The one thing that has taken time, and is still taking time getting used to is the host family stay. I love my host family, I feel totally welcome and cared for here. But it's like I am caught in the middle between being a member of the family and being a prolonged guest in the house. Whenever we sit down to have lunch together as a family I am always served first, followed by my host dad and then whoever else is left between my mom, host sister Maca and her friend Alej who lives with us. But I also help clean up the table and set things right after we eat and then Maca, Alej or my mom wash the dishes, sometimes they leave them for the next morning or whatever, but they always do them. Also, when I say I'm being cared for, I'm REALLY being cared for. I'm in the habit of making my bed at home. Simply because I feel that it's nice to get into a bed that is all laid out and you don't have to work out all the twists in the blankets when all you want to do is put your head on the pillow and sleep. So, I've kept that habit up here, especially since there are about three extra blankets on my bed due to how cold it gets inside the house at night. Many times when I leave early in the morning for class, I come home to my mom having re-made it to look super nice. My mom always does the laundry, sometimes with the help of my sister but nonetheless, all I have to do is put my dirty clothes in the washing machine for one of them to sort out when it gets full. Then all of my clothes get folded up and left on the chair by my door for me to put away. Monday is normally cleaning day when the whole house gets cleaned, swept, etc. meaning my room is also included in this, and once again, I come home from class to everything being sorted out and looking nice in my room even though I keep it pretty tidy myself. There have been nights that I come home after once (ohn-say) which is basically dinner and my mom will be laying in bed hanging out and she will get up to make sure I've eaten, and normally I have - but she'll still go to the kitchen and grab me a little plate of dessert or an apple.
All of this makes me feel loved and well cared for in my family, but it's kind of hard for an independent girl who is used to doing her own laundry, making her own food (or at the very least plating her own dish up) and just tidying her place up when she finds the time for it. You might say that I'm loving not having to really do any of the work or chores around my house. While I might agree to an extent, it also is very unbalancing for the student with a U.S. mindset, because this is normal here. It's a very maternal society where the mom's are used to caring for everyone and doing everything, whereas back at home we work hard as soon as we can to assert our own independence.
Something else that I recently noticed is that you need to be careful about the things you cook or recipes you choose to make while you're here. Something so simple that you just have tucked away in your kitchen back at home, doesn't even exist here. Like parchment paper. I've started a semi-weekly thing here with my friend Rachel to bake or make some food every Monday that we are home and not gallivanting around South America. This last Monday was our first one, and we decided to make these delicious looking brownie-like chocolate cookies that we found on a food blog called Brown Eyed Backer. Seemed simple enough because it's basically like making brownies, but dropping the batter to make the cookies - problem being it called for parchment paper. So instead of these little delicious cookies that look like brownies and taste like them, they turned out to be flat pancakes that scrunched up when you tried to get them off the pan. Even after it being greased up good. (Yes, improper grammar, there because I want it there). So we instead used the second half of the batch to make a small pan of brownies, layered some homemade butter cream frosting on them, layered the smooshed up cookies and covered it with more butter cream frosting. It didn't look the prettiest, but I know my family thought it was very good even though it just looked like a glob of brownie and butter cream frosting mixed together once I got it home. But now we know, when it calls for parchment paper - don't attempt to make it in Chile, wait until you get home. :)
That's pretty much all I have for now, we bought bus tickets to go to Mendoza, Argentina last night for this weekend so I'll hopefully have something about that when we get back next week. Then next weekend is "Fiestas Patrias" which is pretty much the birthday of Chile, and guess what? This year it's their bicentennial. So big party, and it's on a weekend. Meaning four day weekend big party with drunks all over spouting their love for their country. I'll have at least a little about that too in the next couple weeks.
Love you all!
~De
I wish I had someone to help me keep my room clean and organized >.< . And it's a bummer that those brownie cookie things didn't work out as well as you had hoped, but it just means you have an excuse to make them when you come home, and I can help eat them :)
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