The First Week of Work - Alison's Perspective

A dark storm has blown in and "Mission Chile" has become turbulent.

In retrospect, I had a hint of what was to come when I received the agenda for my first day 100% in Spanish. But here is the story of my first week at the Deloitte Santiago office...

My first two meetings were with the admin folks in HR and Consulting to complete the standard documentation (e.g., Visa stuff, Code of Conduct, technology, etc.) and all of it was in Spanish, which didn't phase me because everyone spoke to me slowly and clearly, and I completely understood what was required. By 11 AM I was delivered to the area where the Strategy & Operations (S&O) group sits and met my buddy, Claudia (who is Chilean but lived in the US for a number of years, did her MBA in Europe and worked in Denmark where she met her husband, so she speaks English quite well). She actually told me that she was instructed to speak to me only in Spanish (which was my second hint that something was brewing), but was lovely and helped me by translating when I didn't understand.

Claudia then took me to meet one of the two Partners that run S&O here. As soon as Claudia introduced me to him, he said something to me really fast and in a very think Chilean accent. I thought I knew what he asked me, but wasn't sure - I was a bit fried from three hours of Spanish so far that day, plus a little intimidated to meet this guy, and I second guessed my reaction and didn't answer him. At this point, he threw his hands up in the air and said "What am I going to do with someone who doesn't speak Spanish?" in perfect English. Then he asked me "What is your plan to become fluent in a few weeks?". I was so taken aback, I didn't know what to say - I explained that I had 9 weeks of Spanish classes before coming (two hours per week), and was to continue classes ASAP here in Santiago once HR is able to coordinate them for me. Claudia stepped in at this point with a number of things she thought I could help with - some proposals and projects that were required in English, and other ways that we could leverage my expertise and get around this temporary issue, but it was a brutal first meeting.

In typical Alison fashion (and if you know me well you'll know exactly what I'm talking about), my first reaction was to blame myself for this situation. Here I am in another continent - I've uprooted my entire family (husband, kids, pets), rented out our house (which we have spent loads of blood, sweat and tears renovating, not to mention money), taken a huge career risk by leaving a great job in Toronto, sold a ton of our possessions for a huge discount, etc. - and now I'm completely useless (apparently) to the office here because my Spanish skills are not up to par.

The same Partner called me into his office about an hour later and to talk about some more constructive ideas for getting me up to speed, including full immersion - I am to attend as many meetings as possible to get my ear tuned to Chilean Spanish and I am to speak only in Spanish (even if it is wrong). The entire department now has the mandate to only speak to me in Spanish. I attend 3-4 meetings in Spanish each day and am working on two proposals (in Spanish). I have lunch with different sub groups in my department and have awkward kindergarten-level conversations with them about things I know the verbs to say - like where do you live in Santiago, do you have kids, how long have you worked at Deloitte, etc. It is humiliating and exhausting. I have absolutely gone from being a high performing consulting professional in Toronto, to being pretty useless. To make matters worse, my Canadian computer's hard drive is dead, so I have no access to my files or archived emails - a resolution is in the works but is slow coming. On the bright side, many of the junior staff and two of the female Managers I work with have been quite lovely and supporting. One of them even invited us (including Jeremy and the kids) to a picnic on Sunday, which was wonderful... but it really has been a completely different welcoming than I expected.

On the home front things have been rough going too. We had a temporary nanny this week, as our full-time one can't start until next week. Both kids got a terrible cold and fever (and passed a lower grade version to us)... so they were touch and go all week. Each day I left to a chorus of crying boys, who were clinging to me and wiping their snotty noses all over my suits. A wheel on our stroller broke, so the nanny had difficulty taking the kids to the park with one flat tire (but did anyway). One day William purposely locked himself in one of the bedrooms in the hotel, kept leaving the hotel room and going into the hallway and threw up (after a coughing fit) all in one day... so we came home to an irate Spanish speaking nanny.

We are also still homeless and Hasso is still in the dog hotel. We changed our housing strategy after walking to the two houses in Santa Maria de Manquehue and finding that they are completely removed from the city - we couldn't even push the stroller from the park to the house (for the Hollywood one) as the hill was too steep, so there was no way our middle aged, portly nanny was going to be able to do that. Also, we were increasingly nervous that William and Jackson would need to take a bus to school/daycare. So, we revisited one of the runner up houses in Old Vitacura that was really overpriced, and put in an offer that was accepted. We are now neck deep in the BS of contracts and payments for the house, but are hoping to move in next weekend. The house is 1 block from Alianza Francesa and numerous parks, Jardin Infantils (daycares), bakeries, grocery stores, gyms, transit, etc. so although it doesn't have the view, it is still in a fantastic neighborhood and fits our lifestyle much better. If you want to see where we'll be living, reference the map at http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=110908962556855004094.00049131af458e56d0057&ll=-33.393272,-70.582159&spn=0.010534,0.015407&t=h&z=16. The house is at the corner of Espoz and La Perouse.

AND, Jeremy starts traveling for work this week (but only to Vina del Mar and is driving home each night for all but one night)... but next week he's gone for the entire week to Copiapo and also back to Canada. On the bright side, I am hoping he can bring back loads of maple syrup, Children's Tylenol, and some hard liquor to help us get through the next few months. Maybe he can even take back my dead laptop to get fixed.

Funny quotes/situations from this week:

1) I came home from my first day at work and invited William to go swimming with me, because I had a rough day and needed to do something fun. He asked me why my day was rough, and I said there was a mean person at work. He said "Mommy, not again?!!! This always happens to you!" So funny... what have things come to when your four year old becomes your shrink?

2) On Saturday night we were having dinner together as a family and Jeremy says, "this is so nice - for once no one is crying, or fighting, or yelling and we are having a civilized meal together". As if on cue, William (who just chugged his entire glass of milk in about 2 seconds) throws up his entire dinner, in a waterfall of milk. Ouch.

Hopefully things look up this week! Luckily in all the disasters that happened last week, no one was seriously injured... for that I am thankful. We can only go up from here!