D-I-E Chile

There were situations where I felt that the Chileans take things more personally, they are more formal and expect people to always ask “how are you?” (both in person and in written messages). My landlord even got a bit uppset once when I didn´t ask how he´s doing. So, also the e-mails I received from e.g. school were much more personal than the ones I receive in Finland. They always started like “Dear Justiina, I hope you are fine.” 

It felt a bit weird that persons I´ve never met called me “dear” and the fact that you shoul always ask “how are you?” feels sometimes unnecessary since the answer is always “good” and in most of the situations they really aren´t that interested to hear how you are, it´s just a habit and a way to show politeness. But I don´t know if that always feels so polite to me since I´m used to the finnish way when you don´t ask every person how they are, but when you ask you tend to have even a small chat with the person and mention something about how´s it going in school or work etc.

But I don´t mind the habit, it just took a while before getting use to it and remembering to ask it. Especially because at the same time I had to get use to people coming to kiss you on the cheek when you meet them. Many times a local entered the room he or she actually kissed everyone in the room on the cheek, said hello and asked how are you (two men just shake hands), when in Finland you would just shout Hi, and take a seat. If even that.