La Comida de Chile

Chile is not famous for its cuisine but they do have a few specialties that are pretty awesome:

Empanadas: Empanadas are dough filled with almost anything that you can think of and then they are either fried or baked. The most popular are queso (cheese), pino (cheese, meat, hard boiled egg), and other combinations of cheese and meat or vegetables. You can think of them as the predecessor of hot pockets, only better. I especially love them when they are homemade!

Palta: Also known as avocado. It is on EVERYTHING here, literally. Sandwiches, salads, burgers, etc. It is also a valid snack choice eaten plain. I love avocado so this is definitely not a problem for me. Fun fact: palta is another chilenismo, a word only used in Chile, everywhere else they call avocados aguacate.

Italianos/Completos: Huge hot dogs with tons of stuff on top. I haven't had a completo yet because I really like italianos, so I always end up ordering one of those. An italiano got its name from the colors of the Italian flag: red (tomato), green (avocado), and white (mayo). Chileans also love mayo. Here's a picture of an Italiano just for reference!

Pisco sours: Technically a drink, not a food but they are served at almost every restaurant. Made with Pisco, lemon juice, and sugar and sometimes whipped egg whites on top. Very good!

Terremoto: Literally translates to earthquake. A certain type of sweet fermented white wine with a scoop of pineapple ice cream. Some places add grenadine too. It's called a terremoto because you don't realize how strong it is until after you drink it and feel wobbly, supposedly.
Lauren and I sharing a terremoto:


Asados: Barbeques. Like American BBQ's salad, potato salad, and corn are all included, just in much larger quantities. Unlike in the US, there are no hamburgers or hotdogs, its just a collection of grilled carne (steak), pollo (chicken), chorizo (sausage), and cerdo (pork). Today my Chilean family had an asado at our house. It was delicious, although I don't think I will need to eat again until sometime tomorrow!

The Gringo Bar

This weekend some friends and I went to a bar called California Cantina. It is a gringo bar with an interesting history. Just to clarify, gringo/gringa is a slang word that is used to mean American. My host mom told me that it is derogatory in some Spanish-speaking countries, however in Chile it is used (usually) with affection. So this bar/restaurant that we went to was started by two guys from California who were studying abroad in Santiago and missed good hamburgers and tex-mex food, two things that are hard to find here. There were definitely a lot of English speaking customers and some of the waitstaff were bilingual. It was kind of a weird experience to only hear English and although it was easy understand, I think I prefer going to Chilean places. The food was great, and very American, and the hamburger came with palta (avocado) as a nice reminder that we are still in Chile!

first week of class and other adventures

We finally started classes last Monday, not that I am complaining about the time off from school. As of right now I only have classes Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and sometime in the next month I will start an internship on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So far classes seem good though its hard to tell since we've only had each class about twice. Also during this first week of school I witnessed the most interesting tradition I've seen since I've been here: the hazing of ALL of the freshmen students. The first week of school the upperclassmen gather all of the freshmen and cover them in food and other gross stuff and take their shoes and bags. The freshmen then have to walk around begging for money to buy back all of their things and the money goes towards throwing a carrete (party). I guess the end result is fun but its a shock to see all these students at first and I definitely don't think I would want to be part of that tradition!

Over the weekend my host family and I took a day trip to Pomaire and San Antonio. We ate a huge lunch and did a bit of shopping in Pomaire before heading to the port city of San Antonio where we saw tons of pelicans and lobos marinos (sea lions)!! On the drive home I noticed snow on the Andes! Unfortunately I couldn't get a good picture from the car.



A few friends and I spent a lazy Sunday afternoon wandering around Santiago and relaxing in a park. A popular pastime in parks here is to string flat ropes between trees and tight-rope walk across them. The more experienced walkers can jump and do tricks. Esteban (a new chilean friend) and I tried it out and it's much harder than it looks!


We ended the day on the rooftop of an apartment watching the sun go down behind the mountains! It was absolutely beautiful!

Vina del Mar y Valparaiso

Thursday morning the whole group of American University students and a group of students from Wake Forest University piled onto two small buses and headed towards the beach. The first stop that we made was Isla Negra, the location of one of poet Pablo Neruda's houses. It was beautiful! The sun was out and for the first time since coming to Chile it wasn't over 80 degrees. We toured the house and then had some free time to spend on the beach. Unfortunately you aren't allowed to take pictures inside the house, but it had some amazing views and was very creatively decorated.









After Isla Negra, we traveled to Vina del Mar, also on the coast of Chile. We again had some free time to visit the beach, although this one wasn't quite as pretty as the one at Isla Negra. Vina del Mar and Valparaiso are port towns that are sort of in a cove and are protected by a breakwater so there aren't really any waves. On Friday morning we took a short bus ride to Valparaiso, the most important port city in Chile. It was a booming city until the Panama Canal was built and ships no longer had to travel around Cape Horn. The city was built without a plan and is built on 42 or 43 hills (Cerros). We had a walking tour in the morning and then spent some time at the beach before checking into our hostel. There were a group of us that decided to stay in Valparaiso for the rest of the weekend and I'm glad I decided to stay!

Tons of hills and really cool graffiti here:












A few really cool things happened when we were staying in Valparaiso. The first is that I stayed in a hostel for the first time and loved the experience! The second thing is that we went to the supermercado (grocery store) and bought food for the weekend to make our own meals (which were delicious!) We decided to buy cheese for sandwiches and had to order it from the deli, which was a bit nerve-wracking because things are measured in kilos here, not pounds and I had to order in Spanish. It all worked out and I ordered a 1/4 kilo of cheese for the 6 of us. This might seem like a small feat but since we are living with families we haven't really had to do too much food shopping so I was pretty proud. The third thing that happened was we went to a famous club called El Huevo (The Egg). It was in all of our guide books and recommended to us by our professor. It's a huge club with four floors and a rooftop and a bunch of different rooms with different music on each floor. Really fun! The other awesome thing that happened in Valpo is that we met some Chilean friends who also live in Santiago!! We had tons of fun going out with them and I'm glad we finally met some native Chileans who are our age! I hope this post wasn't too long and boring to read!

Here are some photos from two of the famous cemeteries in Valpo that we visited: