In short: The cycle tour is on hold, I’m currently living in Santiago de Chile and working as a teacher at the German school here.
“Framed.”
During my time in Mexico, I was extremely happy to have finally arrived in Latin America and felt very comfortable in the new culture. But at the same time, I had been travelling by bike constantly for two and a half years and felt that I needed a break somehow. So one evening I found myself on a website with job offers for teachers at German schools abroad. I am a teacher, I identify completely with this profession and I am in the fortunate position of being very happy to do it. The German foreign school system had already appealed to me a few years earlier as a possible combination to combine my love of travelling with my work. And now there were suddenly several good-sounding job offers along my rough cycling route through Latin America. I felt a real excitement inside me, told another traveller in the hostel about it straight away and started writing applications the next day.
The journey continued during the application process, of course, and I always had to plan well for video conferences in order to be in a place with a good internet connection. On my last day in Nicaragua – I was still in a hostel on Ometepe – the crucial video conference with the head of the German School Santiago took place. It was the moment when I practically had the job in the bag, apart from all the bureaucratic hurdles that still had to be overcome. From then on, I didn’t just cycle south, but always with the thought of having to arrive in Santiago de Chile at the end of February next year. So I still had about nine months, countless kilometres and many more metres of altitude to go. But stubborn as I was, I naturally wanted to do it all by bike. And I did it in the end, even travelling a considerable distance further south in Chile than just the height of Santiago.
At the German School Santiago.
Is the journey over now? Not really, I’m not back home yet. And even if everything is a bit more steady at the moment, it’s still life in a different environment. I’m constantly discovering new things, I’m learning the Spanish language much more intensively and this expat life still feels like a kind of journey. Even if it does have a regular daily routine. But it’s only temporary. For how long? I don’t know exactly yet.
Arrived
It’s been five months now. In the meantime, I’ve settled in quite well – explored the city a little, managed the first semester at the DS Santiago, mastered the really terribly complicated process of registering with all the Chilean systems (huge thanks to Andrés!), went on little tours with the Beast. It’s great fun to be back in front of students and working with them, even if the whole school organisation is very different to what I know from home. It is definitely a tough challenge – a new adventure.
Am I a Metropolitan now?
It’s good to ‘pause’ the trip and still be here in Latin America at the same time – it doesn’t feel like the end. But I have time to process the experiences of the past three and a half years of travelling. All the new impressions that are currently flooding in are now coming in a little more slowly.
The blog
There’s plenty to discover!
The section of the cycle tour from Colombia to Chile will, of course, be covered here in the blog. In between, however, there will certainly always be something from my current life here on site – after all, there’s a lot to report on. The next adventure is already planned. So far, the Beast has only taken me to the neighbourhood of Santiago. But in the coming summer holidays (end of December to end of February), the ‘remaining tip of the continent’ is on the agenda – by bike from Puerto Mont to Ushuaia. And with the Andes right on my doorstep, it won’t get boring here any time soon.
Do you have any specific questions about how things work here? Write it in the comments, it might be a good seed for another post 😉 ¡Hasta luego!
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