Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Soy Santiaguina??

Hola guapos y guapas! (For the non-spanish speakers, look it up, I just paid you all a compliment!)

Hope you're all doing well. This last week and a half I've been in Santiago so my life has been, well, I don't want to say boring, but average. Perhaps I've gotten too used to the jet setting lifestyle? Or perhaps I'm actually acostumbrada (used to) life here in this smoggy metropolis. I'm beginning to find that I'm making less comparisons (in my head...most of the time) between Santiago and my life back in the states and have begun to really settle into the pace and Chilean lifestyle. Hey, it took 4 months but I made it!

A couple highlights from the past week:

1) Thursday night we all went to go see Que Pena Tu Vida (Your life sucks), a newly released Chilean film about a rather undesirable dude who is having love life troubles. The plot was nothing special but I understood 95% of the movie!!!! This is a huge improvement, considering my 3rd week here we saw La Vida de Los Peces where I understood approximately 10 phrases. Real learning has occurred!

2) About a month ago, I failed a test. I mean straight up failed, on a scale of 1-7, I received a 2.1 (hey man, if I'm going to do something, I'm going to go all the way). Anyways, this past week I met with my professor (who by the way is never in class, literally, I can count on my fingers the amount of times I've seen this woman and there are 3 weeks of classes left) to find out what happened. After a short chat, I realized I had misused a few words in my essay (typical foreigner) but after explaining what I had actually intended to say, she raised my grade to a 5.5! Credit will be received!

3) On Friday, a couple friends and I went to a hip hop class. Although I was an excellent dancer at the age of eight, se me fue mi habilidades (my skills have since left me). However, I still enjoyed myself; it was good exercise and the instructor had an (unhealthy?) obsession with Michael Jackson. After showing us the moves, he would continue dancing on his own, and let's just say it wasn't hard to imagine the red pleather jacket and one gloved hand.

4) I walked up a hill! For reasons only known to my subconscious, I woke up at 9AM on a Saturday to climb Cerro San Cristobal with a few friends as prep for our 5 day hike in Patagonia in December. Although I was under the impression that all of Santiago stays out until 6am, it appears that they also wake up (or stay awake) until this time and run for the hills to exercise. We came across a herd of bikers, runners, walkers and 3 different group exercise classes, including step aerobics, although I sorry to say the hunt for the Chilean Richard Simmons still continues.

5) My inner Betty Crocker was calling out to me (that and the approaching birthday of my host brother) so I decided to bake cookies. My lovely parents sent me Nestle chocolate chips (which are not sold here. Yet literally every other product here is Nestle, coffee, ice cream, the Cheerios I eat for breakfast in the morning, I'm pretty sure they have an illegal monopoly going on. Irony) so I of course chose to make the classic chocolate chip cookies. All went according to plan until the baking part, Chilean ovens and I have a strained relationship.

1) In order to turn it on, you have to turn on the gas on the stove, light a piece of paper towel on fire and then quickly stick it in the bottom of the oven. Without burning the house down. What??

2) There is no way to set the temperature; it's either on, or it's off.

3) There is no timer but this doesn't matter because cookies bake in literally 4 minutes.

The last one I found out the hard way. After about 6 minutes, I opened the oven to check on the little galletas and was greeted by a puff of smoke. As I pulled out the tray and swung open the window for oxygen, my host mother comes strolling in the door and says sweetly what a finely pleasant aroma the house has. I'm chalking this up to cultural differences.

Shout out goes to Tosin Akinsanya. The other day on the metro, Me Gustas Tu came on my Ipod, so obvio you were the first person who popped into my head. Hope you're well and can't wait to talk next week!

Besos,

Abby

No comments:

Post a Comment