Day 3 - January 26

Day 3 - January 26
Quiet drinks?!?
Australia Day in Chile
Had the beer that Sjoerd owed me

        I woke up homesick on the morning of the Australia Day and desperately called the Australian consulate in Chile to see if they knew where I might find a congregation of my flock, but they had no answer for me. The lady on the phone hung up with a cheery, “Happy Australia Day!”
        “...Happy... Australia Day...”, I replied, my voice nearly breaking.
        I'd had the idea to call them stashed away for days as a backup plan in case no other options materialised, the day stretched out before me bare and lonely. Mélanie found a free walking tour we could go on, we were in Santiago by this point. The city reminded me of the Melbourne I'd spent a week in at the start of 2011, all leafy campuses and clean public transport.

        Sjoerd had told his parents back in The Netherlands about drinking challenge, and his dad had told him to tell me that if I made it to the end of January 'on par' (having used as many or fewer days as there had been weeks) he'd send money from The Netherlands for Sjoerd to buy me a beer.
        When I had decided to set the challenge for myself, I'd announced it publicly on my blog (hahaha 'publicly' – a press release to my 800 Facebook friends). I laid down the rules and gave a few thoughts on how I thought the whole thing might go.
        I did this partly to keep myself accountable, and partly because I had – and still do have to some extent – a very inflated sense of self-importance. I played it up like a boxing promoter hyping a fight, and challenged people to bet against me fancying that waves of scoffing disbelief would ripple through the halls of power when news of my great challenge broke out. Embarrassingly though, no one gave a fuck. Sjoerd's Dad taking an interest in my self-important affairs meant the world to me, and since this was the last day we'd be travelling together, and it was looking like I was going to make my monthly target, he bought me the beer then.

        We drank with Mélanie and the two English guys from the hostel in Arica.
        “Quiet Drinks?!?” reads to me like a desperate sigh of disbelief. Of “Who ARE these people?!?” Of wanting to be anywhere else.

Click here to read the next part - Day 4 - February 9th