Cachando Chile: a Year in Review

Writing the landmark 100th post is a bit of a daunting task. I had intended to post this on December 1, which I had declared Cachando Chile’s 1-year blogiversary, but with all the hoopla over the Alienating Chileans post (which hit and passed the 100 comments mark that day), followed by an enormous amount of real-life events—you know the kind—all those things that get in the way of blogging, but that end up becoming “blog fodder*’ anyway. (*Eileen gets credit for coining this extremely apropos term).

In honor of this landmark, I wanted to look back over my first year of blogging.

Finding your way into Chile

Today is Cachando Chile’s 1st “blogiversary,” and I had hoped to put up my 100th post today, but I didn’t quite make it. This is number 99, but that’s fine. I was absolutely stunned by the amount and types of response that my recent post “Ways to Alienate a Chilean” received. And now, with a few days to reflect upon it all, it seems only fitting that that post, which details our many and often humorous failed attempts to fit in, be followed by its more positive counterpart…

There are different ways to experience a new culture. I divide them into 3 categories: tourist, missionary, and participant-observer.