Onward, but mostly upward.

So today I arrived in Arica, my first stop on what is going to be a fairly whirlwind tour of Peru, Bolivia and Argentina. I basically didn't sleep last night because my flight left so early (but thanks again for the ride, Israel!) so my impressions of the city are pretty hazy. I basically fell asleep on the beach and then walked back to my hostel. Fittingly (and extremely annoyingly) the autofocus on my camera seems to be wonky. So while it's technically a malfunction, you should think of this photo as an expressive manifestation of my mental state.

Arica is basically built around this giant, sandstone hill. It sort of just looms out of nowhere and the city hugs the flats around it. It's pretty dramatic looking. To accentuate things there is a giant statue of Jesus on top with outstretched arms. It's hard to know who started the trend of putting giant religious statues on hills overlooking cities, but it's probably time to stop. I mean it's getting a bit hackneyed if you ask me.

I had a very informative conversation with the owner of the hostel and an amateur anthropologist about how I should proceed with my trip. It seems I will have to be pretty choosy about Bolivia. They have also really put the fear of god into me regarding altitude sickness. Because of my time constraints I can't make the recommended stop in Arequipa before going to Cusco. I will therefore be dealing with a fairly sudden altitude change of more than 4,000 meters*. So basically I could be completely incapacitated for my first days in Cusco. Which could potentially ruin my plans involving the salt flats of Uyuni. If I can't make it to the salt flats my back up plan is to spend an entire day swimming in the center of Lake Titicaca. Because I think it would be cool to be able to say I swam across an international border. I will also probably need the exercise after all the hours I'll have spent on buses.

*Originally I wrote this as kilometers. Which would put me very close to the moon, I suppose. Let this be a testament to my exhaustion. And embarrassing lack of comprehension of the metric system.

Welcome to the Working Week

So it's been a bit of time since I wrote, but fortunately that's because I have a new job! That's right, after three months without working, I am finally back at it. Although my new position is basically the opposite of serving food and wine at Aroma. I responded to a job ad on Craig's List a couple of days after New Year's and about two hours later someone called to see if I could start the next week. It seems I am the only person in Chile using Craig's List. So far both of the inquiries I've made (my apartment and now my job) worked out pretty much immediately.

So the thing about this job is that it is in Santiago. And yes, that is a completely different city. But I felt like I was getting nowhere in Valparaiso and part of me has been longing for a bit more city life. Valpo is lovely, but in a city of 500,000 you tend to see the same faces and go to the same places every day. So for the last week I have been commuting two and a half hours each way to work about three hours a day. It's totally ridiculous and totally exhausting.

The job is "curriculum manager" for a tutoring company based in the Las Condes neighborhood of Santiago. So it's teaching, or more precisely tutoring. The company currently works exclusively with clients of Korean descent. So it's definitely a niche market. Right now there is no office, so I am making house calls. Like I said, it is completely different. I don't know if I like the job yet. It has certainly given my days some much needed structure. But I am often gone for ten or twelve hours at a time. And so, I have decided to move to Santiago.

The idea of moving again makes me vaguely nauseous. Even though I don't have too much stuff here, the process of finding a new place and getting to know new roommates seems particularly exhausting. So if any of you out there on the Internet have some great tips on affordable shared apartments in Santiago (preferably on or near the Linea 1 metro) please share!

Jitters

So in case you haven't picked up on this, I am making a go at National Blog Posting Month. I am sort of challenging myself to write more substantive things here and use my tumblr for my one-offs... But after a full day of bike riding yesterday and a full day of walking in the sun today, I'm afraid I don't have a ton of energy. And tomorrow my super-expensive Spanish classes begin at nine am so I need to get to bed pretty much now. According to the rules of the school there will not be more than five people in my class tomorrow. Which is a pretty small first impression to make. But the standard first day of school anxiety is still creeping in. Will I make friends? Will everyone else be muchmuch better at Spanish than me? What if I make some crazy pronunciation faux pas (like the time I tried to ask the dishwasher at Aroma for the "vasos" but said something more like "besos")? The "what to wear?" questions are not so pressing since wearing anything other than jeans and a t-shirt here garners far more unwanted attention than its worth. But, you know, which t-shirt??

Wednesday Cooking Diary: Chili

Chili is absolutely the easiest thing to cook. Ben, my roommate when I was nineteen taught me how to make it. I am pretty sure that his dad just told him over the phone to dump a bunch of cans into a pot and cook it with chili powder. Over the course of that year, when I was as poor as I ever plan to be, we tried putting lots of different things into the pot. Mostly it always tastes good, but now I have settled on a pretty good method:

-I start with a small yellow onion and three medium sized garlic cloves, all diced.

-I saute this with a pound of ground turkey until there aren't any pink parts left (this is a post-Philly addition. I could not afford luxuries like ground turkey that year).

-I add some diced up green pepper, a little bit of red bell pepper (little sweetness, little color), a can of whole kernel corn, a can of beans (kidney tonight, but often black) and a large can of diced tomatoes in juice (not with basil). Sometimes I add some diced jalepeno. HEAT!

-Add three heavy dashes of cumin, a dash of cinnamon, three heavy dashes of chili powder... When I want it spicy, I do some cayenne. Longer cooking time is better for maximizing flavor, so tonight it's going to simmer for close to an hour.

My favorite thing with chili is cornbread and so I often do the Jiffy boxed kind. It's really tasty, really easy. Which is good because I am so tired.

There's not real cooking time necessary on this. You want it to be soft, you want it to be flavorful.