The Chile

What's a girl to do?

This is me, in my bed, dressed for the weather in the casa. If I go outside, its warmer. Not by a lot right now because it is nighttime, but during the day yes it is significantly warmer, outside, than in the house. I'm sorry that I'm talking about this again, the fact that it is cold, but it is on my mind and I have trouble concentrating and so here I am writing about it instead of doing my homework.woops! And I'm also documenting my cold weather gear for you too, apparently. Please don't judge me too harshly.

This is another outfit I like to sport in the casa. Down vest with hood with my fleece pants. And then I get in my bed, and stay there until my butt hurts from sitting in one spot, at which point I stand up and hang upside down for a few minutes and then get back in my bed with my laptop.

This past weekend I had to actually stay in the house the entire weekend to write an 8 page research paper for my social psych class. This was less than desirable. I missed out on some good international kids fun and sunset on the beach time. The result is that now it is monday, but I feel like surely it should be thursday night already!

Let me tell you about my day today. First I woke up and got ready, quickly, so that I could put all my clothes on and my jacket of course. I made my usual breakfast-banana, yogurt, and quaker instant oats. I bought myself some flax seed too so me being me always puts a healthy scoop of that on my cereal, followed by a liberal sprinkle of cinnamon. When I have walnuts in my room, I crush a few of those up and throw them in. In Spanish, walnuts are called "mariposas," which also means butterflies. The butterfly nut! Fun Spanish fact of the day.

Anyways, after I got ready and ate breakfast I called Peru to make some train ticket reservations for my sister and I in July. We're going to Machu Picchu and the website wasn't working so I called and had a nice chat with Jorge at Perurail. Then it was time for film class! It is one of my favorites because it is actually entertaining. The professor is really nice too, and my friend Sarah and I refer to him as the silver fox, so yes, I enjoy that class. From the beginning of the semester the class was set up as such: 6 movies, 6 discussion classes, which would alternate as one movie followed by one discussion, etc. with three tests, each one over two movies. Well, recently this has become a problem, so we didn't watch a movie today. The discussion went something like this: "Okay students we have a problem with our schedule. It appears we will have to wrap up earlier than I originally thought. The situation is that we got behind a class when I was out of town, and the last Monday of the semester is a public holiday (Latin America LOVES their public holidays), and the Monday before that is the Chile-Honduras world cup game...and the university has officially suspended classes during that hour of course so looks like we'll have to cut out a movie and a test. And today we don't have time to watch a movie as planned because we're going to get kicked out of the room early since today is the celebration of the inauguration of this building and the faculty is screening The Wave in this classroom. So we'll do our discussion on the movie today and then watch it next week."

Hahaha so we casually cut out 20-30% of the material of the class. And the discussion he presented this morning was stopped mid-thought by celebration set-up. But the profe seemed pretty cool with it, really.

What made the class even more interesting today was that a Chilean classmate had found me and sent me a message on facebook asking if he could have a copy of my notes from a class he had missed. He sent me the message in English, which was slightly insulting, but thoughtful I suppose. After I stopped giggling about the fact that he would choose one of three foreign students to ask for notes when he had about 20 Chileans to choose from...I responded in Spanish! haha and told him he could have a copy of my notes but they were far from perfect. Ironic that he thought it best to ask me in English for notes that I had to take in class in Spanish from a professor talking a million miles an hour about High Noon and "old westerns" filming techniques. So after class I did the cheek kiss meet and greet with my new film friend and his friend and awkwardly exchanged notes and padded on my merry way home.

I arrived home to the vacuuming of our new nana, Maria Jesus, nana number four. Number three, who made amazing lentil soup and I miss dearly, just stopped showing up last week. I'm starting to detect a trend. Is it possible my family here is a bit difficult to keep up with for the dear nanas?

Next I victoriously emailed my 8 page paper and my partner paper to my social psych professor. check! Then it was time to down my lunch at the very early lunching hour of 1:00 (this weekend we ate lunch at 3:45 saturday and sunday...why do they even have a word for hurry in the spanish language?). Lunch, by the way, was surprisingly delicious. When the nana asked me how she should make a soy burger out of the soy meat my mom had left soaking, I was a little concerned. She threw it together beautifully though and served it on white rice with some leftover stir fried veggies. I had salad(which comes after the main course-iceberg and peeled tomatoes, as always, and ran to catch a bus to class.

I showed up to psychology as I had been told I should, to talk to my profe about my essay. The Chileans in the class were taking an exam but us exchange students write the essays in place of exams. So, he told us to write our names on the list and then we could leave. Wow, glad I took a 30 minute bus ride for that...

So I got back on the bus and went home. It was cool out but nice and sunny so I got off the bus a stop early (the public health freak in me does this often) and walked a while. I ate the Reese's cup my friend Julie from psych gave me (she had received a package from her US mom, and the chocolate-pb lover in me was in heaven). I arrived back to the house and started working on emails and various things and haven't left my room too much since. Heaven knows what I've been doing, because I honestly haven't accomplished much. My only explanation for all this is the Chile. I have the Chile. The symptoms are cold-like, but are accompanied with difficulty concentrating, desire to dance, tendency to stay out all night and sleep all day(culturally, you really are viewed as depressed or something if you don't "salir" aka go out on thursday, friday and saturday. This weekend when I didn't, my mom was offering me wine and pisco as I was trying to do my homework. social time is sacred!) and occassionally eat cake for breakfast. I'm kind of kidding, but then again I'm kind of not. The good news is, I think my Spanish is reallly improving, and I have learned so many general culture and life and people lessons here I can't even begin to explain, so I'm feeling like the objectives are being met! Happy June everyone :)