the end

Happy Anniversary of Madeline & Abby going to Chile!!!!!! We know you all have been on the edge of your seats since Saturday, December 4, 2010, wondering what happened after barbecues and bowling balls.

Well, the first thing you should know is that we made it back to the States. Alive. And that’s how we’re writing this right now. Sorry if some of you out there were unsure about that. And yes, maybe we’ve been together in Nashville for five months, arguably giving us plenty of time to blog. But no. The time is now. We’re snuggling in Atlanta (the Birthplace of Snuggles), going to hear Bon Iver sing us to sleep, and having a Summit. Abby thinks there’s no such thing as a Blog Summit. But that’s what this is. So there.

Backtrack – between bowling and returning to the States, we had exactly ten days to explore every last nook and cranny of Chile. So of course we headed wayyy down south. To the Patagones. (The place, not the STD, clarifies Abby.). Your Chilecheesebloggers were joined by two girls named Al(l)ison. So how do you feel about taking a day-by-day look at what we did? We feel great about it. Here we go.

DAY ONE

After an interesting journey on a surprise (and free) magical bus trip with a Santiago bicycle team of hunky men, we found our way to Puerto Natales, our last stop to rent super-duty hiking and camping gear for our 5-day wilderness immersion. And off we went like a pack of hobos (do girl hobos exist?) into the Great Unknown, armed with peanut butter and high expectations.

Bus … catamaran … boom. At campsite #1. Freezing cold. Raining. Dinner: Peanut butter sandwich #1 of 20, with chocolate chips for nutrition. Tent-pitching for the Helpless, provided by Burly Barcelonans. Learning the hard way that it actually is better to sleep naked.

DAY TWO

We woke up at the crack of 6am to begin our quest to conquer the W. First stop: Glacier Grey. We hiked for hours through sun and rain and mist and snow,  and stopped alongside the colossal hunk of ice that is Glacier Grey to munch on peanut butter sandwich #2 of 20, approximately 1/10 of our week’s ration. We finally arrived back to our tent, frozen and all kinds of hurting. After illegally huddling in the heated dining room of the fancy lodge (we were nothing but lowly backpacking peasants), we shivered our soggy bodies back outside to eat peanut butter sandwich #3 of 20. 

The one-L Alison, with the peanut butter.

DAY THREE

The sun rose, as it does every day, but due to excessive foggage in the air, we can neither confirm nor deny that fact. Nevertheless, we arose and re-stuffed our backpacks to move on to the next campamento. It was another day filled with breathtaking scenery, peanut butter sandwiches, and tired bodies. After hours and hours and hours of hiking, we made it to our night’s resting ground, if you can even call it that. We felt like the ugly stepsisters, shooed away to the rocky riverbank with howling trees to pitch our tents. Also, to compound our ostracism, everyone there seemed to have known something we didn’t before The Patagones hit – stoves are a common camping accoutrement. We thought we were being economical and hard-core for eating peanut butter and only peanut butter for every meal, but we were just being dumb. Do you picture people wearing Patagonia sportswear eating peanut butter? WHY DID WE THINK THAT WAS A GOOD IDEA?

Shafted.

 So we went to bed, cold, hungry, and alone.

DAY FOUR

After brushing our teeth outside to this beautiful view …

… we hiked through a guanaco-infested territory in pursuit of the final prize: Las Torres del Paine. But some mean easterly winds were threatening our arrival, so after some harrowing dances across bridges and cliffs, we made it to the base (the way base, says Madeline) of these iconic towers of rock. But we were told by our little hobbit man in a treehouse that the mist might permit us to see them in the morning, it might not. Who knows?

We know. We’ll tell you right now.

But wait: That night, we bonded with people from Australia and New Zealand and England and Germany and Israel and other countries and they were actually really impressed with our mono-food diet. But they also felt really bad for us and gave us some of their hot food – Mac & Cheese, and Onions. For the record, it’s gross. We were so famous that the New Zealander blogged about us.

We woke up at the crack of 6am again, our favorite time to wake up in The Patagones, to climb (more like crawl) to HERE:

And then we had to get back down, pack up, and RUN, really fast, to the bus stop to take a bus to a bus, to a plane, to a metro, to a bus, to our beds in Santiago, shoveling down peanut butter sandwiches on the fly.

Throughout our journey, and even still today, we are thanking our lucky stars that we survived, unprepared and ignorant as we were. We hiked 45 miles (mostly up steep hills, along perilous cliffs) in 5 days, subsisting on peanut butter alone. But so many hours in la naturaleza was a beautiful time to reflect on our five months in the longest country in the world, and we can’t imagine a better ending to a perfect semester.

Signing off for forever (until we go somewhere else together),

Your favorite cheesers

barbecues and bowling balls

So this is kind of from awhile back, but we thought we'd offer you a glimpse into some of Santiago's more simple pleasures.

Just like the States, Chile likes its bowling as a form of diversion. So Mads + Mary + Alison + Allyson (neither of them with last name Buterbaugh) and I went bowling on a Friday night at the mall and had a blast. 

(I maybe had more fun than others because I rocked at bowling ... which never happens.)

The setting: Alto Las Condes Mall. Possibly the swankiest mall in which I've ever set afoot.

Y'all ... those are real stuffed reindeer and bunnies. Ew.

Alison brought her championship bowling medal for good luck (jk ... it was some championship swimming medal from a class she took at La Católica ... maybe even cooler than a bowling medal).

I caught Mary singing to herself ...

Then I caught Mary snuggling with the late arrival.

Mads has a cute "I just got a spare" dance.

Abby wins. Boo-yeah.

The day before our crazy night on the town bowling, Allison Buterbaugh hosted an asado (Chilean barbecue) at her lovely Las Condes home in celebration of the last day of classes. Good times were definitely had.

That fruit is tossed in vanilla, folks.

Allison's host family makes their fortune off selling gourmet cheese. There's always an ample supply at her home. This kind is cherry-flavored!

Speak of the grill-master: Allison makes some excellent longaniza (sausage).

We thought we'd support our buddy back in the lake-district town of Villarrica (y'all remember that post?) by buying his Crater cerveza.

We made soooooo much rice.

So, if you can't tell, we've been trying to soak up Santiago-time during out last couple weeks in the country. We probably won't post again for a little bit, seeing as we're sticking around town for a couple more days and then leaving for our Patagonian backpacking/camping adventure on Tuesday. We hope to bring back some of the most magical pictures and stories yet. All for you, readers.

Oh, I guess I should mention one other thing I did recently. Allison Buterbaugh scored us tickets to a Universidad de Chile vs. La Católica soccer game a couple weekends ago. Well, the day before the game, Madeline is about to hop in the car with her host family for a luncheon outing when her host mom asks her where her overnight bag is. So Mads had to go on a surprise weekend vacation (which turned out to be quite fun, I hear), hence giving up her ticket. While the game was quite the fun cultural experience, Mads might have a couple reasons to be happy she didn't go:

1. We were told by multiple sources we'd get knifed leaving the stadium by the opposing team (didn't happen, but it was on the brain the whole time ... and maybe it would've happened had they not segregated the teams completely and dismissed us by section at the end of the game).
2. Little 10-year-old rascals wearing striped t-shirts like to steal your tickets right out of your hand (yes, this happened to me).
3. We added at least 27 new gringa cat calls to our vocabularies.
4. We watched an un-muzzled police dog bite-tackle a La Chile fan who happened to punch a La Católica fan in the face right behind us.
5. I'm not sure about Madeline's host family's soccer allegiance, but my host family told me I wouldn't be welcome in the house if I brought home a jersey (the Gonzalez family is loyal to the team Colo-Colo to death). Rosi sternly threatened me, "Abby, don't you dare bring that trash home, or else no dinner for you ..." Sheesh. 


HASTA PRONTO! 


PS: 11 days til we're HOME!

AlfajOreos

The day after our unconventionally wonderful Thanksgiving, Abby and I (along with our friends Erica and Alexis) went to check out the city of Mendoza, Argentina. Mendoza is a big attraction for Santiaguinos like ourselves because it lies just a short bus ride away, and the best part is that the bus trip involves driving up and over the beautiful, still-snowy Andes.

We arrived at our hostel on Saturday morning, wandered around the city for a while, took a power nap, and headed to see Mr. Hugo, the famous (among cheap travelers) Mendocino bike-wine-tour man. We spent the afternoon tasting chocolate, olive oil, marmalade, dulce de leche, and of course, wine. It was a beautiful day, and we got to hang out with our new British friend, Julia, who is traveling by herself around the world for the next 7 months. Every time we start thinking we're adventurous, we meet someone like her. Sheesh.

We spent Sunday just walking around (the plazas, the mall...), relaxing, and treating ourselves to a nice dinner. Then we got up early on Monday and headed back to Santiago. Although this trip was pretty uneventful, it was super enjoyable, and really great to finally see Argentina. 

Abby joined in a high-stakes card game with the mural on the wall of our hostel.

As of Monday, these bloggers are both done with school! And it's December?! Abby's real padre (as he calls himself) is here for the week, I'll be headed to Viña del Mar tomorrow, and on Tuesday we're finally going to Patagonia! 

Aaand I almost forgot to explain the title of this post. Oh man.

Conclusion: Chile is even better when we don't have to pretend to "study" all the time.

PS- I stole all of Abby's pictures. Except for the super-impressive AlfajOreo shot. That was me.

turkey time

To keep y'all on your toes, Mads and I are going to be posting about several significant events over the next couple days, but not in any special order. Our days and weekends have been so busy recently (after all, we DO come home in 13 days, remember?) that everything is kind of blurring together. My first assignment? THANKSGIVING.

About a month ago, we started to plot what we wanted to do on this oh-so-cherished holiday. The most obvious thing we could do would be to replicate the yummy family-style meal we have every year in the States, right? But Chile kind of complicated our plans. 

First of all, no one here understands you can cook a whole turkey. Like, whole turkeys exist in grocery stores, but our host families have no idea why. I had to repeat, "Yes, you can cook a turkey ... yes, you eat a cooked turkey ... yes, those frozen birds are food ..." for 5 minutes straight at dinner one night, and I was just met with blank stares and, "No entiendo ..." My host mom also voiced that she didn't understand what turkey had to do with the Virgin Mary. She seemed tiffed that this "holiday" of ours was so senseless. After a brief pilgrim and Indian lesson, dispelling visions of turkeys being sacrificed to the Mother of God, we finally came to a common understanding. So Rosi conceded that she'd allow the turkey experimentation in her home, and we bought a turkey. Geez. Obstacle number one overcome.


We then set about harvesting (yes, I'm trying to use Thanksgiving-y vocabulary) recipes from Momma Hannifan and TasteSpotting (WARNING: Don't click here unless you want to be eternally condemned to distraction and discontentment with your mediocre cooking skills). And so, our Thanksgiving spread was to look as such:


- Yummy turkey
- Broccoli-cheese-rice-watered-chestnut casserole
- Cranberry apple cobbler
- Sweet potato crumble casserole
- Pumpkin pie


Looks pretty tasty and well-rounded right? 

After streaming the Macy's Day Parade online ...

That's some Thanksgiving joy on her face if I've ever seen it ...

 ... we went to the grocery store and returned home for our 7-hour baking marathon.
 

Before I describe what we ended up cooking, here's your 2010 Thanksgiving Bake-Off Team.


MARY
Known for her great olfactory sense.

ERICA
Great at sampling things. And being cute.

Anddd of course, yours truly, Mads and Abby.

OK, so here's what we cooked:

- Yummy turkey
We had NO CLUE how to cook a turkey. After thawing it all morning in its package, we finally read the instructions and it said, "NEVER, under any circumstances, thaw the turkey in its package." Woops. The only "suggestion" in the "suggested recipe" was to inject pisco (Chilean vodka) into the turkey. Of course. We did cognac instead because the only pisco in the Gonzalez fridge was mango-flavored. But problem: no needle for the massive syringe my mom whipped out of the utensil drawer. So she told me to run to the pharmacy and ask for a 4-inch needle. Good thing I covered those track lines on my arms (kidding...), otherwise the pharmacist would've given me a weirder look than she already gave me. I thought I was going to have to explain again that no, the Virgin Mary had nothing to do with my desire to inject cognac into a turkey, but she finally just shrugged her shoulders and coughed up the needle.


We also added some lemon and let it baste (is that the correct cooking term? So much taste-spotting terminology in my head and no sense to it ...) on a bed of apple slices.


It ended up being seriously the tastiest turkey I've ever eaten. Everyone at the dinner (Madeline + Erica + Mary + host parents + my host sister) agreed. My host dad gave us a 7.0 (highest mark you can get in the Chilean academic grading system ... sadly the only authority figure who thinks so highly of our work down here).

Scandalous.

LOOK AT THAT.

- Broccoli-cheese-rice-watered-chestnut casserole
OK, here's the deal here: Chile doesn't have the Velveeta cheese, nor the cream of chicken soup, that this heavenly casserole requires. So we improvised by buying what looked to be nacho cheese paste in a plastic tub and mushroom soup powder mix. And how does one describe a watered chestnut? Needless to say, they were nowhere to be found. But this too, miraculously, turned out quite well.

Notch-yo cheese?

- Cranberry apple cobbler
Chileans think cranberries exist here. When you type "cranberry" into WordReference.com, it spits out the word "arándano." That's also the word for "blueberry," at least in Chile (but I'm starting to doubt Chilean's fruit proficiency ... the guy at the fro yo place told me the other day that what we consider to be blackberries are actually the love babies of blueberries and raspberries. SO WRONG.) "OK," we thought, "We'll just use blueberries instead. NBD." Then we couldn't find brown sugar for the crumble on top. We asked lots of store clerks for it, and they all presented us "azúcar moreno," but it was turbinado (yeah, I used to work at Smoothie King). I'll give Chileans a break on this confusion ... it was, in fact, the color brown. It just wasn't brown sugar. So we found some maple and brown sugar oatmeal and used that instead. Aren't you getting proud of our creativity?

That's Madeline's decapitated body mixin' some cinnamon and sugar and apples and blueberries.

- Sweet potato crumble casserole
Sweet potatoes do exist in this country, but only through some vendors at this one special market. So Rosi picked some up for me one day. They're not as orange as the ones in the States, but still, quite delicious.

This was luckily as close to disaster as we got. Just a little burnt on top. Still delissshhhh.

- Pumpkin pie 
This was a huge concern. We were so worried that this would be the one and only year out of our 21 (20 for some) years of life that we hadn't eaten pie on Thanksgiving (I've heard stories, myth or truth no sé, of Poppa Hannifan rubbing pie on my gums at age 1 month). But have not fear ... the Buterbaughs (alllllll six of them) are here! Well, they were here, for a six days to be exact, and they smuggled us in some pumpkin pie in a can (jk, Mrs. Buterbaugh called Delta and they gave her the green light to bring it on down). Hallelujah. The only problem was we couldn't find pie crust, so we had to use this puff pastry stuff that burnt easily ... but hey. We study abroad kids are all about adaptability and adjustments now, right Mads?

There's that beacon of Great American Food (excuse me, Great United States Food ... we're all Americans, now).

Nom.

 And when all was done, we sat down to a table sprinkled with plastic pumpkins (compliments of Momma Hannifan), and went around the table and gave thanks. It was quite the magical moment. Heartfelt words were said.

See that Christmas tree peeking around the corner? It was listening to Mads say she's grateful for Chile.

We let the man of the house cut the turkey.

We really do look like a scene out of Norman Rockwell's Thanksgiving utopia, don't we?

And what made this day even more spectacular? Christmas music (gracias, 98.1 KUDL Christmas radio online) AND Christmas decorations AND Love Actually.

Maybe some "Santa Baby"?

Gosh, Chile. Have I told you lately that I love you?

happy happy joy joy

It's almost summer here, and that means cherries are everywhere. And that means I'm one happy camper.

What brings great joy is Rosi's encouragement for the study bug (that's me). Mads and I have finals this week, and my host mom is making it an extra-special time with some chocolate gifts for "mental reinforcement."

More updates to come. Teasers: Sausage. Gringo bowling. Pumpkin pie in a can. Christmas. Madeline as avatar/smurf.
 

Why the 504 is really the best bus ever...

Quick story:

Last night, I was making my way home after the midnight premiere of HARRY POTTER (go see it!!). Since this was around 3am, I was the only one on my bus. When we pulled up to my stop, I was standing towards the back of the super-long bus, expecting to exit through that door. As the bus came to a stop, however, the driver turned around and said to me, "Mejor bajarse acá..." ("It'd better for you to use this door in the front..."). Weird? I guess he only wants to open one door, since it's just me? So I headed up there, and as I was about to step down onto the curb, the cute young bus driver handed me this:

That's right. It was a beautiful flower. At 3am. What a great surprise. I beamed all the way home, and even forgot to be terrified of Bellatrix Lestrange for a little while. 

Chile, have I told you lately that I love you?