A Gringa in Chile

After two months of living in Chile, I have realized that there are certain things that Chileans are obsessed with. Some of them are things that Chileans have a good reason to be obsessed about, and some of them make absolutely no sense. Seriously, mayonnaise is not the condiment anyone should ever be obsessed with. Mayonnaise Look at all that Mayonnaise. Photo Cred: Ian Chileans love their mayonnaise. It's on anything and everything, from hamburgers to hot dogs to french fries. I always thought the USA was the land of mayonnaise lovers, but I was absolutely wrong. Here, when you go to bite into a completo (hot dog), you will find half of it is taken up by mayonnaise. Every conceivable type of sandwich is sold "Italian style", which means it has smashed avocado, tomatoes, and mayo on it (the colors of they toppings are the same as the Italian flag). Mayo is also used as the topping of choice on french fries, and mayo is brought out during almost every meal as a c

Before coming to Chile, no one adequately warned me about the language difference. I obviously knew that they spoke Spanish, and knew that they would have some of their own Chilean slang. What I didn't realize, however, is that Chilean Spanish is crazy. Chile is a very isolated country; they've got a desert in the north, Patagonia and glaciers to the south, mountains to the east, and the ocean to the west. This isolation has caused a lot of different environmental and cultural phenomena, notably, creating an interesting Spanish dialect. A Chilean accent is to Spanish how an Irish accent is to English. Really fun to try to understand for a non-native speaker! One of the biggest differences in how Chileans speak is their accent. Now Cony, my host sister, told me that Chileans have a pretty neutral accent and will lose it if they travel out of their country for a week or two, but for me, the accent is very pronounced and strange. I'm used to hearing a Spanish accent, which

Most people start their travel blogs off with their first impressions of the new places they've explored or new cultures they've experienced. Maybe they stick with a list of favorite new restaurants, foods, or places. I thought about starting with those, and maybe I will make those blog posts in the future, but I figured that the best way to start off my blog was to get myself out of my comfort zone. I needed to get some things off of my chest in order to honestly show what my study abroad experience is like.  So I'm starting off my blog with a list of the embarrassing things that have happened to me in the first month of studying abroad in Concepcion, Chile.  1) Speaking Spanish I'm going to be honest here, I thought I would be a pro at Spanish within my first week in Chile. After all, I've studied Spanish for more than seven years, I've always done well in my Spanish classes, and I even had a dream in Spanish before! Everyone knows that the minute