estar con la caña- resacada
guiskey!- smile, say cheese
completo italiano is bc the colors are red white and green
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodanza
Thursday, June 27, 2013
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
I'm finally a citizen!!!
Today I finished the last step in the process that took 4 months (I'm here for another 3 weeks... fail) to get my Chilean residency card. Hooray! Here's what it looks like :)
The process is roughly as follows:
The process is roughly as follows:
Sunday, June 16, 2013
Fun times with Family Friends
This weekend was busy busy, packed with two different food-parties, so naturally, I got sick right before them. Are you surprised? I'm not. Jess was so wonderful helping to feel better whenever she could; she did so much of the cooking this time and I'm so proud of how delicious it all came out :D
We invited our Chilean family-friends over for dinner on Saturday, after a work brunch I could not attend. Jess said it was fun though. We spent Friday prepping- shopping, chopping, and crying a little (damn onions!). Saturday was d-day, dinner-day that is. Our menu was as follows:
Appetizers: pebre- a famous Chilean salsa
cheesy pepper-paprika pitas
ensalada (salad haha)
Main course: garlic and olive oil tossed roasted vegetables
white wine risotto
sweet and spicy chicken
Dessert: (of course!) hot and gooey chocolate chip cookiewiches with vanilla ice cream
Here are some pics of the apartment (it was so clean!!), the dinner setup, and the food :D yummm. We had such a great time with our Berrios family. In between courses we played Language Jenga (aka, Jenga, but we had to say the numbers on our brick in another language). They only stayed a short while because it was already late, but we had a blast regardless. We love them so much and are so glad they came! We even sent them home with the rest of our pebre in a Tupperware. Imagine that, the gringas sending the Chileans home with homemade pebre! Hahaha, what a compliment to our cooking!
We invited our Chilean family-friends over for dinner on Saturday, after a work brunch I could not attend. Jess said it was fun though. We spent Friday prepping- shopping, chopping, and crying a little (damn onions!). Saturday was d-day, dinner-day that is. Our menu was as follows:
Appetizers: pebre- a famous Chilean salsa
cheesy pepper-paprika pitas
ensalada (salad haha)
Main course: garlic and olive oil tossed roasted vegetables
white wine risotto
sweet and spicy chicken
Dessert: (of course!) hot and gooey chocolate chip cookiewiches with vanilla ice cream
Here are some pics of the apartment (it was so clean!!), the dinner setup, and the food :D yummm. We had such a great time with our Berrios family. In between courses we played Language Jenga (aka, Jenga, but we had to say the numbers on our brick in another language). They only stayed a short while because it was already late, but we had a blast regardless. We love them so much and are so glad they came! We even sent them home with the rest of our pebre in a Tupperware. Imagine that, the gringas sending the Chileans home with homemade pebre! Hahaha, what a compliment to our cooking!
Monday, June 10, 2013
Off we go, into the wild Buenos Aires!
Hasta luego Santiago! Jess, our friend Amy, and I are heading off to Buenos Aires, Argentina this weekend. We are so excited and have so many awesome plans! Can't wait to update you all on them as soon as I can :)
Have a great weekend all, but know ours will be more awesome ;D
Have a great weekend all, but know ours will be more awesome ;D
Monday, June 3, 2013
Food, glorious (gourmet) food!
SATURDAY MAY 25, 2013.
So I totally forgot I was going to write a loooong blogpost about our fun adventures last weekend. Oops. Anyway, we had a relatively busy Saturday, visiting a gourmet food expo in Barrio Lastarria. Later on, we hit up the TeachingChile reunion barbeque. We had such a wonderful day!
So I totally forgot I was going to write a loooong blogpost about our fun adventures last weekend. Oops. Anyway, we had a relatively busy Saturday, visiting a gourmet food expo in Barrio Lastarria. Later on, we hit up the TeachingChile reunion barbeque. We had such a wonderful day!
Saturday, June 1, 2013
Bowling Birthday Bash
Today is my friend John's birthday, so we went out to a bowling
alley in a mall last night to celebrate. It was a lot of fun and I'm
glad he had a good time. Bowling was much the same as it is in America,
though for snacks we got a basket of fries and 12 empanadas de queso
haha. Yum! We bowled in two teams, and I wasn't the worst, but
definitely wasn't the best either! I scored 63 after 12 rounds. It was
so unfair at first because the other team had bumpers up on their lane,
cheaters! The man eventually came and took them down. One of the guys on
our team somehow managed to score a 9 every single round, be it 6-3,
7-2, 9-/, whatever. Every time! It was wild. One girl on our team also
managed to lose her ball and it came rolling backwards toward us!
Yikes!! haha. Here are some pics of our night.
Later on we stopped by our other friend Alyssa's birthday party, up in her apartment. Her birthday was Thursday but she had her party Friday night. It was fun; there were Chileans, Americans, Australians, Canadians, and South Africans. At one point, the American girls felt the need to bust out some organized dance moves, so we did the Cupid Shuffle, the Wobble, the Cha Cha Slide, the Macarena, and even the Cotton Eyed Joe! It was hilarious and most of the foreigners watched us like we were crazy, which we probably looked like we were. Oh well! I'd say it was a Friday night well spent :)
Later on we stopped by our other friend Alyssa's birthday party, up in her apartment. Her birthday was Thursday but she had her party Friday night. It was fun; there were Chileans, Americans, Australians, Canadians, and South Africans. At one point, the American girls felt the need to bust out some organized dance moves, so we did the Cupid Shuffle, the Wobble, the Cha Cha Slide, the Macarena, and even the Cotton Eyed Joe! It was hilarious and most of the foreigners watched us like we were crazy, which we probably looked like we were. Oh well! I'd say it was a Friday night well spent :)
Government + paperwork + waiting in lines = never a good time
That blogpost title says it all really. This morning, AT 745AM, we continued the longest visa process I have ever been a part of.
Depressing Deluge
The rain was out of control this week. For real guys. On Monday, I got downstairs in my lovely work outfit to discover it was pouring outside. No I did not bring an umbrella to Chile. Yes I forgot to ask my parents to send one when they sent my rain jacket. Yes I am too stubborn to buy one off the streets that I know will break the second I turn the corner.
For some reason, I find that rain abroad (aka not America) is so much more unbearable than at home. In Spain, I walked to class one day in the rain, with a rain jacket and an umbrella and was so completely soaked from the hips down that I had trouble sitting down (wet jeans are the WORST). I can't figure out what it is that makes it so much harder to live your life when it's raining here. The most I've got is that we drive so much in America that we don't really deal with it, but then I throw that theory out because I had plenty of rainy walks up to the bus when I was student teaching in Manhattan and they were still not as bad as what I experienced abroad. Jess thinks it's the quality of the roads, which is also definitely possible.
I walked home Monday in spite of the rain because I was so mad and wet anyway. It was eventful to say the least. People are IDIOTS when it comes to walking around in the rain. I didn't see a single person with any kind of rain boots, though they all have umbrellas that they hit you in the head or eye or face with as they leap to avoid a puddle. There was foot traffic build up in crossing the streets because people would get to the other side of the crosswalk, only to be confronted by a huge puddle before they could get to the curb, so then a line would form to follow a path around it. This is nice and polite, but also we are in a road and cars will be moving soon, into us, so please get out of the way! Speaking of cars moving, I actually got hit by one on my way home :S Yikes! I was crossing a one-way side street that opened onto the main road, which was completely clogged up with rush hour, bumper to bumper traffic, at a complete standstill. Now, I was crossing at the crosswalk, and of the two lanes, the left already had a car stopped waiting for me and three other people to cross. He would've had to wait anyway though, because there was a solid wall of cars in front of him in the main road he wanted to merge into. However, just because all of these factors point to the idea of stopping at this crosswalk, does not mean that everyone would actually do that. Many times down here people will pull through as close as they can to the new road and leave most of their car sticking into the crosswalk- a personal pet peeve of mine. This special brand of idiot in the right lane last Tuesday, decided he didn't care about stopping in crosswalks, about not having a road to drive into because of the wall of traffic, or even about the people who may be in the road. As a result, he drove right past that first car I mentioned- the one stopped in the left lane- and into me. I yelled and slammed a fist into the hood of his car and miraculously he stopped in time. He only bumped me and I stumbled a few feet out of the crosswalk, but I was nonetheless unnerved. What if I hadn't had time to yell or he hadn't heard me or I didn't hit his car or he couldn't stop in the rain?? It was intense and I walked away fine but with my adrenaline pumping. What a moron. There were so many signs to stop, not the least of which was the car right next to him, NOT moving forward. It was insane! This is part of the reason why I hate driving, and why I think no one should be able to drive above 40, ever. Why on earth would you need to be going 49 in the rain, on a side street, when there's traffic, and human beings in the road?!?!?!? Ugh. Anyway, long story short, I was fine, just shaken up and seriously angry.
Tuesday proved to not be much brighter. Here are a series of pictures I took on my 45 minute walk from one class to the next. They don't quite capture just HOW wet and nasty it was out (or how miserable I was). Apparently, my rain jacket is not even remotely waterproof, and my rain boots, while they didn't leak, can't prevent the waves of water splashing in over the top of them. I was so thoroughly soaked by the time I got to my second class, there was a puddle underneath my chair by the end, from me dripping dry onto the floor. I could pour a stream of water out of my boots by the end of the night, and walking was a weird sensation because I constantly felt like I was going to fall thanks to the several inches of water sloshing around inside my boots.
Side note: I find it hilarious how quickly the street vendors switch their merchandise
to what will sell the fastest. In the summer, March and April, it was sunglasses. By
the end of April into May it was scarves. Next it was hats and gloves for winter, and
then this week everything switched to umbrellas and windbreakers.
Anyway, back to the rain. I went straight back upstairs and changed into my wellies and rain jacket. The rain continued the entire day and night into Tuesday, when it continued all day and night into Wednesday morning! Oy vey. I was not looking forward to this at all. I love to walk here and had planned to walk all day Monday- plans cancelled. Then Tuesday, the only way to get from one afternoon class to the next is to walk 45 minutes along a (not a highway, it's not that dangerous) very busy large road. Great.For some reason, I find that rain abroad (aka not America) is so much more unbearable than at home. In Spain, I walked to class one day in the rain, with a rain jacket and an umbrella and was so completely soaked from the hips down that I had trouble sitting down (wet jeans are the WORST). I can't figure out what it is that makes it so much harder to live your life when it's raining here. The most I've got is that we drive so much in America that we don't really deal with it, but then I throw that theory out because I had plenty of rainy walks up to the bus when I was student teaching in Manhattan and they were still not as bad as what I experienced abroad. Jess thinks it's the quality of the roads, which is also definitely possible.
I walked home Monday in spite of the rain because I was so mad and wet anyway. It was eventful to say the least. People are IDIOTS when it comes to walking around in the rain. I didn't see a single person with any kind of rain boots, though they all have umbrellas that they hit you in the head or eye or face with as they leap to avoid a puddle. There was foot traffic build up in crossing the streets because people would get to the other side of the crosswalk, only to be confronted by a huge puddle before they could get to the curb, so then a line would form to follow a path around it. This is nice and polite, but also we are in a road and cars will be moving soon, into us, so please get out of the way! Speaking of cars moving, I actually got hit by one on my way home :S Yikes! I was crossing a one-way side street that opened onto the main road, which was completely clogged up with rush hour, bumper to bumper traffic, at a complete standstill. Now, I was crossing at the crosswalk, and of the two lanes, the left already had a car stopped waiting for me and three other people to cross. He would've had to wait anyway though, because there was a solid wall of cars in front of him in the main road he wanted to merge into. However, just because all of these factors point to the idea of stopping at this crosswalk, does not mean that everyone would actually do that. Many times down here people will pull through as close as they can to the new road and leave most of their car sticking into the crosswalk- a personal pet peeve of mine. This special brand of idiot in the right lane last Tuesday, decided he didn't care about stopping in crosswalks, about not having a road to drive into because of the wall of traffic, or even about the people who may be in the road. As a result, he drove right past that first car I mentioned- the one stopped in the left lane- and into me. I yelled and slammed a fist into the hood of his car and miraculously he stopped in time. He only bumped me and I stumbled a few feet out of the crosswalk, but I was nonetheless unnerved. What if I hadn't had time to yell or he hadn't heard me or I didn't hit his car or he couldn't stop in the rain?? It was intense and I walked away fine but with my adrenaline pumping. What a moron. There were so many signs to stop, not the least of which was the car right next to him, NOT moving forward. It was insane! This is part of the reason why I hate driving, and why I think no one should be able to drive above 40, ever. Why on earth would you need to be going 49 in the rain, on a side street, when there's traffic, and human beings in the road?!?!?!? Ugh. Anyway, long story short, I was fine, just shaken up and seriously angry.
Tuesday proved to not be much brighter. Here are a series of pictures I took on my 45 minute walk from one class to the next. They don't quite capture just HOW wet and nasty it was out (or how miserable I was). Apparently, my rain jacket is not even remotely waterproof, and my rain boots, while they didn't leak, can't prevent the waves of water splashing in over the top of them. I was so thoroughly soaked by the time I got to my second class, there was a puddle underneath my chair by the end, from me dripping dry onto the floor. I could pour a stream of water out of my boots by the end of the night, and walking was a weird sensation because I constantly felt like I was going to fall thanks to the several inches of water sloshing around inside my boots.
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