What could've been eaten

          Once again, many things have happened since my last post: outdoor concerts, visits to museums, eating empanadas, the start of classes, and my one-month anniversary of being in Chile (CRAZY!).
          One thing that has made the most impact on me the past few weeks has been learning how to cook. Food is a huge part of any culture, and the act of putting it all together is another way to experience people interacting with each other on a new level. My host mother talked about how cooking is more than just an act of putting different foods together and serving them on a plate. She taught me a little about how putting your love and energy into the food you're serving is the real reason why the food turns out appetizing; because the people eating it are literally receiving the energy and love put into the act of cooking.
          I rarely ever cook at Grinnell, and sometimes I cook the occasional box of Mac&Cheese or boxed dinner that's laying around my house. Of course I'll try to help my sister make Thanksgiving dinner (kudos to her: I could never do what she does every Thanksgiving). But I would always say to my friends that if you put me in a kitchen and expect me to make anything, I'll probably end up making something explode.
          Obviously that wouldn't happen. The kitchen isn't ochem lab. I just haven't had very much experience cooking, which honestly is surprising and a huge oversight of mine in hindsight. Since my mom usually cooked dinner for our family most nights, you would think that her spinal cord injury resulting in quadriplegia in 2004 and her passing in 2012 would have taught me something about it these past 8 or 9 years. But I still have the same cooking skills as that 11-year-old who burned chocolate chip cookies every time.
          But here in Chile, I've been a part of cooking real food. I helped my host mother with lunch one day, spent a Saturday shopping at a mercado then cooked various Mexican dishes for her birthday, and then went to Lonquén (a town about an hour south of Santiago) to bake some chocolate chip cookies for my extended host family. Only a few burned this time!

The Mexican food

Lonquén: in Mapudungun (the Mapuche language) it means "located down below"

A traditional Chilean oven where the cookies were baked

          During all these cooking adventures, I can't help but think about "what could've been" if my mom had a functioning body. Usually I never think this way; why waste time in an imagined fantasy land when reality is hitting you in the face? But these past few weeks it's been inevitable. What if my mom had at least functioning hands that would have allowed her to grip a stirring spoon or a whisk? Would I have appreciated her knowledge with the lessons I've learned now? Would we have spent time peeling potatoes side-by-side like I did with my host mother a few days ago? I'm not sure, but it's nice to imagine.
          Even though some of these cooking adventures have been a bit tear-inducing (I'll blame the onions) while I let myself think about what could've been, I know those onions are making me learn about myself and the way I can come home a better person. After all, I need to learn how to cook to survive in the real world.
          I'm still perfecting my potato peeling techniques. But one of these days, I'll cook a feast of Chilean food. Maybe even a Thanksgiving dinner for my host family? Hopefully it will contain all the love and energy I've gained and have yet to gain from my tasty adventures in Chile.
      
Until later, blog readers! Thank whoever cooks for you today. :)
Ciao!

When it rains, it pours sopaipillas

         It rained literally all day today. It was a cold, drizzly, hard rain that wouldn't let up the entire day. Even though I love it when it rains, something about rain in July when it's supposed to be winter really weirded me out. I didn't want to leave my room at all; sitting in bed and reading a good book felt like a great idea.
         But I needed to get to "work" and start thinking about travel plans and sightseeing in Santiago. Eventually I got enough courage to put on my rain jacket, slip into my rain boots, and dig out my umbrella from the piles of warm layers at the bottom of my wardrobe. I went to the Pontificia Universidad Católica and registered for my class, Religions and Christianity, which took all of about 5 minutes... after I spent a good 20 minutes trying to find the Theology department, then figuring out how to enter the building. I'm pretty sure those students in the Study Room and library thought I was crazy for taking laps around the theology building. Oh well!
           After spending a lot of time walking around in the cold rain and waiting for buses to arrive (they don't run on fixed schedules, so at the same time on different days you could be running to the bus one day or waiting a half hour the next), it felt good to get home and slip on my Darth Vader slippers and make a nice warm cup of hot cocoa. Real cocoa from Venezuela. Good stuff after I added lots of sugar! :)
          Sitting by myself in the apartment, feeling a little lonely and a bit unproductive today, I was rapidly brainstorming in my head what types of things I could still do with my day. Obviously I came up with nothing, but the day still ended splendidly. My host mother and host sister came home with ingredients to make "sopaipillas" (so-pie-PEE-yas). I had forgotten that my host family mentioned this little tradition on the first day I came, of always making sopaipillas whenever it rains. Immediately I was excited to see it come alive.
           Even though I feel like a master chef when I make Kraft Mac & Cheese or Funfetti cake, I still have a lot to learn when it comes to cooking and baking. So I mostly watched during this round of Chilean Cooking 101.

The dough is made by boiling zapallo (sa-PA-yo) in water, then mixing it with butter or oil and salt until it makes a paste. Then you add flour and knead the dough for a long time, then roll into balls and flatten with a rolling pin.

zapallo

My host sister, Maria Ignacio, showing off the sopaipilla dough. :)

To the right is the oil where the dough will be fried, and to the left is a sauce in which the fried sopaipilla will soak. The sauce is made out of chancaca, real sugar from the sugarcane plant, with orange peel, whole cloves, and whole cinnamon.

Sopaipilla frito!!

 

The finished product, complete with the typical tecito (tea) that accompanies almost every meal here in Chile.

           Participating in this intimate tradition really makes me feel included in the family and part of the culture. On a rainy day, when people in the US would normally curl up alone on a couch with a book, my family interacted with each other and made food, with great conversation around the table. Sometimes I still struggle to find the differences between such a modern city in Latin America and any city in the US. I think I need to stop searching and comparing, and just start relearning how to live with new traditions and behaviors.
           The sauce, with its smell of cinnamon and cloves, made me think of Christmas back home with everyone together in the house and eating Christmas ham. Getting the whole family together for one day out of the year is quite the ordeal, but maybe instead of reserving special family time for certain occasions, we should put a little bit more effort into little get-togethers that depend on something random. Like a rainy day. Even though it seems so isolating in a new place, there's always unity in a little sopaipilla.

A little bit of everything!

          It feels like the past 13 days have flown by while dragging themselves along. If that makes any sense at all, I applaud you! The past several days I’ve been mentally cheering myself on saying: “you can do it! Just sit down and write this dang blog post!.” But it’s SO hard, I have way too many things to write about. So, I apologize in advance for the haphazard flow. :)

          The fall 2013 IES Santiago group of 25 students spent the first several days in the Orientation program, where we listened to presentations and lectures about basic cultural norms and learned about Chilean Spanish. Chileans speak very fast with a lot of slang, so my host family has been joking around with me by saying that I’ll come back to the US speaking a version of Spanish that people will barely understand. It’s been a bit of a scramble learning new words for foods and slang for everyday expressions, but with time I hope I can speak adequate “Chilean”. We are very dedicated to improving our Spanish skills, so we always speak Spanish whether we are in the IES center or out discovering the city, for which I am VERY grateful.

          We also went on a short day trip to the gorgeous cities of Valparaíso and Viña del Mar (about 2 hours west of Santiago). The city is beautiful, yet has a very different dynamic than Santiago. There, the affluent and the poor live interspersed throughout the city, so they live with each other and probably interact on a daily basis. In Santiago, one side of the city houses the more impoverished population while the center of the city is full of wealthier people, where it resembles the US with shopping malls and US fast-food chains. There’s a very clear separation between the two areas, which I’ll hopefully learn more about while I’m here.

          We’ve visited Plaza de Armas (for a mini-tour of the place, see my facebook photo albums), the Museo de Bellas Artes (the fine arts museum), the Centro Artesanal de Los Dominicos (a fascinating “strip mall” of local artisans who make and sell their work), and countless shops and markets throughout the city. It’s very easy to get around this huge city on the micro (bus) and metro (subway system). I have a goal of looking through my tourist guide and talking to my host family about where I should visit in the next few weeks before academics start up in full swing.

          In a few weeks, I’ll be starting the Clinical Observation Seminar where I’ll learn about the Chilean healthcare system and observe doctors in various hospitals and clinics, both publicly and privately owned. I hope it will help me decide if I actually want to become a doctor, or if I want to be involved in healthcare through a different role.

Some things I need to constantly remember:
          Don’t sniff. Don’t yawn. Don’t stretch. Don’t walk too quickly. Don’t wander aimlessly and look around in wonder. These are all dead giveaways that I’m a gringo (foreigner) in Chile. I thought I might blend in with my darker hair, but somehow people have a sixth sense that can identify any foreigner. It’s very homogenous in Santiago; there is very little diversity amongst the population. So, no matter how well I try to communicate with people in Spanish, they’ll still respond in English sometimes. Honestly, it’s easier for me to understand Spanish than very accented English! :)
There are times when I get pretty frustrated that I don’t entirely fit in with the culture yet, but there are SO MANY more positive things I can write about than petty foreigner adjustments.

Such as…

          The food! It’s not spicy, contrary to the what the name “Chile” suggests. Lots of fruit, palta (avocado), pasta, and really yummy bread.

          The city! It’s such a relief being in a city again, I feel like the whole world is outside my window instead of just another cornfield (no offense, Iowa!!). The city has a more relaxed vibe than Grinnell, which I think is a healthy break from the constant stress and “need-to-get-everything-done-now” feeling from the US.
          My host family! They are wonderful. A single mother with a daughter who studies/lives in Argentina while in school makes a very atypical Chilean family. In Chile, there is no dorm life because students will still live with their parents while they attend university. We’ve had many discussions about cultural differences between the US and Chile, how gender and sexuality establish (or change) themselves (interesting fact: instead of referring to a male as “straight” they said “hombre”, which literally means man. Some language thing might be reflecting the way people view sexuality? Or the other way around? I’ll need to see!), how the Chilean political system needs to change, how and why abortion needs to be legalized, how the future generations may change Chilean politics, and other fascinating topics that are introducing me to the complex culture I’m visiting.

          All in all, even though I sometimes get exhausted and feel lost with all these new experiences, I’m thriving in Chile. I love speaking and hearing Spanish all day long, reading the Spanish street signs, and being surprised every once in a while with a spectacular view of the cordillera (Andes).

Here’s to another few weeks full of growth and happiness. :)

Ciao!