A comer!

That’s how we call each other down to eat in my Chilean family. And this is a post about FOOD.

Why now? Because I leave tomorrow and yesterday I completed a year since I first moved in with my Chilean family and I’m probably going to write a post about all of that when I’m on my combined 11 hours worth of flights. (Everyone is aware that I find flying very uncomfortable, right?)

Last year I feel like I ate a lot differently. There was a lot of salad in my house. I brought lunch along a few times a week, and that usually involved a salad of some kind, maybe a sandwich or a wrap if we were low on salad goods. And then we’d eat a lot of salad for dinner. This time around, the weather has been COLD. Much colder than last year. Probably because last year I arrived as winter was slowly on its way out, and this time I got here right when it really kicked in.

This time around, my office has provided me lunch five days a week. There are two options at work- the normal plate, which is a big portion of the entrée (inevitably some kind of starch plus a protein) (and by big, I mean huge), soup, a small salad (often just cabbage, just tomatoes, or just lettuce with half of a tomato), bread, and a little dessert. After the first week, in which I consumed large portions of beans, pasta, and potatoes, I switched over to the “vegetarian” (spoiler alert: not really vegetarian) or “diet” plate. Which is a normal portion of a starch with a protein, soup, a big salad, bread, and dessert.

The cold that we experienced every day in the office usually meant inhaling the entree and downing the soup as soon as it wasn’t scalding, just to warm ourselves up. Typical entrées were: rice and chicken, chicken and potatoes, tortilla (like Spanish tortilla, a veggie-based, crustless quiche) with rice, quiche with rice or potatoes, and two times, palta a la reina, which is avocado filled up with stuff (in our case, quesillo)…with a side of potatoes.

I ate my salad at lunch and then rarely at salad at home at night. Guys, when it’s cold, I have no desire to put more cold things into my body. So I would compensate with solid portions of pasta, meat and rice, or carbonada, which is a typical Chilean stew filled with potatoes AND rice, some kind of meat, corn, squash, peas, and whatever else the cook likes.

In summary: I ate rice or potatoes at least once a day every day. I have not gone running since I left campus in May. And I miss it.

I spent a lot of time wandering around the supermarket this time as well. Our office was just down the street from one, and most days after lunch we would walk over there to get some air and usually pick up chocolate and other snacks for the afternoon. Here are some of the more interesting things I saw:

Lenguitas de Gato. Translates to Little Cat Tongues. Really it’s just a long cookie covered in chocolate, and apparently it exists in Europe as well. But come on. Cat Tongues?

This is tea. Called Hot Love. It’s just raspberry and vanilla flavored, but the kicker is that it’s in English. And I don’t know what’s particularly hot about raspberry and vanilla.

I never saw these once last year. They look like potato smiles (you had a deprived school lunch life if you don’t know what I’m talking about), but made out of corn flour and are raspberry flavored. Found right by the cheese puffs.

I’ve actually had Chis Pop a couple of times. They’re like blown up Trix. This is something I would never buy myself…but I always sneak a few if they’re around.

Okay, this isn’t a weird food at all, but it’s probably my favorite thing that I can’t find in the States. Ramitas are delicious little sticks covered in some kind of slightly cheesy or really cheesy powder. If I were to get a care package from Chile, I would want these, manjar, Watt’s peach juice, and Sahne-Nuss.

They’re still selling Christmas candies in this store. No joke. We are now at less than six months until Christmas comes again, guys.

Oh, and speaking of Christmas…

We made Christmas cookies to celebrate 6 months until Christmas, and the one year anniversary since I moved into this house. Aaaahhhhh!

That’s all I’ve got for now, friends! My next post will probably be published once I’m stateside again.

Chile, you know I love you. See you again…in October, maybe?

USA: it had better be dang warm and sunny when I get home. If it turns out to be one of those cool, damp summers, I will not be happy.

And Border Patrol: I have fifty minutes to get off my plane and get through customs before I start boarding my next flight. Help me out.

With love,

Gaby

 

 

Settled/Unsettled

Last night we went to the airport and dropped off my American host sister, another student from my university who was living with my family this semester. It was emotional. Leaving- whether it’s the States or Chile- is definitely my least favorite part of traveling. That and all the hours in the plane. Someone really needs to work on a more efficient and cheaper way of travel. Wouldn’t it be great if we could just pop back and forth between continents? Then you could just go down for a long weekend. I could have come back to the States for the Fourth of July. I could come down for Chilean Independence Day. Are we agreed that someone needs to work on that? Okay, aerospace engineers. Get to it.

I’ve become more settled here the second time around. I live in a house with my family. I could actually manage giving someone directions in my neighborhood. I have places that I like to shop, and I know where to go to buy certain things. I know that fifteen minutes can make all the difference between a 50 minute and a 90 minute commute. I have a routine (and anyone who knows me knows that I love a routine).

And yet, other things have happened that have been unsettling. There’s been a spat of robberies affecting my friends and coworkers lately- nothing particularly serious, but unfortunate all the same. I work in a part of town that’s quite different from where I live. I’ve seen what it’s like to be young and alone in a foreign country, and how hard it can be when you only have yourself to rely on. I’ve been exposed to more poverty, which is always uncomfortable. And it should be. I’m not saying you should avoid the glance of the homeless man begging for coins on the bus. Not at all. You shouldn’t. But you shouldn’t ever feel comfortable or nonchalant when you can tell that he hasn’t showered in several days, and that his hands are so cracked and dry that they’re bleeding. It’s unsettling. It’s unsettling when the bus driver doesn’t pay attention to the elderly woman getting off of the bus and closes the doors before she’s out- resulting in her falling out when he barely stops and opens the doors again (Note: everyone got off the bus and about half of the passengers stayed back to help. Buena onda. Clueless bus driver.). It’s unsettling when we have to go home early from work on protest days because the protests can get out of control enough that for those who live in the center of the city (not me. Not even close. I completely bypass all protests.), it can be dangerous to get home.

Does that make me cuica? Cuico/cuica is the chilenismo for snob, except it’s a little more derogatory. Is it cuica to avoid certain areas of town because it’s far away from home, I don’t want to go there on the bus, and I don’t want to pay for a taxi there? Is it cuica to always pay for a taxi if I’m going home alone? Is it cuica not to venture past Bellavista/Lastarria or outside of Ñuñoa when I go out? Does being unsettled by all of the things in the paragraph above make me cuica?

I can’t apologize for my limits. I know where I’m comfortable and where I’m not. If I’m uncomfortable- as in, I feel like something is wrong- I will not enjoy myself. I’m not a risk-taker. I’m settled. For as young as I am, I really like being settled. And I think the more settled I get, the easier it is for me to be unsettled.

Friends and family: I would like to re-emphasize that all of the crime and safety things mentioned above affected other people, not me. And that this is crime you will find in any big city in the United States. And that I take plenty of safety precautions, and overall, everything is good! Everything is very good. It’s all flying by, and I won’t get into it now because I’m a broken record on that subject.

Maybe I’ll bake something today. Or take a walk. Or read. Or all of the above.

I got off at the wrong metro station the other week. So I took a picture of it. Of course.

I love how naturally perfect eggs are.

Queque is sweet bread. Like banana bread, or orange bread. Queque means cake, which acknowledges the fact that these “breads” really are closer to cake. But Chileans just accept that and make it breakfast food.

Even when it’s gray. Look at all that snow!

Las Condes, late Saturday afternoon.

Ñuñoa on a Saturday night.

This is vino navegado. It smells and tastes like Christmas. It’s basically a hot spiced wine (mulled wine?), with cinnamon, cloves, and orange. It is an excellent way to warm up.

I danced until 5 with my friends who were leaving the next day. Dancing until 2 is one thing. Dancing until 5 is another thing entirely. And the Chileans do it all. the. time.

When you go out until 5, the best thing for the next day is to watch a movie and eat popcorn. The translated title of Bridesmaids is Damas en Guerra- Ladies at War. ¿Cómo?

Should I do a food post soon? Yeah. I think that’d be good. Chilean food, round 2!

Cuídense! With love,

Gaby

So at this time last year…

I was very deeply asleep in a freezing retreat house in Linares, spending my first night in Chile.

This is the post I wrote describing those first couple of days. The title quite accurately describes my memories of that first day off the plane and in another country where not everyone speaks my language. I remember being cold, eating a lot, and not having a clue what almost anybody was saying. I seriously doubted my 8+ years of Spanish. I was generally very confused, exhausted at the end of each day, had to put my trust in a lot of people I barely knew, and yet was impossibly in love with just about everything.

And that was just Linares, guys. That was only two weeks out of the now seven-plus months this journey has entailed. I’ll be more reflective when I hit my one-year arrival in Santiago later this month. But man. A year. A whole YEAR has passed since I got to Chile for the first time.

And now I’m back. What does that even mean?

Actually one of the only decent pictures I could find from my early days here. It says Linares. If you want more, go to the archives!

With love,

Gaby

Language is Fun!

I thought that maybe this trip around, language wouldn’t be a big part of it. I would arrive fluent in Spanish, and fluent in Chilean Spanish besides. I would probably improve my writing skills and maybe even get a little more comfortable with the sense of humor and slang.

However, that hasn’t been the case. Language has been a topic of conversation almost every single day at work. Why? Because as I’ve mentioned before, I work mostly with other foreigners- non-Chilean Latin Americans and a handful of Spaniards and French. Several of them have also arrived in the last couple of months, and they don’t always understand (cachar) Chilean Spanish. They use their own slang and their accents really are a lot different. The office is a big, colorful mix of different sounds and slang (bakán vs. chévere, po vs. che, weon vs. pendejo), and we never stop talking about it.

Here’s a rundown of the different accents I have encountered this time around:

Chilean: very fast, very poorly pronounced. Heavy on slang.

Colombian: Very well pronounced, very clear, almost slow. Somewhat nasal and throaty.

Central American: can be very fast, but in general well pronounced. They use the “vos” form instead of “tú.” That took some adjusting. Clean s’s. Which is refreshing.

Mexican: entirely based on my one Mexican coworker, but this was corroborated by others recently. Well pronounced, a little slower than others, very clear and strong s’s. Not something the Chileans are known for!

Argentinians: very fast. Highly rhythmic and lyrical, almost Italian. They are very emphatic and demonstrative. They also use “vos.” The “ll” (as in, llamar or llaves) is technically pronounced in Spanish as a consonant “y.” In Caribbean Latin America, it is often pronounced as a firm “j.” In other parts of Latin America, it softens a bit. In Argentina- which is arguably what identifies them- it is pronounced as “sh” or “zh”. For example: “Yo me llamo Yolanda” = “Zho me zhamo Zholanda.”

Spaniards: an average speed, I suppose? Not too fast, not too slow. This has probably been the most difficult accent for me to understand, for whatever reason. Soft c’s and z’s are pronounced as “th.” Some Spaniards pronounce their s’s almost as a “sh” sound instead of a pure “s.”

Foreigners: we all sound different! You can often pick out where a foreigner is from based on their accent in Spanish. Gringos are notorious for not being able to roll their r’s. I think vowel formation also sets us apart. The French still sound French, because of their vowels. Gringos can’t relax their vowels. German vowels in Spanish are a lot of fun.

Any moment where you are really, genuinely complimented on your second language is a big moment. It means someone has noticed and that they really do indeed understand what you’re saying. Other Latin Americans still crack up when they hear me say “po” or “cachai” or “wea.” Most Chileans don’t even notice it.

Major moment the other night? When a Chilean girl I had just met asked me where I was from, because when I introduced myself to her, I was absolutely unidentifiable as a gringa. And then her German friend who said he had never heard an American speak Spanish so well before. Any moment where I confuse or mislead people as to my origin, I am happy and validated in my efforts.

That’s all, friends! More may be coming later this week. More reflections on a return trip, and what I’m learning about myself this time around. Te tinca?

I will leave you with this series of photos I took early this evening. One second, the sky looked like this:

You know, a normal sunset. Pretty. The usual.

And then it did this.

From one moment to the next.

Um, whoa.

No words. I loved it.

Just your daily dose of mind-blowing beautiful.

With love,

Gaby