Halfway through November

Hi everyone!! As November is already halfway over, I am happy to announce that I have finished the first draft of my independent study project for my study abroad program. This is a little ahead of schedule in terms of how I expected things to go, but really perfect because now I have the chance to relax, enjoy my last two (?! CRAZY) weeks in Arica, Chile, and start thinking about other things.

Because I am in the southern hemisphere, things are really heating up. It’s been hard to wear jeans outside without sweating buckets and our apartment doesn’t have air conditioning so instead we try to take advantage of the wind by keeping windows open during the day. A plus of having summer right now is the produce available- lots of delicious fruits and veggies are popping up at the farmers market and my roommates and I are taking advantage of them! While the north of Chile doesn’t have any fresh berries, my favorite part of summer, I managed to find some frozen raspberries to add to my granola in the morning. We have been cooking up a storm in our apartment, including some of my favorite dishes! We made a tomato orange soup from scratch that emulated my favorite soup from Elephant’s Deli in Portland, Oregon. We have made lots of sautéed veggies, lentil dishes, fajitas made an appearance, and even homemade pasta sauces! It has been really great to have our own space and to cook for ourselves after living in homestays where white bread was the norm.

Since we’ve either been in classes all week or writing these 20+ page papers while we’ve been in Arica, we are trying to take full advantage of the city. Yesterday, we finally made it to the pizza place everyone claims to be the best in the city. The only other pizza we’d had before this was a gross pizza with corn kernels and soft crust, so we figured anything would be an improvement. The best part about the pizza place was that it was INSIDE the large supermarket here- and the pizza was DELICIOUS! Thin crust, good tomato sauce, and plenty of cheese, olives, and mushrooms. They deliver, so we may be taking advantage of that again.

We have a few other things we’d like to do, like spend time at the beach and meander around downtown, so hopefully those things will all happen in the next two weeks before our Independent Study Project Presentations and the end of the program! 

marisaw@gwmail.gwu.edu

- Marisa