First things first, I finally tried my first kuchen, which is a little german style apple pie/cake, but the Chilean version. It was really delicious! Basically it has a pie crust with a thin layer of what tasted like lemon pudding layered over the crust, which was then covered by apples. Then today I bought some treats from a random street vendor. I said I wouldn’t, especially when they are selling food items from what appeared to be a cardboard box…but, they were super delicious!! I got three things and [...]

Yesterday (Friday) I had a cooking class with one of the teachers from the International Center, Christian. Emily, Mari, Kenya, Ryan and Greg all came too! We made pebre, which is a Chilean salsa. It was delicious. It has garlic, tomatoes, onion, parsley, chile, olive oil and salt. It was really delicious! We also bought sopaipillas from a bakery and topped our sopaipillas with the pebre, it was sooo good. In Chile, traditionally when it rains people eat sopaipillas, it is like Chilean comfort food. They are fried thick tortillas made with [...]

On Saturday morning I climbed Cerro el Roble with 8 other people (Diego, Joaquin, Cony, Daniela, Gustavo, Matias, Sebastian, Fernanda). I hope I didn’t forget anyone! It is called Cerro el Roble because it is filled with trees called Robles, which are red/purple, so the entire hill looked red and purple!  It was so much fun and incredibly beautiful! Pictures can’t do it justice! We drove to Cerro el Roble and then drove part way up it (so we wouldn’t have quite as long of a trip…haha). Then we started walking, [...]

I had my first day of actual volunteering on Thursday, which ended up going decently. Finally a decent day at Maritimo! I got there and met up with another one of the volunteer coordinators, Josefina and another volunteer, Zach. Josefina led us up to the 4th floor where the kids are and then we had to wait because one of the patients was having a bit of a melt down, so we had to wait for Josefina to get done trying to calm her down since we needed to be [...]

Yesterday, I went back to the street vendors and managed to find myself a pair of regular jeans for $15, so now I can have a pair of pants to wear at my internship site that I don’t care too much about. Plus the jeans I managed to find are regular bell bottoms and not skinny jeans, since it appears like that is pretty much all you can buy here. Skinny jeans and more skinny jeans. I also started the process of hand washing my clothes, since in Chile if you do not have a washer [...]

On Monday I walked with Ryan almost to Reñaca, which is a neighboring city to Viña. It was a very beautiful walk along the ocean! But, it took about 2 1/2-3 hours (total, there and back)… In Viña there are parks that have public workout equipment that you can use and there was a park near the ocean on the way to Reñaca that had really nice equipment and lots of people were using it! I wish that they had workout parks in MN! On the way, there were also a [...]

It has been raining here for about three days now and when it rains in Chile it RAINS! The streets are literally filled with water. You can’t even see the road in front of my apartment right now. Just to walk down the sidewalk your shoes get soaked because there is just water everywhere. The wind is very strong as well, especially at night. Last night my windows and my door were shaking from the wind! In front of my apartment there are a bunch of bridges that go over [...]

Wandered around some more today, found Wolff Castle, which was pretty cool. It’s this big stone castle right on the ocean surrounded by bigs rocks and lots seagulls and pelicans! The pelicans are huge and a little scary looking. I also walked on another beach (further down on the coast) for awhile and played with some of the stray dogs. It was a good 4-5 hours of walking. I am already getting sunburned, which is not a good sign since it’s only been about 4 days now! Damn my pale skin! I also found [...]

I have officially made it to Viña del Mar, Chile! It was definitely an advanture getting here. First I had a loooong layover in Atlanta, GA and as I was getting onto the plane all of the luggage storage bins filled up and they were going to have to check my bag (making it highly unlikely that it would make it to Chile with me…) But, I was rescued by a very nice flight attendant who I had told I was going to be living in Chile for the summer. [...]