A Summer in Chile

To prepare for the asado, Anthony and I met Ian by La Vega a few hours before people were due to arrive. La Vega is a HUGE market in the middle of Santiago, and I definitely wanted to see it before leaving. We got lots of produce and meat, saving the bread and alcohol for when we could get it closer to the apartment. La Vega has a bunch of cheap food, but we only had so many hands and the trip back was about 20-25 minutes by crowded subway. Walking through the meat section was a little tough (small spaces, lots of people, lots of meat, a bit of a stench; being vegetarian didn't help), but overall it was pretty cool to see! 

Although the asado was scheduled to start at noon, nobody but the interns were there until 2pm. (It's typical for Chileans to be 30 minutes to an hour late, and noon is basically ungodly early for a Saturday.) Anthony manned the grill, and all had a great time! 

Asado Part 2: MISTIers et al.

The invite list for the asado pt. 2 was this: anyone from MIT, the friends that the MIT students had made while here, two students that were joining Kate and me for our Atacama trip the following weekend (whom we had yet to meet), a high school friend of one of my non-Chile MIT friends named Monica, and about 14 of Monica's friends. There were a lot of people, a lot of meat, and plenty of alcohol. Anthony was champion of the grill. He spent all day and night making a ton of really delicious meat, with high praise from everyone! 

Having a rooftop asado is also really nice, because you get a really great view of the mountains during the day, and a cool view of the city at night. Eventually, everyone went home (after cleaning up a lot, which was unexpected and really nice!) and Anthony and I crashed. The evening was a lot of fun and very delicious. It was also one of the last times we'd see a lot of these guys before leaving, so it was a pretty great near-farewell. 

Paige had told us the night before that there’s a fairly large supermarket called Totus a mere four blocks away from our apartment! This was pretty much a miracle since we had been going to a combination of 3 smaller supermarkets that were on our way home from work and about 5 – 10 minutes from the apartment. We basically never go south of our apartment, so we had never found this Holy Grail of local supermarkets! Anthony and I headed out to Totus in a quest for food.

We eventually found the place. It was kind of hidden, so I think that we would have had trouble discovering it even if we had walked right by it earlier. When we went by the produce section, the woman who was in charge of weighing fruit saw me and got really excited! She said I looked just like Aurora from Maleficent (which Anthony and I saw together a few weeks ago) because of my hair, and then asked if she could take my picture. Anthony and I finished our shopping, including guacamole supplies and chocolate. On the way back, we snacked on a fresh baguette. We passed a guy who was smoking pot in the street! It was very strange.

When we got back to the apartment, the sun was about to set, so Anthony and I headed up to the roof to take a quick look. It had rained that morning, so the smog was mostly gone! The view was really incredible. Mountains really surround Santiago on all sides, and we could really see how far the city stretches. Seeing Santiago without smog is a treat, and it was absolutely stunning.

After finishing our snack of baguette, orange, and leftover meat for Anthony, we headed to the Costanera Center. The Costanera Center is one of the tallest buildings in the world, and the tallest in Latin America. (I mentioned it in my Cerro San Cristobal post, along with a photo.) The bottom five floors make up a giant mall, and there’s a movie theater on the sixth floor. On our way up, Anthony and I passed a food court where we saw Cinnabon. For two Americans who hadn’t had good American junk food in over two months, Cinnabon was basically the most beautiful thing we had ever seen.

While we waited for our movie to start, we indulged. Somehow a simple trip to the movie theater had become the best date ever. The sight of the cinnabons, freshly out of the oven and iced, nearly made me cry from joy and anticipation. We took our food to a table nearby and began to eat. It was absolute heaven. I nearly cried again from pure happiness. It was just… wow. Words cannot adequately describe the pleasure I found in that cinnabon.

We had pretty varied ski experience: Daniel had skied all over the world, including at least once each year for the past four years through MIT. I had gone a lot in middle school and high school, but it had been at least three years or so. Anthony had skied about two times when he was ten, so he had the least experience by far. 

After arriving at El Colorado, we donned our ski gear, locked the rest of our stuff away, and headed out! We started out by going up the pingüino lift and coming down the green slope to the left of it, which you can see in the picture below.

If you can't see, pingüno is the red line in the middle of all the green slopes. Daniel and I skied as Anthony sort of fell down the slope at first. As anyone who can remember learning to ski would know, turning can be pretty challenging. For some reason, there wasn't really a bunny hill to start on. The beginning of this green (green for easy) slope was actually really steep! About halfway down, Daniel went ahead to go look into a free-for-all ski race that was happening later that day. Anthony and I eventually made it down, and he sat down and took a break while I took a fast run down myself. Between the early morning, long bus ride, skiing-induced knee pain, hunger, and lack of coffee, Anthony and I were definitely ready to get some lunch. 

Lunch at the ski resort was one of my more successful vegetarian maneuvers: I managed to convince the hot dog vendor to give me a grilled bun with just melted cheese, tomato, and avocado. And it was delicious! Anthony had something from the cafeteria inside, including mashed potatoes and fish that quickly turned cold as we ate outside. We followed that up with coffee and relaxing by the fire. The coffee kicked in pretty soon, and we were ready for round two!

This time, we tried the other lift: Colorado Chico. It's the one bordering the yellow striped area (the snow park) on the map. I had never seen a lift like this! Instead of a bench that you sit on and ride up, it was like a hook that dragged you up, skiing.

Weird. But great! Because this hill was a lot like the other in that the top 1/3 was pretty steep, but the bottom 2/3 was reasonable. And since this was just a hook-draggy-thing, Anthony could just hop off 2/3 of the way up, and I could go all the way up and ski the steep part faster!

After doing this a couple times, Anthony was much improved! Thanks to Daniel's coaching at the beginning and Anthony's own perseverance,  he managed to ski longer and faster intervals without falling. We tried the first slope again, and although we found a very nice snowboarder to take our picture, we decided to go back to the slope by the hook-lift.

The city of Santiago was visible from the slopes, and it was right behind us in this picture. It was a little gross to see the layer of smog over the city, but awesome to finally be completely out of it!

Anthony also had a very interesting couple of falls on that first slope, including one where he managed to fall in a way that caused his ski to get stuck in the snow poking straight up! There was another one where he completely faceplanted, his legs and skis sprawled impressively behind him. I had my couple of falls too, of course: both of them on the ski lift. The first time, Anthony and I didn't really know how the hook lift worked, so he sort of just sat on it instead of leaning against it. This caused us both to fall, and since he had apparently forgotten to strap his boot we became inseparably entangled! The ski lift man just laughed and helped us, saying he had never seen people get their boots stuck together before like we did. The second time, we were being pulled up when I just suddenly lost focus and fell! (Bringing Anthony down with me, of course.) We got out of the way of the others, took our skies off, and walked a short distance to the slope and skied down. 

Towards the end of the day, we met back up with Daniel. He had spent the day going on some harder slopes and learning to ski backwards, inspired by Anthony's natural ability to do it. 

It was time to go pretty soon after, so we started getting ready to leave. On our second-to-last run down, Anthony didn't fall at all! It was a momentous occasion. He was a total pro by the end of the day. As we were waiting for the bus to leave, Daniel took a couple fotos of us.

Pomaire has a legend about three legged pigs. Though I'm not really clear on what that legend actually is, I definitely saw a lot of ceramic three-legged pigs! They're supposed to be good luck, and the potters of Pomaire make lots of different sizes and designs. 

We also saw some giant ceramic penises, of course.

And yes, that IS a pot with a penis handle at the end there. 

Lina and I ate at a restaurant where the only vegetarian thing was a cheese empanada, which lead me to suspect that cheese empanadas were actually the only vegetarian things in all of Pomaire. Later, I had my first mote con huesillo! Lina and I also bought lots of ceramics for very cheap (four ceramic cups for $2??? how can we not???) and squealed about all the tiny things. There were tiny pigs, tiny pig necklaces, tiny jug earrings, and tiny cacti!

SO TINY. SO CUTE. OMG. 

We also met this nice lady shop owner, who told us about her relative (daughter? friend's daughter? cousin? I forget) who went to England for university! She was super nice and let me take a picture after our conversation.

We found the rest of our group at the top, where they were happily drinking mote con huesillo -- a specialty of Santiago made of wheat and peaches. It literally has a whole peach in it. Nom!

We explored a bit and took a group picture beneath the Mary Statue (which is so high up that it is visible from most of Santiago) before heading back down. Along the way, we took more group pictures and marveled at the city! The lighting wasn't all that great for sightseeing or phototaking, but it was still very impressive to see the span of Santiago. 

That giant tower in the second photo is the Torre Gran Costanera, a hugenormous (totally a word) building. Actually, it's the tallest building in Latin America, according to Wikipedia! Wow! Mostly, it's a giant mall, but there are a couple hotels and some office space in there too.

Just before reaching the bottom, we found PUPPIES!

Yay puppies! Look how majestic that puppy is. Anthony and I headed home after that to shower off, eat veggie burger baguette sliders, and play some Pokémon. On the way, we stopped and got some froyo and looked disappointedly at the size of the Mapocho "River" that runs through the center of Santiago. It's nothing compared to the Charles.

That froyo was really good, though. 

After Rodrigo's friends left, Rodrigo and Isa went to relax with Manu while Anthony and I retreated to our suite. The last few days had been wonderful, but a nice afternoon of marathoning Orange is the New Black was much appreciated.

The next day, Rodrigo dropped us off by a metro stop in Buenos Aires with some general instructions about where to go. This is the route we ended up taking:

I did my best to label our path! We got off the subway somewhere around (1), and saw some cool buildings and stuff before heading down to see the big tall important thing. To be honest, the big historical things were pretty cool, but I'm not sure how much I'm interested in what they actually are... so, big tall pointy thing!

From there, we headed towards la Plaza de Mayo. On the way, we saw a place selling churros and hot chocolate, but it didn't look all that great. So we made it our quest to find a good churros and hot chocolate place that day!

Next, we went north up a road called Florida. It was full of shops and such, including malls and lots of people on the street claiming to be "casas de cambio," or money exchange places. We stopped in a bookstore where we laughed at the entire display of Messi books (I think there was a title like "not a god or hero: the story of greatness") and Anthony bought a novel he had been looking for. Of course, the entire way we were keeping an eye out for churros and hot chocolate!

Then we got to the park. There were a bunch of cool things there, not the least of which was this AWESOME GIANT TREE

Yea so unfortunately I didn't get very many pictures of giant tree that both display its glory and also are in focus, so here's a blurry Anthony for scale and a hard-to-see photo of one of the branches escaping. It was AWESOME.

Then we headed south down that other road (labeled 3), where we got AMAZING pizza from this pizza chain named Kentucky. The cheese was just hgnnngnngnnn. We also continued looking for hot chocolate and churros, unsuccessfully. 

We got back to Plaza de Mayo (4), where La Casa Rosada (the Pink House) is! The Pink House is Argentina's White House, and I took a picture! (so unlike me, I know)

Okay okay, here's an actual picture of it:

We headed south from there. We were looking for this neighborhood that I forget the name of (there are three big neighborhoods to see in Buenos Aires apparently, and we were trying to visit them all), but we weren't really sure where it started. Also we were starving and therefore a little grumpy. After looking at the menu of about 5 different places, we decided to cross the canal and try our luck over at the swankier neighborhood place. We found a park, some rowers, and nice food places by the canal! (this is around the 6 on the map)

This is not the restaurant we went with, but this one had cows on the doors!

The restaurant we went to was kinda fancy, and we got a stone bowl of hot cheese! omnomnomnomnom cheese

We walked north up the other side of the canal. We saw a turtle (photographed in the previous post) and found ourselves in a park! There were some kids skateboarding down the hill, but we mostly just enjoyed laying on grass in the sunshine. After that it was about time to head back, so we crossed back over towards Plaza de Mayo to get to the metro. On the way back to the metro, we passed by the place we had seen selling churros and hot chocolate. Having not found any that day, we decided to settle for what looked like inferior quality. It turns out that despite having a photo of churros and hot chocolate on the door, they only sell hot chocolate! Imagine the disappointment. But hey, we got some pretty good cheese pizza, so all was not lost.

Rodrigo picked us up from there and took us to the airport. Overall, exploring Buenos Aires was nice, but I think we spent too much time being hungry-grumpy. Plus, we had enjoyed spending time with our Argentinian friends too much to have as much fun just wandering around by ourselves. 

Before saying anything else, I really have to emphasize how delicious this dinner was. We started with wine and cheese -- Anthony and I have been taking advantage (very responsibly) of the reduced drinking age in South America -- before moving to the dining area for the main course. We had a sort of lentil stew, which included some meat for everyone but me. I was very honored by how well my dinner had been prepared; it can often be difficult for omnivores to find a reasonable vegetarian dish to compliment the rest, but our hosts did a fantastic job. Dessert was also delicious: there were six different types of very good ice cream, one of which included actual dulce de leche (a really, really good Argentinian caramel) mixed in! 

I think that dinner was probably the most challenging experience with Spanish that I've had so far. While everyone spoke English very well, they were more comfortable speaking Spanish. Often they would speak Spanish to each other and switch to English when they noticed that I was listening to the conversation, despite my repeated requests to keep speaking Spanish. While it was very nice of them to want to include me, having others tailor their conversation to your needs is never a fun experience. 

My Spanish has not been improving as much as I would like while I'm here, since my CEO and main work partner both speak English natively. But I have overcome my biggest hurtle: I now no longer feel uncomfortable speaking bad Spanish! At MIT, I was hesitant to say anything in Spanish because I was worried I'd be wrong. But here, I unabashedly use a combination of Spanish, Spanglish, and charades to get my point across whenever needed. And I've definitely noticed an increase with the number of non-confusing conversations I've had with Spanish-only speakers! Some progress is definitely being made.

Here's another completely unrelated picture, this time of a turtle we found on an overturned and sunken ship in the Buenos Aires canal.

After dinner, we all moved back to the sitting room. One of the highlights of this conversation included Julieta's husband asking Anthony, "What are your intentions with Brittney?" in the style of a shotgun-toting pre-prom father. We also got to learn a lot about Argentinian culture! Rodrigo had explained to us earlier that there are different exchange rates in Argentina. While the official USD:Argentinian Dollar exchange is about 1:8, the "blue rate" that is used for most intra-Argentinian commerce is 1:12. That's a pretty big difference! Argentina has a lot of really tough currency exchange restrictions and, as I mentioned earlier, import restrictions. However, the Argentinian Peso fluctuates a lot more than the US Dollar. In fact, it can change so much in a single month that you could sell your apartment and, in the time that it takes to buy the next one, loose an entire room or suite! My understanding of the blue rate is that it is much more stable, and allows for fair and consistent pricing. 

Julieta then explained the process of buying homes and apartments. Apparently Argentinians don't just write checks or wire money to each other: they pay in cash for everything. When Julieta and her husband bought their current apartment, they withdrew all of their savings from their bank in CASH and loaded it into an armored vehicle outside the bank. They then drove in a separate car to the bank of the person they were buying the apartment from and met back up with the armored vehicle. They took the money inside the other bank, where the sellers were waiting along with someone they had hired to count their money for them. This seemed completely surreal to Anthony and I, but apparently it is a very common practice! 

Unrelated pic from Buenos Aires #3: "Art"

Another interesting aspect of Argentinian culture is live-in workers. Many middle-class and upper-middle class families have maids or domestic help that live in their homes. They clean and take care of the children, and generally say out of the way. I briefly glimpsed Julieta's maid as she prepared food in the kitchen and brought out plateware and such. Rodrigo and Isa explained that the process of hiring someone can be difficult, since you entrust your children to them. Juanita told us that her maid is actually finding other work for the year that they are gone, and will be coming back to work for them again upon their return! Rodrigo showed us the small servant suite on the plans for the house they are building.

Around 12:30am, we started to head out. The dinner had started early, around 8pm, and had lasted for nearly 5 hours! Long dinners are very common in both Chile and Argentina, and 8pm is truly early. Most people don't start dinner until 9 or 10 pm, even on weeknights! 

The security people at the front gate directed us inside, where we were introduced to Agustín Rocha. Sr. Rocha was really nice! He is the youth trainer for the club, and he gave us a full tour. We started in the training room, home to 6 old model D ergs and two model C’s. There were also a couple treadmills, elliptical, and bikes, plus a bunch of weightlifting stuff. From there we walked downstairs into the main entrance hall, where tons of giant trophies were on display. Agustín explained that there haven’t been many big competitions like those recently, which is why all of the trophies were from around 1905-1911.

Anthony and I saw a few boats launch the day before. The water was too cold to wet-launch, and I don't know if those little mini-docks helped much... also note the giant boat that these guys share the water with!

He also gave us a little history of the club: founded in 1873, it’s the oldest rowing club in Argentina, and one of the oldest rowing clubs in all of Latin America. He said that the Ingleses (Englishmen) who populated the area at the time had lots of money and lots of space, so they built these huge, sprawling mansions for boat clubs. Unfortunately, rowing isn’t quite as popular a century and a half later, so the rowing club is now more of a social/athletic/rowing club: some people use the training room just for working out, even if they don’t row, and they had one room set up with a projector and a bunch of chairs to host a viewing of the soccer game. Many of the people who rent boats out of BARC aren’t even athletic rowers: they paddle out to an island on the river and play soccer or have a picnic all day, and then paddle back at the end. Despite the more social atmosphere, there is definitely still a strong rowing culture at the club. We were told that there are about 80 people in the youth rowing program! And all of the walls are covered with rowing paraphernalia, so it’s hard to forget how much rowing is a part of the history.

Why yes, that is a coxed single. The rower's looking out of the boat, but at least he has some nice backsplash...

Next, we made our way to the actual boathouse. There were a ton of old wooden rowing boats, which Agustín described as “antique.” Only a few rowing shells were actually in the boathouse, because most were down river for the next day’s regatta. All of their boats are made in Argentina because of the country’s strict important laws, but they did manage to have Crocker oars. When I asked about them, Rocha said that there just weren’t any other oar manufacturers. There were tracks in the floor to move the big, heavy rowboats down to the river, and our guide showed us a panel that dropped from the ceiling to form a ramp up to the boat repair shop. I’m really, really glad that John Pratt (the MIT boatman) doesn’t have to deal with that.

Here you can see the tracks in the ground that are used to roll the rowboats to the dock. Also, a quad that launched in the wrong direction, causing them to run into a pole two strokes in and have to turn and block the entire river 5 strokes in. 

BARC also has tennis courts, a fireplace, lots of old photos, and even some dormitories! Apparently it was very common for people from very far away to travel to Tigre (the rowing center of Argentina, as our luck would have it), and they needed some place to stay. There were also a lot of large, spacious rooms.

During our tour, we learned that Agustín had actually been to Indianapolis (Anthony’s hometown) for rowing! He had also been to Georgia in 1996, competing in the Olympics lightweight double scull for Argentina. 

While it was really cool to see and hear all the celebrations, it did stop us from taking a boat tour of the area because the harbor was full of parade boats. Instead, we explored the main square a bit before heading up into the hills. We took a strange, tiny staircase that branched off of the street we were on and found ourselves at the top of Cerro Alegre. There, we discovered a beautiful view and a few friends!

We knew that Lina, Jonathan, and Kate had arrived in Valparaiso a few hours before we had, but we hadn’t called them to meet up. Somehow, our random little alleyway staircase had led us to the same place that their guided tour had led them!

After saying hi, we parted ways. Anthony and I headed further into the hills and wandered around, admiring the architecture and cute little shops. One of the places we stopped at was a candy shop called La Dulceria. Anthony and I got some sweets for ourselves and some as a gift to Rodrigo and Isabella for the following weekend’s trip to Argentina. The man running the store was kind enough to let me take pictures inside.

After wandering around some of the less cute and beautiful areas of Valpo (these areas were actually pretty dirty, and smelled strongly of urine – hopefully from the many street dogs in the area), Anthony and I headed back to the bus and back to Santiago.

The trip was enjoyable, and the candy definitely made it worth it. We’re hoping to go back to the area to visit Vina del Mar, so we can see some beaches!

Our flight was at 7:15am Friday morning, so Anthony and I arrived at the Santiago airport (completely exhausted) around 5:45. It turned out that Rodrigo had a conference thing in Valparaiso the day before, and was on our flight back to Argentina! We saw him in the line for international departures, where we ran into a bit of a snag. It turns out that the little yellow slip of paper that immigration gave us when we arrived in Chile was our “tourist visa,” and we would need it to leave the country. Oops. We panicked for a little before being told to fill out a different form and come back. We did that, and everything was fine. 

Anthony, Rodrigo, and I sat together at our gate. Eventually our flight was called, and we filed out. But the airport is tiny, and apparently it doesn’t have enough gates for all of the planes. So everyone in our gate went outside, down some stairs, and into a bus that drove us to our plane with a couple of rolling staircases attaches. It was WEIRD.  The flight also had a good muffin and juice. As we were about to land, Anthony and I glanced out the window and saw how incredibly MASSIVE Buenos Aires is! Here’s a picture I pulled from Google, so you have an idea, but even this doesn’t show the sheer enormity of the city:

After landing, Rodrigo took us to his home in Tigre. Tigre is a suburb to the North of the main city, and it’s absolutely gorgeous. Anthony and I got to walk around for a while, and I took lots of pictures!

We ate lunch with Rodrigo, Isa, and Manu. Rodrigo prepared some delicious veggies and pasta for me, while Anthony enjoyed Argentina’s famous milanesa, a breaded fried steak. Just like in Chile, 1 or 2 pm is typical lunchtime, and 8 pm is dinner time. We had a small meal while Rodrigo told us about his friend the Pope. Literally. Anthony and I were amazed to discover that Rodrigo had worked for a religious organization earlier in his life, where he befriended the future Pope. Oh, and at some point last year they took a little trip to visit their friend in Rome and have their child blessed. No big deal.

It was pretty cool. 

Overall, our first day was really great! Rodrigo and Isa welcomed us into their home very graciously. It was very nice, despite being almost completely packed up in preparation for their move to an apartment next week. Playing with their son and two dogs was lots of fun, too.

07:35 – Anthony wakes me up again after his shower. I go make toast and eggs (or French toast or cereal, depending on how tired we are) while he gets dressed. We eat breakfast, and then…

08:05 – Anthony leaves, and I start getting ready.

08:35 – I leave the apartment and head to work. After triple-locking the apartment door, I start my walk to work.

09:00 – I arrive at work. I might be doing anything from creating a marketing powerpoint to self-teaching myself a combo of CSS, HTML, and JavaScript in order to make a pretty website.

13:30 – Lunch time! I might go out to eat with a coworker (team lunch on Fridays!) or eat something I packed from home. Too bad there’s no microwave in my office, otherwise leftovers would be the best thing ever. I usually top off lunch with some hot peanuts from one of the vendors. The packets are 2/$1, and totally worth it.

14:30 – Back to work! Most of the company is still gone, since they take 2-3 lunch. Ian and I are hungry Americans, though, so we shift our lunch by half an hour.

18:00 – Work is done, so I head to the gym. It’s a block away from work, and I got a great discount from someone’s host family. Yay exercise!

20:00 – I arrive home. Sometimes I’ll have left earlier, so if I get home before Anthony does (around 19:45), I’ll start making dinner.

21:00 – After eating dinner, we clean up. Usually. Our rule is that since there’s only enough room in the kitchen for one person to clean, the other has the task of amusing them. So far we’ve utlilized bad jokes, riddles, youtube videos, and Yahoo Answers. If you happen to have any ideas for how to amuse someone while they wash dishes, let me know!

22:00 – We watch an episode of Orange is the New Black and then go to sleep.

Sophie, Ian, Patience, Anthony, and I all went to the California Cantina. It's sort of known as an International bar, so I ended up hearing more English from strangers there than I have since being in the States. We didn't have a great view, but they had a very interesting menu. Plus, it was pretty exciting to get excited with everyone else when Chile scored -- and WON! 

The five of us went to the apartment of Paige, one of my coworkers, for an empanada party. It was pretty delicious, and we got to hang out with a bunch of Chileans.

Being the adventurous people that we are, the five of us plus Kate, Lina, and Jonathan (all MIT students) went to San José del Maipo. It was an hour bus ride from the end of one of the metro lines. When we found out that most of the "cool stuff" in the area was closed due to recent snowfall, Lina, Jonathan, Anthony, and I decided to turn the planned overnight trip into a day trip. Everyone walked around the town, which seemed to have been having some sort of festivities, and we ate dinner before heading back to Santiago. 

Some of the coolest things about San José del Maipo? The silks people,

the live music, 

and the absolutely gorgeous view.

Price & Availability of Random Food

Okay, so I knew there would not be a Trader Joe's, but I certainly was not expecting a complete lack of pretzels. Tortilla chips are also very rare, as is salsa. Vegetarian chickin nuggets and hot dogs are completely out of the question, but I have found some good veggie burgers and soy patties! Baking powder also took 3 different grocery stores to find.

Also, vanilla. A 500ml jar is 1,500 pesos, or a measly $3! I was really surprised, because in the US it's more like 30 ml for $3. Cooking with it, though, I discovered that it is really watered down. I kind of prefer it this way, because I don't feel like I've lost liquid gold if I miss the bowl and I won't accidentally overpower my food with vanilla, but it was definitely a surprise.

In terms of food in Santiago that's hard to find in US, I'm coming up with a great list: pan dulce, or sweet bread; sopapillas, this fried doughy thing sold for really cheap on the streets; and empanadas, again fried hot on the streets.

Actually, freshly-made street food is super common here. It's actually a lot more common than what I've seen in Philadelphia and Boston, which brings me to my next difference:

Stores & Street Vendors

A lot of the stores here are only a few yards deep. It's a lot different than the US stores I'm used to, where you can wander around and inspect things without anyone noticing you for a while. There's not really any anonymity. There are some larger ones, though, such as restraunts and some clothing stores. I think the small stores are offset by the street vendors. There are always tons of people on the sidewalks selling peanuts, scarves, phone cases, and (more recently) Chile garb to celebrate the world cup! 

Chilean Greetings & Personal Space

Between men, the typical Chilean greeting is a handshake. Between men and women, or just between women, the greeting is a kiss on the right cheek. (You kiss the cheek on your right.) It's not just an air kiss, as I had thought, though; if you don't actually make cheek-to-cheek contact, you will get funny looks! 

If you try to take the Santiago metro during rush hour, I wish you luck. The people literally shove into the train as densely as possible, and you often have to fight your way both in and out of the train. Anthony had to literally pull my arm to extract me from being sandwiched between two people, because I couldn't get out myself. Luckily I walk to work, so I've only had to do that once, but Anthony fights through it every day. What a champ! The nice thing is, though, people are still very polite if someone needs help. A friend told me that a woman with a baby had to take the metro at a busy time, and everyone shouted "Baby! Baby! Baby!" and allowed her to go through. People also allow the elderly, pregnant, and otherwise disabled to take the few precious seats on the train.