Perfect Meal

The perfect meal: oatmeal with blueberries, cut up orange, and huge cup of tea. Dessert? another orange...but where's my protein? Anyone? Ohh that's right, I left it in the big pot of stew on the middle of the stove (bratwrust, i think it was multiple chicken legs, potatoes, oil, and some water) that I will not be eating tonight.

Viva la vida saludable!

Halfway point

This week is the halfway point of me being in Chile: two months down, two to go! They will fly by though, they always do...

Schedule!

• This week: tango tonight, test tomorrow in politics, field trip in the morning, lazy weekend involving bars, pisco mangos, and more carretiendo 
• Next week Oct 25-31: Papa Lemp arrives on Tuesday, no internship so I can spend the day week with him, Wednesday and Friday classes, weekend in Valparaiso and drinking wine
• November 1-November 7: no school monday and Dad leaves, 2nd-5th group trip to Isla de Pascua (Easter Head Island) then come back Friday for the weekend
• November 8-14: back to reality of school

So basicaly, the next 3 weeks will go by super fast, and then when I come back from Isla, I have about 3 weeks of classes followed by exams, and of course, more traveling at my back account's leisure. This past week came with an Opera in Italian starring (sort of) Becca, studying late, internships, and now a series of stomach pains brought about by my diet I believe. Answer: sleeping a lot, pangs of my tummy, and tea tea tea. Hopefully I'll feel better when my Dad gets here! I'm having him bring me peanut butter and more cardigans.

Papa Lemp coming to Chile!

This took way too much brain power to figure out, but it is done! My dad was coming on the 30th of October and staying until the 4th of November because I have a three day weekend in there; but, yesterday, I got an email from the director of my program saying we were going on a trip then to Isla de Pascua (Easter Head Island) from the 2nd to the 5th of November! I FREAKED OUT! I talked to her via email and to face to face but there seemed to be no options where I could both spend time with my dad and travel with him AND go on the trip with my group. It looked impossible. So I talked to my dad that night with his infamous positivety "In the grand scheme of things, this is just a speed-bump Caroline," I don't know how he can do that. And I talked to my mom, kind of the same vibe. So the next day I'm trying to coordinate everything (emailing my director and my dad back and forth) and somehow, Papa Lemp changed his flight to Chile for a week earlier. Let's just say it is a good thing when you're dad is a lawyer, and very good at talking his way out of things. SO! This means my dad will be here in less than a week (Monday 25th) and is staying until the 1st of November. Plan is: drive to the coast, lay of the beach, drink wine, and love it in Chile.

I love my family, but...

I love my family, but sometimes I cannot believe what we eat. Lunchtime rolls around, about 2 pm, and we are having tacos and pancakes (like crepes here) which is one of my favorite meals.  I come to the kitchen and I see a lot of vegetables which makes me super excited. However, not all goes as planned.
Situation one: Rodrigo, one of my not-brother-but-housemates, is making what appears to be yogurt sin sabor (without flavoring).  Then, I see him pour in about an equivalent of two tablespoons of sugar from the sugar bowl. My plan: do not eat this.
Situation two: My mom tells me to mix this concoction with this bowl of cabbage on the table for the tacos. Now I think to myself, I cannot waste this lovely, healthy bowl of vegetables with sugar-yogurt mix. So, strategic as I am, I finish my cup of tea, take a handful of cabbage, put it in my cup, and then mix the rest of the cabbage with the sugar-yogurt. Tricky right? Not tricky enough.
Situation three: Every meal here as an essential ingredient: plata (avacado). My mom makes homemade guacamole with chopped up onions, tomatoes, and about 5 mashed up paltas. Now I was hoping she would keeps these seperate as I have way to much palta on a weekly basis for it to be healthy, but there is always some give and take. I'm looking at this mixture thinking that along with my cabbage and chicken, this is gonna be a good semi-healthy taco. Nevertheless, Rodrigo, who was mixing the ingredients, says "se falta sal" which basically means "this needs salt."  My mom comes over to the pantry, takes out the salt shaker, and opens it up. Now imagine me, standing at the table about 3 feet away from them, watching them with my mouth wide open in a slow-motion "noooooooooo" kind of face. My mom pours the salt in: she makes not one, but two slow-motions circles around the bowl and says "ahora, tiene sal" or "now there's salt!" I almost cried. I walk over to try the new mixture, and what do I taste? Salt.
So now it's time for lunch. We sit down, I make my taco with my stolen cup of cabbage, chicken, cucumbers, and a tid bit of the mixture to take some tomatoes. I also have half of a pancake with this spinach filling. Dessert was half a banana.
Overall? Not too bad, but when I get back to the states, I am never eating like I do here. I love my family, but not their food.

San Pedro de Atacama: A Desert Vacation

So last weekend WE WENT TO THE DESERT!! It was amazing--so amazing, in fact, that is was on the show Planet Earth, if you've ever heard of it. Chile is literally one of the most diverse countries in the entire world, if not the most. The desert, Atacama, is in the city of San Pedro in northern Chile. We were close to Argentina and Bolivia, about a two-hour plane ride out of Santiago. We landed, and we were outside! The airport was so small we climbed out the plane and walked to the airport from the landing strip, but it was gorgeous and warm outside so we didn't mind. There ws absolutely nothing outside though! Just flat land all around us, and dunes hidden in the landscape. 

Airport at San Pedro, Welcome to the Desert!

After spending hald of the day traveling, we spent the rest of the day in town.  It was downtown, 'el centro', but it was tiny! There was one main street with lots of small restuarants, and little shops with al paca fur and local food and leather hats (not real...) and a bunch of little things. I bought some gorgeous al paca scarves (hello christmas gifts) and then we met up at a restaurant on the dime of our lovely school. I've been eating vegetarian to try and stay healthy, and it is working! The thing that wasn't so healthy though was the half of bottle of red wine, Merlot, that I shared with Becca. But, it did make my food taste even better. At the end of our meal, a live music group came into the restaurant and played local music for us! Charlottle noticed that one of the instruments was al paca or llama toenails. Lovely.

I have fallen in love with red wine

The second day was incredible. We had a free morning, which Becca took the time to arrange sandboarding for! This is exactly what it sounds like: boarding on the giant dunes in the middle of the desert for 4 hours. It was AWESOME!! I fell about a million times but the best part was that falling on sand doesn't hurt! Yes, you have sane everywhere, down your pants, in your shoes, all over your face, stuck to your hair, and when you sneeze. But! It is totally worth it. The sun was beating down on us, and we have to walk up the dune to go back down it; but once you got to the top, you did not want to go down. The view was spectacular, like a postcard, of the sky meeting to dunes and mountains of sand with the sun almost making it impossible to look for too long. Up there on that dune, it was the most mellow I've felt in awhile. It was way to hard to leave. But, I needed to shower.

Just shredding it, no big deal

After the dunes, we went on a tour of La Valle de la Muerte, or Death Valley. This was where we went sand-boarding earlier that day! Afterwards, we went to La Valle de la Luna, or Moon Vally, to see the sun set. In the desert, it get insanely cold when the sun goes down. So we stayed, went to the top of another dune, and watched the sun go down. It reflected everywhere, and was as I keep saying, incredible. Another free meal, and we went to sleep. Sunday was our third day, and by far our busiest. We woke up to another tour, this time of the natural salt fields, the second biggest in the world, in San Pedro. The coolest thing: flamingos! They just lived at this national park and ate the little organisms in the salt water all day and slept all night. What a life.

Charlotte and I, flamingos in the backround somewhere

Later on Saturday, we layed by the pool because it was go nice outside. To be honest, we all got burned, but this was after multiple reminders by the Chileans that we were "white" and "pale" and all gringos think they can handle the sun and they can't. We proved them right: everyone was some shade of red, except Melly. Not fair. Next, the lagos y lagonas. 

The gringas, and the grino

Monday was our final day, where we woke up at 4 am and left  4:30 to go see the gysers in the wee morning at the top of a mountain. Thank goodness no one go too sick from the altitude (4,800 meters up. I still do not know what that is in miles, or feet). Se valio la pena? (Worth it?) No. Too cold and too high. But, Joe, Becca, and I were able to go swimming in these natural springs on the top of mountains. 

Once in a life time baby

We came home later that day and I slept my life away. Great, amazing, lovely, sandy trip. Loved it.

Home Life

The normal, home life here in Chile is so different from the states. I thought I'd share some examples:
1. Last night, Becca, Diego, and I were starving! We're at my house, trying to figure out what to do. Ordering pizza? No! One pizza here, from delivery, is around 12 US dollars. And to be honest, totally gringo. What else do we do in the states? Make cookies! Nope, not here either. Homes don't just have all the ingredients that you will find in so many homes in America, like flour, and baking powder, or chocolate chips. So instead, we made do with palta (avacado).
2. Laundry. What an ordeal. A lot of homes here dont actually have dryers, but my family is lucky and we do. Also, the mom is expected to do all the laundry, even for me at the exchange student. I do it myself because we all know I have some control issues when it comes to my chores, but still, my mom always dries things for me if I leave them too long in the washer. And, we hand-make our laundry detergent instead of buying instant.
3. Everyone here, in my house at least, sort of sticks to themselves outside the realm of eating.  My parents have their room, my brothers have theirs, and of course I have mine. During the day, when it is calm, everyone stays in their own room and does their own thing. At meal time, everyone comes together eats, and then stays at the table for awhile longer to socialize and talk about the food, life, partying, drinking, and more. Unlike the states, no one in my house uses the living room, or a common TV.

That's all I can think of for now!

La Comision Fulbright

As some may know, I accepted the internship from Fulbright! As first, my mom was convinced that I actually received a Fulbright scholarship (if only!). Nope, I'm just working there as an intern until December. It's an awesome job though! Tuesdays and Thursdays I go in at 9 am and stay till around 5:30, at Los Leones which is this relly cool part of Santiago downtown area. My co-workers are really chill, super nice, and all speak English actually, in order to talk to their bosses in the states.

The weirdest thing though is getting used to the keyboards. The ? and the ' and the shift button and the ! and the @ and the / and the . and the , are all in different places. It's kind of hard to type here just because I'm so used to doing something else now! And you realize that things are just written differently: for example, when we type University of Chile in english, the word 'University' is capitalized.  But, that is not the case in spanish.  The days of the week and months and proper nouns are almost never capitalized either. So weird!

The awesome part is that we are served lunch everyday by a cook for the office, and it's actually HEALTHY FOOD! So awesome. We've had lasagna, and seafood pasta, and salad, and asaparagus everyday. And for dessert: fresh fruit. I am in heaven. 

Thursday there was something going on outside our office (floor 9) and at first we thought it was a golpe (strike) or a bomba (bomb) but it turns out to be nothing, or at least I think. Either way, I love this internship. Good choice I believe!

Oh! And there is another Carolina at my office so everyone calls me Caro. I love it! Such a cute nickname, with the Spanish accent rolling the 'r'.  I am quite happy so far.