Back to school

Hello, neglected readers! I'm back to blogging now, and ready to once again define your internet reading experience from this blog. Actually, I'm sorry that it's been nearly two months since I've posted anything on this blog. I'd claim that I was EVER so busy, but we all know that's not true. It would be impossible to do a full summary of the last two months, so here's a quick highlight reel with some pictures.

First cool piece of news: I'm going to be interning at the US Embassy in Santiago this fall! I'll be working in the Foreign Commercial Section (FCS), which helps both American companies trying to expand into Chile and Chilean companies looking to invest in the US. I'm still waiting for clearance to begin working, but I hope that I'll be able to start in the coming weeks. This photo is of me with Ambassador Mike Hammer at the Embassy's Fourth of July celebration.

Another highlight of the past month was getting to ski for a number of days. This first picture was with fellow Embassy interns Hannah and Jason at Valle Nevado on the Fourth of July.

 Later in the month my brother and parents visited. We spent three full days skiing at La Parva, another Santiago-area ski resort. The mist/smog in the background of this photo is covering metropolitan Santiago.

 My brother Sean is a little hesitant to take photos with his older brother. Sometimes I had to resort to surprising him with quick selfies on my phone.

Later in the trip we made a quick trip to Valparaíso, the port nearest to Santiago and Chile's third largest city. 

 After saying goodbye to my family, I enjoyed my final couple weeks of vacation by doing some exploring in and outside of Santiago. Here's another great selfie of me on Cerro San Cristobal (St. Christopher Hill) overlooking northeastern Santiago.

I took a wonderful trip to Chiloé, an archipelago about 600 miles south of Santiago that hugs the Chilean coast. It's normally super rainy there, so when I had a sunny day I took advantage of it with a long hike along the Pacific coast. There were penguins on the cliffs near me, which was a special highlight of the day and totally made up for the enormous blister I got afterwards.

This is curanto, the most famous Chilean dish. It was originally conceived as a one pot dish that fishermen could take with them and make at sea in these funky pots that they would cover with dirt and cook for long times. This one wasn't "authentic" in the sense that it was cooked in a modern kitchen, but it was super tasty and filling. In all it includes clams, mussels, sausage, chicken, corn, and different types of potato. 

 This is my favorite souvenir that I've managed to find in Santiago so far. I'm not certain if it was a hat that was originally made for Texas and then just recycled for Chileans or if it was made for a very special audience. It's pretty special, regardless.

Then on a related, here's an ad that I got recently on Facebook. It would seem that my Chilean-Texan connection has become pretty obvious to the advertisers Facebook sells my information to. It's definitely one of those moments when I marvel at, and then am disturbed by, how well Facebook knows me.

In other news, classes started again last week for the southern hemisphere's spring semester. I'm taking two different poetry classes, a nineteenth century history course, and a seminar on Chilean history and culture designed for exchange students. I've already signed up for another climbing course, and managed to arrange my class schedule so that I can work at the Embassy in the large chunks (most of Tuesday/Thursday and all of Friday) when I don't have class. Look out for further updates in the coming weeks about the internship, classes, and the eagerly anticipated visit from Holly, my lovely girlfriend. As always, thanks for reading.