Kyle Hepp?” and once we had confirmed that I was indeed Kyle Hepp, they ushered me to their car where we sat in silence for the entire drive back to, not their house in Puente Alto, but the tia’s house in Nunoa. The drive felt like an eternity after my all-night flight, combined with totally cliche teenage angst about the language barrier. This was also pre-Costanera highway days, so the drive probably did take a good hour from the airport.

As seems to be a common trend with these gringa First Impressions of Chile, somehow I didn’t quite grasp what was being said and failed to realize that the house we were staying at for the weekend wasn’t where I’d be living full time. We arrived in Nunoa and I unpacked. And then someone told me to repack but I didn’t understand. So she started doing it for me. I grasped that she wanted me to put all my things back in my suitcase but I had no clue why. I did as told and didn’t ask any questions — not that I could have if I wanted to!

After that I realized that I was in deeper than I had thought. I got scared and just decided to hide in my room to try out a little theory — if I slept long enough eventually I’d wake back up in an English-speaking country with my mom and brother where nobody tried to invade my personal space with a slobbery kiss on the cheek. Clearly that idea failed, you know, since teleporting hadn’t yet been invented.

Other first impression descriptions that don’t flow coherently in a blog post.

~They offered me torta. I got very excited, because I knew that vocab word — torta means cake! EEHHH, not so much. Torta meant flaky pastry type stuff, filled with dulce de leche, which I hated upon first bite.

~WTF is an alcachofa?!? Quick, run to Spanish-English dictionary, look up that word. Yeaaaaah, I didn’t even know what an artichoke was in English. I was in for a looooooooooong couple of months.

~Little kids don’t know what “Speak clearly and slowly” really means.  As Doctor Cox from Scrubs would say, “They’re loud, you can’t understand them… They’re like tiny cab drivers.” Taking to tiny little people under the age of 5 is detrimental to one’s confidence in language skills.

5 Comments

June 7, 2009

You’re probably wondering if I will ever stop writing about this accident.

I don’t think so.  I got ran over people. Pounded into the ground like a Kyle Pancake. SMOOSHED, hardcore.

Sometimes I can’t even believe some of the things that happen to me. I wonder if my entire life actually a joke/movie like The Truman Show.  But, then I realize, these knees in pain are real, buddy. So very real I could vomit.

I can’t stop trying to piece together the parts that I don’t remember. Everything is crystal clear up to the moment my foot steps off the sidewalk and then BAM. Nada. That’s nothing, in case you didn’t get that.

While it may sound really silly…I suddenly realized…”Hot damn, I’m just a mere mortal. This sucks!” I could have died. I really could have died.

I said to S. today, “Holy s**t I got ran over.”

And he responded, “Si weon.”

Loooooooooong pause.

“SI WEON!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

I don’t think the gravity of what happened has set in with either of us yet. I also can’t believe I wrote a blog post about it so soon after it happened. My second entry about the accident was much more coherent, but I wrote the first one in live concert from the hospital. It’s funny because a lot of people have emailed to tell me that they heard I got ran over so the first place they looked to see what was going on was my blog. And that they felt better once they saw my blog post about the whole thing because I sounded “normal.” Yes, lots of people have said that so don’t feel bad if you were one of them.

However, when I read back through that blog post I feel like I sound anything but normal! Maybe I just feel that way because I don’t actually remember writing the blog post. Actually almost the entire first half of last week is just lost to me. I don’t remember getting smooshed by a car Sunday night. I don’t remember talking on the phone to several of my friends. I don’t remember getting stitches. I don’t remember sharing a room with a swine flu patient. I don’t remember the guy who hit me coming to visit. I don’t remember S. getting mad at him. So many important details have been blacked out! I had a whole week off of work and I’m sure I got to rest but I don’t remember much of it.  It’s a very creepy sensation to have lost nearly an entire 7 days of my existence.  I want that time back!

PS. Tomorrow I’ll be back on the computer like normal and will get you back if I owe you an email, sorry!!!

34 Comments