Back!

Oh, hello, Friend!

How lovely it is to wake up with news from you! Everything you've been doing sounds so cool and interesting. I guess it's my turn to catch you up with my return to Chile!

My first week back in Chile could be described a few ways - in waves of homesickness, in heat waves (back to a very blisteringly hot summer!) - but perhaps is best encapsulated in my culinary escapades.

Chile is still a land of raw materials, with the very little that comes prepackaged set at costs beyond my current means of living. It's nice because it allows me to get crafty and experiment.

Experiment one: No bake cheesecake.

Thesis: If the lack of Graham Crackers in Chile can be offset by their abundance of generic vanilla cookie wafers, then I can make a pie crust.

Process: Long and arduous, especially because I had my friend Alvaro in charge of crushing the vanilla wafers into tiny tiny pieces, and he took a cigarette break approximately every five minutes.

Outcome: ALMOST successful - however, I did not buy enough cookies to make much crust, and then somehow managed to unplug my refrigerator in the process, so the cake unfortunately died overnight from natural causes.

Experiment two: Grinding coffee in a blender.

Thesis: If Nescafe tastes like such shit, then ANYTHING I can manage to brew out of real coffee beans will be better.

Process: Fairly short and incredibly loud, with possible damage done to the blades in our blender (at least it got some use; I can't remember the last time we hauled it out, but it was probably to make something alcoholic). Boiled water and put the whole beastly mess into my french press.

Outcome: .....watery. It was like water coffee with lots of milk and sugar. But then I adjusted the water/bean ratio and this time it didn't end up so bad. I also just managed to drip some of the new batch on our recently cleaned couch, so allow me a minute to clean that up before Erik has a coronary....

hahahahaha ok.

Experiment three!: Beer battered fried chicken.

Thesis: If I have a Betty Crocker cookbook, then I can effectively be Betty Crocker!

Process: Sending Erik to the store during the soccer game so I can turn it off and read in peace; boiling a liter of oil on the stove. (Turning my wok into a deep fryer was very scary, though successful. Things to consider: potential tastiness vs. potential third degree oil burns all over my body).

Outcome: Finally, sweet success! The chicken was crunchy and tasty and everything fatteningly good about America, AND we have leftovers!

Also, my first day back involved lunchtime AND dinnertime sushi!

Last week I went to a house party with Alvaro and his Swedish cousin, Erik, who was visiting the Chilean fam. Very often, the old style mansions that are littered about Santiago have been transformed into something called "collectives": groups of young people who rent out the house together and live in shambles. This particular mansion had six bedrooms, two bathrooms, and thirteen tenants.

Anyway, one of the tenants has a pretty big bank debt due to student loans, so she decided to throw a charity concert for herself! We all bought "tickets" to the show, food and drink, and basically had a group jam session and danced all night. One guy had bagpipes and I taught a group of Chileans how to do the Beginner's Jig. It was so much fun - very relaxing and silly.

What else? Oh, I finally saw the new Sherlock Holmes movie. Brilliant! I think the best one so far, though I was disappointed that the strand of disease warfare wasn't more strongly picked up on in the plot line. But all in all very amusing, especially the fight sequences, and that bit on the train :) I wish I could have seen it with you!

I hope you come to visit soon, but for now I promise I'll keep up with my blog so you can know what's going on down here! Chile, of course, is ever changing, and I always find something new and cool about the country.

Hope you are well! Glad we're back in touch!