Potaytoes Potahtoes

Hola hola!

I got to speak English again today! We did part one of our orientation today. Highlight of my day, not gonna lie. It’s not that I don’t understand the importance of and appreciate the opportunity to speak so much Spanish but by golly it’s haaaaaaaaard.

Things I did today:

-       Nearly toppled in the bus countless times. You think buses are unstable to stand in in America, the buses here are like standing on the edge of a surfboard, no joke. I don’t know how they do it.

-       Learned that they don’t believe in vegetarians here. One of the director/teachers was telling us that if you say you are a vegetarian, it is taken to mean that you are on a diet. So they will give you a bowl of lettuce. And if you say no no that’s not enough food, they’ll offer to add some cheese and ham. And you say, no but I’m a vegetarian! They will tell you oh but it’s still light! PETA would have such a heart attack in this place.

-       Ate the Chilean president’s favorite sandwich for lunch. I’ve already forgotten what it’s called. It was beef and cheese and bread. But not a cheeseburger, because it was like strips of beef, not ground beef.

-       Took a Spanish diagnostic test to place me in my Spanish class for the semester that really humbled me about how much Spanish I thought I’d discovered I’d known.

-       Discovered that now even my iCal is in Spanish. NO ONE WILL LET ME SPEAK ENGLISH.

-       Bought a cell phone! Someone explain me this. The phone cost 10,000 pesos (about $20), and it comes with 50 free text messages, 50 free picture messages, AND 10,000 pesos worth of credit for phone calls or text messages. Do they think they’re making money with this? Silly Chileans.

-       Watched The Big Bang Theory for the first time in my life. Perhaps when I’m wasting my life away in Poway again I’ll pick it up for real.

Oh and there was a potato situation. By the end of this stay I’d better be head over heels for potatoes or I’m gonna have a problem. Anyway so padre and I each have a bowl of soup, porque madre no tiene hambre. And I think oh this is the light dinner. And I finish it and think it’s time for tea and madre comes out with yogurt for her and padre and a plate with some kind of omelette/quiche sin vegetables and approximately 7 slices of general potato, nothing specific for me. I mean I think maybe they were like. Fried or baked or whatever you do where the skins get kind of sweet? I’m the furthest thing from a potato expert. So I’m eating my egg thing hoping I can somehow get out of the potato thing and I take my time and they both finish and madre just sits with me watching me eat and talking to me (apparently me having refused fruit last night and this morning is really causing her concern, because fruit is very important to my nutrition – but really, I’ve just been so full from everything else. She gave me a pear a bit later and I ate it all and she seemed pleased). So I got through the eggs and I start chipping away at the potatoes cutting little pebble sized pieces of potato off at a time and chewing and swallowing and every time I ate a full slice, I earned a sip of juice. And I finished and I was SO PROUD of myself and then she pointed to the bowl of raw tomatoes that I hadn’t noticed but were intended for me. And I just couldn’t do it guys. I couldn’t. And now instead of being proud, I feel guilty for telling her that no I don’t like tomatoes and she was nice about it but when she told padre about my dislike of tomatoes there was a hint of disappointment and oh my I’m such an awful person.

I’m really working on making my blog postings shorter I PROMISE, thanks for bearing with me as I work on this blogging thing. But one more thing. So I was on the bus this afternoon, and this guy comes on playing the guitar. He plays two songs and gives a little speech, probably talking about his need for money, and then he walks around the bus. He gets at least half of the bus to give him money! No idea how much because it was all coins and I don’t have a clue what those are worth, but these Chileans, they really are generous people.