My dear LC-ers prospective and present!
Hello and a very happy belated Thanksgiving! I hope you all
had an extremely restful and rejuvenating break that has left you feeling fresh
as a daisy and ready to confront your next challenges. Or something inspirational
like that….
Oh what’s that you ask now? What did I do for Thanksgiving
all the way in Chile? Why thanks for asking folks! This year for turkey day I
went to what I’m going to call a “confused gringo potluck”. All of us gringos
here with CIEE (which if you don’t know is the 3rd party
organization that coordinates our homestays etc) got together with a smattering
of Chilean friends and host family members and had a Thanksgiving thing. It was
a weird mix of American and Chilean. On the American side there was stuffing and
apple pie (which I made!) and the sharing of what we were thankful for, but it
was clear we were not in the good ol’ USA. For one thing we threw turkey parts
on the grill a la Chilean Asado (grill out), for another we were eating outside
under an avocado tree. Eating outside was weird enough (Thanksgiving is usually
really cold but it’s now late spring here) but the mix of foods people brought
was also pretty strange. None of the Chileans in attendance had really ever
heard of Thanksgiving and were confused about what to bring. We ended up with loaf
of Pan de Pascua (this weird Christmas fruitcake thing), about 10 bottles of
wine, a (calm down everyone, the drinking age here is 18 and Chile has some
fantastic wines!) and a chocolate fountain. Even though I missed having
cranberry sauce, gravy, and pumpkin pie (it is seriously impossible to find
cranberries or a pumpkin here) and I could have done without the fruitcake, I now
firmly believe that every Thanksgiving feast should include a chocolate
fountain.
preparing the chocolate fountain
dinner!
It was kind of sad though to spend Thanksgiving here and made
me miss Portland. I haven’t gone home to Wisconsin for Thanksgiving for a few
years now (it’s just too expensive to go all that way for a weekend) so I
usually spend the holiday with my great auntie Evelyn and great uncle John (who
live in Portland) and all of the family that comes to their house. Thanksgiving
in college for me has always meant a weekend break full of cousins and babies
and awesome food and sleeping 13 hours every night. It was a little sad not to
be there this year but I’m glad I did something here.
It’s now basically summer here and it is getting HOT. It’s
been in the upper 80s and lower 90s for the past week. It still weirds me out a
bit that I’m wearing shorts and a t-shirt in November. The great part of the
heat is that when this past weekend I went with my host family to their grown
son’s house who lives about an hour away we spent the whole day in their
swimming pool. The not so great part of the heat is that my hour plus bus ride
to class every day on the city bus is uncomfortable. Ah well, I’ll just enjoy
the heat and sun before going back to Wisconsin in December…
I only have two weeks of class left here which is crazy.
What that means is that over the next two weeks I have final exams! Ahhhh!! It’s
going to be a lot of work and rather stressful just like finals anywhere. I am
trying to stay on top of my work however and yesterday I finished my first
final paper (10 pages). Please remember that all of my classes are in Spanish
so all of my readings, tests, and essays are in Spanish. Now to write the two different
5 page essays and re read all my notes. It’s going to be a good time.
As my semester rather quickly comes to an end I find myself thinking
more and more about coming back to the United States, and especially back to
LC. As sad as I will be to leave the temporary life I have here in Santiago, I
cannot wait to be back on campus. Something that this semester has made me
realize is just how much I appreciate LC and how much I’m looking forwards to
being back on the hill, to eating at my favorite food cart (E-San Thai food.
You’ve got to try their pad see ew. It is so good) or just studying in Watzek
library.
Getting back is seeming much more real because I am
officially registered for classes! The registrar’s office helps all of us off
campus persons to register because we can’t always be at a computer during our
registration times. I’m happy to say I got all the classes I wanted and will be
taking (drum roll please): Anthropology of Violence, Social Theory (a required
SOAN-sociology/anthropology class), Western Art History; Prehistoric to Medieval,
and Origins of Life in the Universe. It should be a fun semester. A lot of work
(first time I am taking two 300 level SOAN classes at the same time!) but I am
ready.
For now however I am still here and it’s time to get to
work. These papers won’t write themselves and the sooner I finish finals the
sooner I get to go to Peru!!
As always please send me you thoughts, questions, concerns,
philosophies, jokes or cute cat pictures to smiller@lclark.edu
Sara