For six years, every morning, I've sent my friends a Question of the Day.
It's one of the better habits I've stumbled into. But only during my semester abroad in Santiago, Chile, did I reap its most valuable insight.
It started as a quiet rebellion. Back in high school, it annoyed me how people maintained Snapchat streaks with blurry photos of ceilings, just to keep a number alive. During the pandemic, when real conversation became a luxury, I decided to turn something monotonous into a means of checking-in on my friends to get to know them better. The questions are never grand or life-altering. Nothing that would make a philosopher lean forward in their chair. Just consistent, reliable little nudges that show up on your phone while you're brushing your teeth or half-asleep in bed.
Who’s the funniest person you know?
What's a topic you could give a TED talk about?
Which country has the best flag?
A quiet, daily roll call.
Somewhere along the way, it became the theme of my high school graduation speech. It turned random seatmates during GW orientation week into people I fully expect to see at my wedding. And fast forward to now, as embarrassing as it is to admit I am a 21-year-old man who uses Snapchat, I still send my questions without thinking about it.
That's the thing about routines. Once they work, they tend to run themselves. But Santiago doesn’t leave much room for autopilot.
One moment I’m coming home from class, walking awe-struck in front of the snow-peaked Andes. Then I turn a corner into a street humming with music, a feria with dozens of vendors lined up, and conversations that spill onto the sidewalk. There’s no clean narrative here, no straight line from point A to point B, just a city that keeps improvising. The mountains are grounding, but everything beneath them feels in motion. Plans change, nights stretch, strangers become friends at restaurants like seating assignments on the first day of school. Suddenly the day you thought you had mapped out looks nothing like the one you actually lived. Living in Santiago isn’t about getting your bearings–it’s about letting go of them.
Before the semester started, I slipped a question into the queue: What's the first thing I should do in Chile? A good friend of mine, fresh off a semester in Italy, snapped back.
"Build a routine,” he said. “That's how you survive a semester abroad."
And he’s not wrong. After all, I can credit so much personal growth to the ‘routine’ of sending a question every day. But between translating lecture phrases mid-sentence on five different campuses, nursing raw hands from the rock climbing team I impulsively joined, and sitting across from diplomats at my internship nodding along to things I'd only ever read in textbooks, I started to question whether surviving is too low of a bar. Sure, I can survive by following my color-coded Google Calendar to the minute. But if not for saying ‘yes’ to spontaneous weekends in Brazil, or stopping to talk to the churro stand owner outside of the metro stop, or taking a group dance lesson in the comuna plaza on a Thursday night, how would this semester be any different from a semester in the District?
I had come to Chile with the goal to do as much as possible. To maximize every day, and leave with nothing on the table. Such a goal demands the exhausting, but ever-so rewarding practice of making room for things beyond the printed schedule. To ask myself a question in the morning:
How will today be different?
And like everything else here, your interpersonal relationships don't happen on the margins anymore. Since Snapchat is a culturally American thing, I seldom have the option to ask, “Can I add you to my QOTD?”
And that’s probably for the better. I've had to learn a different way of showing up. In Santiago, connection happens at the table. Lunch here, for instance, is an opportunity to recharge your relationships as much as it is an opportunity to fuel the body. That has made it an imperative to follow through on "we should hang out" instead of letting it dissolve into good intentions. To say yes to the Harry Potter-themed café even when it sounds ridiculous, especially when it sounds ridiculous. To stop performing connection and start doing it.
Asking a daily question has given me more than I could’ve expected. They still keep me close to people I care about from five thousand miles away. They’ve trained me to be comfortable being curious. Every once in a while, when I hesitate before asking a stranger for directions, I catch myself thinking, I’ve definitely asked sillier questions than this.
Here's what Santiago clarified: routines are useful right up until they become a ceiling. A good routine can carry you through a semester, a friendship, a career. It can also, if you let it, quietly convince you that your schedule is too full to explore, that the long meal isn't worth it, or that the dance lesson is a logistical inconvenience rather than a memory you'll tell people about for years. In my case, it had started to convince me that sending a silly question every morning was the same thing as actually knowing someone.
In a couple months, I’ll have the opportunity to bring the spirit of Santiago to the District, and be extra present for my friends back home. But in the meantime, I still ask them a Question of the Day, and I’m also trying not to miss the ones the Day asks me.
Raphi Rebucas
Spring 2026
GW Chile - Spanish Track (GW Study Program)
Columbian College of Arts and Science
Political Science & Peace Studies Double Major