Or we could just go with the food and weather and maybe that could be a cute metaphor for personal discovery? Yeah, that does sounds better to me. If it worked for college essays, it damn well better work for a blog!
I'm thinking about food because I've just finished making and devouring a meal of salmon, broccoli, brown rice, and white wine. If that isn't adult food then I don't know what is. Maybe I should have incorporated brussels sprouts or kale or blueberries to get all the super foods in? Whatever I don't care. In fact, I was so proud of myself that I rewarded myself with one or two (or four) Oreos. At least the junk food here is cheap too.
Back to good food. Santiago has a network of enormous grocery stores, smaller stores with seven or eight aisles of food, corner shops with a scattering of offerings, and fantastic markets where you can get enormous quantities of produce at incredible prices. It's late mid-fall in the Southern Hemisphere, so I've been enjoying kiwis, pears, and apples (apples are usually a little less than $.50/lb), as well as Ecuadorian bananas. A friend of mine tipped me off to a fantastic market that takes up about three blocks on Fridays near my apartment, so walking over there and doing my produce shopping for the week is now part of my weekly routine. I've learned to bring my empty enormous trekking backpack and then fill it up as I go along from stall to stall. Most of the food is locally/domestically sourced, but there are some obvious foreign exceptions: bananas come from Ecuador, some of the oranges are definitely not Chilean (though I'm not exactly sure where they come from), and I'm assuming that the almonds, walnuts, and pecans for sale are American. Last week I managed to fill the entire bag with apples, bananas, oranges, lettuce, spinach, eggplant, bell peppers, onions, and some fish on ice. Yup, this market is anchored by three different booths of fishmongers who, I found, can be accounted on to help an American figure out what he can easily cook up for himself.
This is one of the fishmonger stalls
I could honestly go on for far too long about how fun it is shopping at these markets. I love listening to the salespeople hawking their products; I particularly love when I hear them say "¿Qué quieres, mi reina?" (what would you like, my queen) to the little old ladies doing their shopping. A couple of weeks ago one guy called me flaquito (little skinny dude) as he sold me a bunch of onions. It's a cool environment to do your shopping, to say the least.
Another fun recent development was a trip I took to Mendoza, Argentina, last weekend. I went with a bunch of other foreign exchange students on the trip, which was great as it gave me a chance to meet some of my fellow exchange students while we explored a part of Argentina. Mendoza is the closest major Argentinean city to Santiago, sitting about seven hours away in a bus. The distance is probably a lot less than that indicates, though, because the bus crossing involves a somewhat harrowing ride over the Andes, with the border crossing at the highest point between the two countries.
The customs process takes a long time so we had a chance to walk around before getting our passports stamped--definitely better than standing in line at an airport
A definite highlight to Mendoza was learning about Argentinean wine (which mostly comes from the Mendoza region) while touring a vineyard.
The view from the vineyard's second floor. It's fall here, so the leaves are changing color and falling. The trees are olive trees.
Greek wine makers realized a long (long, long) time ago that placing a rose bush at the end of the row of grapes will distract bugs and diseases into attacking the rose first. This trick has survived into modernity, though apparently it's now more of an aesthetic move, as many modern bugs aren't distracted by the roses, no matter how beautiful they are.
At the risk of waxing poetic, I was struck by a sense of past grandeur in Mendoza. The railroads, plazas, old buildings, and cafes seemed like another era's idea of modernity. Argentina's going through some pretty tough economic times right now, making it a quite affordable country for people with access to dollars, but that doesn't make it much easier to see a country with such a pessimistic outlook on its future. I'm really looking forward to going to Buenos Aires in a couple of months, especially to learn a little more about this great country. Don't worry, dear reader, you'll get those iPhone photos in due time.
As always, thank you for reading. I hope your summers (almost there, UChicago!) are getting off to a great start. I'm thinking of you northern hemisphere dwellers as the leaves fall down here and I start thinking about skiing this winter. Clearly I'm finding ways to survive. If not, well, at least I know where I can get some decent food to eat.
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