Semester winding down/Thanksgiving

Happy(late) Thanksgiving! I realize that about three weeks have passed since my last post. The only explanation can be that Chile  has a calendar system where the middle  of the month don't exist,because once again I don't know how the time can fly by so quick. These past two months especially I have seen the beginning of the month come and then suddenly it's the end of the month!

Anyways, for Thanksgiving a friend from my program invited us over to her place to celebrate, potluck style. Her roommates are Chilean and Australian, so with them and the group of us Californians it was a nice little mix. I actually brought a Chilean-style salad, with avocados and tomatoes splashed with olive oil. For some reason lettuce isn't huge with the salads here. There were all the traditional dishes too, including a huge turkey and pumpkin pie. Oh, and there was hummus with the appetizers...I was very excited to say the least! Seeing as there were over twenty people in a relatively small apartment, it wasn't your classic sit around the table say what your thankful for deal. I was happy enough to have the classic food and friends!
The night continued with a dance party to reggaeton(a genre of Latin American dance music), which isn't your typical post-Thanksgiving meal ritual of bumming it on the couch in a food coma, but it was still a blast!

A simple Chilean salad

My (first) plate of good old traditional Turkey Day food

Meanwhile, the semester is finally wrapping up here. I had my last day of classes on Tuesday and our goodbye dinner was that night, which was more fun than bittersweet, especially since I've seen my good friends in the program everyday since then. It's not goodbye quite yet! My internship is pretty much winding down too. I just have my exit interview next week for that. The class I may miss the most is actually my swim class. Last Friday all the classes had a combined competition and I swam after coming right from class. Literally I wasn't even wet before diving in the water for the race...so needless to say it didn't go so well. Oh well, it was all for fun! And afterwards some classmates and I got lunch together. I have  obviously socialized with Chileans before, but to be honest and say this was the first time I hung out strictly with Chileans, no gringos present. I felt accomplished!
The rest isn't so much fun and games. It worked out that all my finals are essays, which makes it nice for making sure my work is clear and grammar-error free. The bad thing is I have a total of 4 essays to write(3 for classes,one for my internship) in the next week and a half, all of them being in the 7+page range. However, one of them is a partner paper and I'm working with an exchange student from Japan. It's funny how we end up speaking Spanish to each other, because it's a language we both share(although I'm pretty sure she speaks good English too).
I think it's appropriate that Thanksgiving fell close to the end of the semester, because looking back on the last 5 months I do have a lot to be thankful for! The places I've traveled, the friends I've made, the fulfilling classes I've taken, and just the fact that I have another 7 months to look forward to on this year long journey. It's strange, my return flight was changed the other day(for visa purposes you have to book a round trip, and December was the latest I could do at the time), which is a very concrete sign that my experience will eventually end. But, it's far enough off that I can't begin to think about how I'll actually feel when I head home. I may not even know then what to feel! Anyway back to the present... I imagine by the next post  I'll truly be done with schoolwork and I'll be looking ahead to the summer(whose plans are still a work in progress). Chao for now!
Some photos of the (almost) end of the semester...

With Ashley and Amanda, two of my good EAP friends  at the goodbye dinner

My swim class after the competition( our "profe" is in the blue shirt)

My good friend and fellow year-longer Andrea. Only 7 out of 44 of us are  extending another semester!

p.s. You may notice the  floral background change. It's appropriate because spring is definitely in full swing, with summer fast approaching! That means the North Face jacket and scarves are tucked far away in my closet! It also means very sweaty,stuffy bus and metro rides during rush hour...

Another Passport Stamp-Mendoza,Argentina

Hola Amigos,
I have seen the north of Chile, the middle, and some of the south. It seemed only right that I should actually venture outside of Chile. That's why this last weekend a group of 5 friends and I decided to take advantage of the long weekend(Thursday-Sunday) we had and take a bus ride through the Andes to Mendoza, Argentina.
Our adventure started on Thursday morning with an early departure that turned into a 9 hour bus ride. What really made it long was the border crossing. Everyone at the bus had to get off to get their passport stamped. But the beautiful views of the Andes we saw along the way were worth it.

My friend Andrea and I at the border

Before I jump into any recaps of the Mendozian adventures I wanted to point out a couple differences that stood out to me most over the weekend. 

 Argentine dialect: My host sister's husband is actually from Mendoza, so I've been exposed to the differences a bit. For starters, the informal pronoun tú(you), is replaced by "vos." The verbs are also conjugated differently. The last letter "r" of the infinitive is dropped, replaced with an "s," and an accent is added to the last syllable. So a sentence like "Tú vives en Argentina"(You live in Argentina) becomes "Vos vivís en Argentina." The only irregular verb conjugation used with vos is the verb "ser"(to be), which is conjugated as "sos." An example of this irregularity would be "Vos sos mi amigo" instead of  "Tú eres mi amigo."  Another  difference is how they pronounce the "ll." A simple example is "Me llamo," which would be pronounced Me YA-mo. In Argentina it is more of a soft sh sound, so it turns out sounding like Me shamo. I just think it's interesting that just one country over,the Spanish dialect can change so much! But let's just stay I'll be sticking to Chilean Spanish.

Meal time: After a whole weekend, my friends and I still couldn't exactly pin down the mealtime system here. Our first night it took some serious hunting to find a place open for dinner at 7:30 p.m. Another night we had no problem finding a restaurant at 10 p.m. The next day we were madly hunting again for a place to have a late lunch. After several of these trials this is what I've figured out...

Restaurants close early afternoon and stay closed for a few hours. Late afternoon/early evening is tea time for Argentines, similar to Chilean "once", except they eat a lot of media lunas(croissants). You may see cafes open with people outside enjoying the springtime warmth, eating their croissants and having a cup of coffee. Then, at around 10p.m. all the restaurants go into full swing for dinnertime and are open till incredibly late.So basically if you're hungry between 2p.m. to 8 p.m., Mendoza is not the place to be. However, there are a plethora of tasty heladerías(ice cream shops) open all day to satisfy any misinformed traveler's hunger :) 

Now onto the fun activities...

Wine and Bike Tour

It wasn't a tour per se. We rented bikes all day from a company called Mr. Hugo's, where Mr. Hugo himself came out and greeted us. He then gave us a map with all the wineries, chocolaterías(chocolate factories), and olive oil factories around the 12 kilometer span. We started with a winery, where I tried Argentine's famous Malbec wine. Then, we stopped for lunch at another winery, because wine tasting, bike riding, and an empty stomach does not make a good combination!  After lunch we headed to an olive oil factory, where we had a sampling and a tour of the factory.I even got a little olive oil tasting certificate. We took a mid-day power nap under the shade of the trees outside the factory, then went onto another winery. Half of our group, including myself, decided to skip out on this one, because I was feeling pretty tired from biking in the springtime heat.We rested outside by the vinery, and my friends who decided to do the tasting brought us out some of the wine they got to sip on. I tried dessert wine for the first time, which I personally thought was too sweet. Finally, we made our way to a chocolate factory, only to find it had just closed. The rest of the day had been so fun though, so I didn't feel so bummed about this. I enjoyed everything about this "tour", even the parts where we had to bike past busy roads and put up with constant honks and shouts of "lola!lola!"(a catcall that translates "young lady! young lady!"). Plus I personally thought it was a great deal. Everything, the 7 hour bike rental, lunch, tastings, and tours ended up being about $25!

In route!

The whole group on the olive oil tour

Window Shopping&Parque San Martín

On the other side of town, there is a huge park in Mendoza where we took an afternoon stroll on Saturday. Along the way, we window shopped in the many artesian shops in Mendoza. We finally got to the park itself, which was beautiful. There were plazas with fountains, a giant water canal, and acres of green grass and flowers. By the end of the day we had probably walked around for 6 hours, which was unexpected exercise after biking a lot the day before, but equally enjoyable. 

Outside the gates of the park

Food

Yes food does deserve a separate section here, because it definitely was a big part of the trip. Meat is to Argentina what seafood is to Chile...really amazing! Plus Argentina has an Italian influence, so I got my pizza and pasta fix I've been missing the past few months. Mendoza also has a bunch of pastry shops, where they sell the infamous alfajor(yes it is pronounced like alpha-whore, which made for some great jokes during the trip). An alfajor is basically a soft, crumbly cookie filled with dulce de leche, often coated with chocolate. I'm not one to chow down on tons of sweets, but I could definitely have more than one of these in one sitting!

All and all the weekend was better than I imagined, and our group got along well. There was only a bit of an issue when I got a bit of altitude sickness waiting over two hours at the Argentine-Chile border on the way back, but luckily we had the nicest bus driver on the planet. He helped guide me to the front of the line to get my paperwork stamped, helped find me medicine to deal with my stomach ache, and made jokes to lighten the mood through it all. Chilean hospitality can make any situation better! 

And finally, I have to say this trip made me antsy to get some more passport stamps. Seeing the word "Argentina" in the clear blue ink made me feel accomplished and ready for more adventures outside of Chile. This country has a lot to offer in itself, but so does South America...and the world. Here's to crossing borders! Chao for now amigos!