#1. I feel much better. i.e. I cooked a huge ginger stirfry for myself last night that was better than what we get in Vietnamese restaurants and remembered that I can do exciting things when I am alone too. (although I still didn't actually do any of the things I thought about and just read all night). And I had a nightmare that I had to move to Germany and attend an all girls music institute where they only served fried fish if you had set up your tents on the ceiling correctly. The whole time I just couldn't understand what exactly was wrong with the situation and then I realized I couldn't be happy in Germany because there was so much I never got to do in Santiago. I woke up (late) reinvigorated about all the things that I still have time to explore here.

There was originally a #2 and #3 but I forget them. Today I made spicy pickled green beans!!! I can't wait for them, although it will be a month until they're ready. I made the whole house smell like vinegar though, which is kind of foul. Also this woman who lives here and is vegetarian too gave me a bowl of really good Brazilian beans and rice and said she would teach me how to cook them. I think she likes me because we both think eating meat doesn't make sense and I get really excited whenever she offers me food. She's really into protein and likes to tell me how much protein everything has. For example did you know that pepper is a really good source of protein? I think she also likes talking to me because I usually didn't know that and say wow a lot and she gets to teach me things. For me getting to try other people's food is better than getting paid. There's this fruit here called chirimoya that is like nothing I've ever tasted. It's sour and sweet and slimy but crunchy and so so different than anything I've ever had I can't even say I like or dislike it, it's just an experience eating it. I think it may be the only high quality fruit Chile has. It is too delicate to export so unlike apples and grapes and lamb and basically everything grown here, the chirimoyas you can find in the markets are actually decent and not just made up of whatever wasn't good enough to be shipped out and sold. Pepino is another really good fruit, I lied. Also the kiwis here are mutant. If you cut them lengthwise, the white center part is three inches long!

A few interesting things:
-I eat brown eggs here and I don't refrigerate them. For some reason brown egg shells are much thinner.
-The US is the only place where kids are taught that there are 7 continents! Everyone here thinks I'm crazy for saying there's a North and South America. Even Europeans are apparently taught that America is one continent. I see where they are coming from, but then why do they still consider Asia and Europe 2 separate continents?
-I also don't refrigerate vegetables. And most other people don't refrigerate milk!
-Although their name is Chile, Chileans can't handle spice and it's almost impossible to find chili peppers anywhere that are really spicy!
-Orange juice has sugar in it and is all from concentrate even though there are delicious looking ripe orange trees in every yard.
-I have had about a million conversations about how I really don't like being called Kelly with everyone but that is still the name that Jenna, felipe, and Rafa all think of me as and the more we get to know eachother, the more they call me Kelly.
-Apparently here it is not uncommon or alarming for a man to call someone a sweet tender girl. I went to an intercambio in a bookstore the other week with Erin and Nate and we were talking with this 45-50 year old man who only wanted to know things like what doing coke is called or what you should say to a woman if you want to conquer her. Apparently whoever had taught him English played a pretty big joke on him and he kept saying things like, "yes, I would like to paw that woman" or "oh she is such a sweet girl, such a tender girl." He literally asked us "If I want to conquer a woman, what should I say to her?" definitely not that you want to conquer her. But I also met a 23 year old who wants to learn English really bad and is majoring in "tourism engineering" so she wants to show me Santiago in exchange for some English practice. I think I get the better deal, except that for some reason the only things she seems interested in showing me are cemeteries. Don't you think it's kind of weird for someone to say, "So if you ever want to go see some cemeteries in Santiago, here is my phone number." I am hoping she got the word mixed up with something else. But cemeteries are interesting I guess. . . .