As I'm sitting here drinking beer and watching the latest addition of the colossal Cleveland Indians/Cincinnati Reds rivalry (yea, I know nothing about baseball, but the two Ohioans next to me are oozing team spirit), I realize that I may be on my way into a very American weekend. Our trainer, Carissa, has invited us to a 4th of July BBQ on Sunday afternoon. She said that only a select few of Chileans (boyfriends and girlfriends) were invited and definitely no Canadians. Carissa said that whenever you have a BBQ here, the Chileans will just bring nothing but meat-all kinds of it-but nothing else. Maybe a bag of chips. No other sides.
Sidenote: The Chileans love their white bread, coffee, sweets, and fatty foods. They have this bar food dish called chorillana which is basically the equivalent of supreme nachos...but with fries. So you get tons of greasy fries topped with hard boiled eggs, onions, peppers, ham/bacon/chicken, cheese, etc. I haven't tried it yet, but it sounds like heaven coming in, and hell going out. Chileans also love NesCafe (instant coffee). The coffee section at the grocery store is completely dominated by instant coffee which is totally confounding, because South America is renowned for their coffee! Even with their obsession with NesCafe, they jokingly refer to it as "No es Cafe" ("It's not coffee"). I'm going to get to the bottom of this... (no pun intended, har har).
Santiago so far seems to be highly American/European in many ways. Just like how I perceived Beijing to be while in China. I feel like it might be the same way with big cities in many parts of the world. It just means that I just have to look harder for the "real" Chile underneath it all. I also think this will also come by making friends with Chilenos and Chilenas which is only a matter of time.
One crazy story not meant to scare Mom or Grandma:
One of my fellow classmates chose to seek out residency outside of the host families that our program offers. He found a place that was cheaper and went with it. The head of the household was a Belgian woman who has fostered several Chilean boys and hosted several foreign exchange students. Last weekend, my classmate found out that one of the boys he has been living with had murdered his brother (who was also living at the house) a little over a year ago over a video game. You can actually read about the incident here (as well as several other news sources if you look up "playstation murder Santiago Chile"):
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8650606.stm
Needless to say, my classmate felt a little uncomfortable living in that situation, especially not have been informed of that incident before moving in. He left as discretely as possible (including having an argument over the phone with his host and telling the boy who murdered his brother that he was leaving because of the noise). Luckily, he is now out of that situation and glad to be out of it.
Happy 4th of July!
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