Well, my case is packed, my boarding pass printed off and now I'm just waiting for a colleague to get in touch with a view to lunch. It's been a wonderful three weeks, made easier by the use of Skype to keep in touch with the family. It's a boon and, like I said before, I never want to travel under any other circumstances again. CNN Chile has been running the same four or five non-stories since 9am this morning. It's great for my Spanish; if there's anything you didn't understand first time you get another twenty bites of the cherry before the sheer vacuousness of the reporting starts to melt your brain.
It's been interesting on a personal level, too. I was wondering how easy it was going to be to continue not to smoke, and it turned out to be an awful lot easier than I thought. Since I've been here the country has passed legislation bringing the anti-tobacco law into line with the over-the-top European version, though I don't know when it'll come into effect. I'm still very pro-choice in this matter (it'd be grossly hypocritical to be anything else with my history) and feel that if people wish to smoke then they should have facilities as comfortable as those now enjoyed by non-smokers. However, we know how insensitive legislative juggernauts operate once they've got a following wind. Whatever happens, governments will want to recuperate ex-smokers' lost tax income somehow, so expect renewed campaigns to get everyone to buy chewing gum, patches and the like instead of suggesting they just read Allen Carr's book which is, basically, all you need in order to stop smoking for good. I know what I'm talking about, here.
It's now nearly mid-day and it's yet another gloriously sunny autumn day. I'll miss pretty much everything about Santiago save for the pollution...
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