You know you´re in the Middle of Nowhere when...

- You have to drag a large orange tank down the street to take a warm shower. Imagine doing this every day. I doubt many people care about it in Chile, but as Americans its almost insane to take cold showers...we are so. spoiled. (but I have to say, I LOVE warm showers!)

- You only shower every few days.

- Hygene in general is just not important. No toothbrushes in the house, not a lot of deoderant.

- Your family eats chicken. They also eat the heads and feet of chicken.

- Also they had a live goat in the morning, have killed it while you are at school a goat and it became barbeque. (it was sooooo good, but I'm not sure I could have watched it. I would have been dead about a century ago.)

- Every morning you pick ants out of the suga for tea.

- The nearest town (comprising of one main street) is a 30 minute walk (and if you blink, you literally will miss it.)

- No one locks their doors. There aren't even locks on the doors.

- You don´t flush toilet paper down the toilet. Your family recently got indoor plumbing and there just isn't the type of suction power we are used to.

- Almost everyone can tell you are foreign. After that, everyone can tell you are American.



Basically that is San Dionisio, Chile where I am currently living with my host family, which consists of: my dad (Jorge), my mom (Alicia), my brother (Ariel) and my sister (Cecilia). The living here is simple and the pace is really relaxed. There is always food, and although its simple country food like corn, meat and tomatoes, it is always around.

My Chilean host dad races horses for a living, so we have two horses in our backyard. My host mom spends the day cooking and doing chores, thats it. The culture in the country is still very machismo even though it has a woman President, and sometimes my mom doesn´t even eat with us. There are a ton of chickens always, and people own dogs, but there are a ton of strays. My family right now is selling watermelons out of their front yard, and they go to a field somewhere to pick raspberries and sell them to a company down the street. They also make there own wine and have grape plants strung up in the front and backyards.

To go with the country theme, I have milked a cow for the first time ever yesterday at a friends house, which was hilarious. I´ve also learned how to make traditional Chilean dishes like humitas (corn meal wrapped in corn leaves and flavored with onions and tomatoes), and to prepare maté, traditional South American tea.

We also have had two charlas, or discussions, about the politics here and how they affect small-time Chilean farmers. The first man, Don Alejandro, lived through so much history; from when Chile was a Socialist country, to the time of the military coup and dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, when people (mostly poor) disappeared. The other man was an 80 year old American priest, who has been here since 1952, more than 50 years. He explained the role of the Catholic Church during all that time; how they helped farmers develop and grow, so that they could own their own land and make a decent living, how that all was crushed by the military coup, and how since 1990 they have been rebuilding everything.

They both had some really interesting opinions about their government, and about the U.S. as well, which was interesting to hear from an outsider´s perspective. Their stance is strongly against the Bush administration because they believe that Bush is pushing for U.S. interests at the cost of many other countries around the world. I can see why they would think that, being on the other side and all, and I´m not sure I completely agree with that statement because I think that is the goal of many leaders around the world. I do agree with them on some things, like that the Bush administration isn´t good and has made a complete mess of many things, but as a whole, every country is looking out for itself, no matter what ¨-ism¨ they are. Anyway, I can´t wait to see what my Chilean Politics class brings and I want to learn more about both sides of the picture.

Moving on from all the political arguments that could be made, the Spanish-speaking has become more difficult because there are so many Chilean idioms and slang that is hard to understand without living here for awhile. I can still understand it pretty well, but most of the time it is hard to communicate anything beyond simple sentences.

So in conclusion, I´m excited to get to Santiago and meet my family, but I am really enjoying this way of life. It´s much different that what I thought, but I am already planning to go back here to San Dionisio and visit my family, when I can actually communicate with them.