mmmm good eats

So, as my amiga Anna Chapin said to me in a recent email from DC, "From one foodie to another, you know the food is importante." With all the fresh produce and interesting concoctions here, it's totally foreseeable that this blog will turn into more of an eating log.

I love to eat. However, I'm not really down with people pushing food that I may or may not want on me. Some of the other students are experiencing really overbearing host senoras who don't understand why they can't eat 4 servings of heavy meat twice a day. A little anecdote: Yesterday, I was dining at my friend Emma's casa with her familia for Sunday lunch (which is actually more like a big dinner). Having heard about my non-meat tendencies (and being confused for a while I guess... no carne?), her senora had made me an entire spinach and cheese lasagna to go alone with the meat one for the rest of the family. Who else remembers those old Stoffer's Lasagna commercials with the parents and the two twin blond girls and some random guy friend of the girls who are joyously devouring their SUPERSIZE portions of Stoffers? Yesterday's lunch at Emmas was like this commercial: Latino style. It was me, Emma's Senora y Senor and their 30 year old son who lives at home (totally normal...) and his girlfriend Carolina. Before lunch, Emma, el Senor, and I talked politics over some Pisco (fruity Chilean liquor again!) and peanuts. At the table, everyone was served a heaping square of lasagna and after I finished mine (quite a feat since I'm not the biggest fan of lasagna..), I rejected a second helping only to be told that I eat like a "pajarito" (small bird). Next came the desert bowls with some sort of icecream cake with cookies and long chocolate sticks. I came home after lunch and declared to Cecilia that I could never eat again.

I feel super comfortable (the senoras here love to add "super" as a prefix for all spanish words) in my casa with Cecilia. She's so chill and let's me eat whenever I want and doesn't get offended when I don't want to eat 6 servings of her food. In fact, last night after that lasagna ordeal I could only handle eating melon for dinner and she thought that was fine, even funny. The only weird thing she likes to comment on is when I eat fruits and vegetables in the same meal (she outright rejected the idea of putting small pieces of peach in her salad).

Cecilia and I have already had several long discussions about health care, politics, volcanoes, alcohol consumption, public transporation, etc. She saw me reading an Isabel Allende book and told me to be cautious about believing what I was reading because Allende hasn't lived in Chilean culture for quite a while. She seemed to feel uncomfortable being judged by someone who up and moved to California and now just prides herself on being a famous Chilean author. Makes sense to me. She also had some pretty decent things to say about Pinochet and wanted to make sure I understood that his good intentions and his successes. Michelle Bachelet, while a leader of social movements, has apparently screwed the bus system in Santiago, and this seems to be the only thing Chileans have to say good or bad about her.

Orientation started today. I'm actually understanding much more than I thought, and let's all pray that by the time I return to the U.S. I can actually speak in legit spanish. Who knows. We have about a week and a half more of orientation before starting classes (not with Chilean students, but at least they'll be at the school where our classes are) and going to Valparaiso next Thursday! Hooray. Okay, that's all for now... maybe next time I'll talk more about school? Probably not...