Adeline Thompson

About Adeline Thompson

http://www.colby.edu/directory_cs/arthom21/

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Livin’ it up in Southern Chile

Livin’ it up in Southern Chile

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I want to start this post by thanking the Mapuche people and land for sharing this experience and teaching me so much.

 

MARI MARI!

That means hello in Mapuzungo, which is the language of the Mapuche people. The Mapuche are an indigenous people in southern Chile and Argentina. This past week, I had the incredible opportunity to spend a week learning and living with this community. I’m currently writing these words by the warmth of fire overlooking a river in the mountains in my homestay in this community. We were visiting the Mapuche because they are incredible, but also because they have spent years resisting the Chilean government and fighting for their rights. Recently, much of this fight has been focused on water rights because Chile is the only country in the world with privatized water and this has been threatening their livelihood. 

After a ten-hour overnight bus ride we arrived in Curarrehue and were welcomed into a ruka, a traditional Mapuche building. By the heat of the fire we ate our breakfast of boiled eggs and fruit.
Our first dinner with our wonderful host mother Juanita really blew it out of the water. It was a simple meal of vegetables cooked with beef, but the flavor was incredible. This can be attributed to the fact that everything, besides the zucchini, came from her farm. From the meat to the vegetables, Juanita cultivated them herself. Even the bread was made from hand. The community here does its best to be self-sustaining.
Once again Juanita hit out of the park for dinner, this time with a hearty soup! It included a variety of vegetables from her garden as well as beef.
For dessert, she made an incredible lemon meringue pie with a crust made out of maize and potato to accommodate my gluten-free roommate.

Continuing with desserts, we also had a delicious arroz con leche. As well as creme brulee-like dessert. Another dessert we had was a mug with Juanita’s homemade blackberry marmalade at the bottom and some sort of fruit, we believe are some sort of plum.
Following along with the theme of every meal being vegetables and meat, here is another soup we had that was exactly that. Please note the massive chunk of meat in bowl, bones and all.
More empanadas! But these were definitely the best empanadas I’ve had. One of them was a shredded steak and the other was made of veggies Quinoa.

On one of our last nights, we had a large fiesta where we played games, danced, and ate lots of food. I’m confident that this night will be a highlight of my trip. It was seriously so much fun and I felt so honored that this community had welcomed us into their lives and were able to teach us that there are many ways to live a full and happy life. The dinner for this night included beef and lamb that had been roasting all day over an open fire. To be completely honest, my jaw was pretty sore from chewing the beef ribs, but the lamb was incredible and the experience unmatched. 

Also, our host mom taught us how to make empanadas! I ate six.

Finally, the last food I want to talk about is the pinon. This comes from the a tree and been harvested by the Mapuche people for hundreds of years. It can be eaten raw, toasted, or ground into a flour to cook with. It is used to feed the livestock as well as the community. Traditionally, families would spend months living in rukas in the forest to collect enough pinons to sustain them during the year, but these days that practice is uncommon. This transition has happened recently and the older women in the community who spoke to us had spent their childhood living in the woods for months at a time collecting pinons. The araucaria tree is one of the oldest in the forests found in this region and can live for hundreds and even thousands of years. The tree starts producing pinones when it is 60 years old. For every handful of pinones that the Mapuche collected, they would stop and plant two of them into the ground. This practice helped to create a healthy and sustainable practice of cultivating crops. Since the practice of collecting pinons is something that is passed down through generations, it also meant that they were able to collect fruit from the trees that their father or grandfather had planted.

 

To me, the practice of collecting pinones exemplifies many of the values that I learned this week. The importance of respecting all living things and understanding we are not apart from nature, but part of the ecosystem too. Sustainable practices can be achieved in individual and community efforts. Also respect to tradition and your lineage, knowing where you came from.

Viva a Chile!

Viva a Chile!

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The month of September is a really special time to be in Chile. September 11 marks the anniversary of the military coup led by Pinochet that led to years of extreme violence and oppression. This was in 1973 and Pinochet was president until 1990 and continued to be commander in chief of the military until 1998. To this day, his constitution remains in place. During the dictatorship, thousands of people were murdered, exiled, tortured, or kidnapped. This day remains extremely painful for many who experienced this first-hand and lived through the dictatorship. I felt extremely lucky to be here learning about a history that the United States doesn’t acknowledge, despite having been extremely involved. Along with the anniversary of the military coup, on September 18, Chile celebrates its independence from Spain. This is done through an entire week of celebrations. One big part of this celebration is the fondas which are basically extremely large public parties. They are often held in public parks or areas. They include lots of games and food as well as dancing and, in some, rodeos. Think common ground fair, but a lot more meat. We got to learn how to dance the cueca, which is the national dance and a large part of the fondas. Also, the style of fonda varies greatly. Some are a lot more lowkey and more like a fair, while some have big concerts at night and are more similar to a festival.

Here is the most popular food at fondas, anticucho, which is literally massive sticks of meat grilled with onion and a piece of bread stuck on the end.
Here is the food that I would most want the spa to add to their menu. It’s called chorrillana? This is basically a bunch of french fries with caramelized onions and chunks of meat topped with a couple of over-easy eggs. Seriously so good.
Drinks are also a big part of fondas. This is picture of the most popular drink, terremoto. Translated to English, this means earthquake. This is made with a cheap wine called pepino, pisco, grenadine, and pineapple ice cream. It’s a very sweet and strong drink. While our program director insisted we had one to properly experience a fonda she also emphasized that one was more than enough. *The drinking age in Chile is 18.*

This is maybe the strangest drink/dessert I’ve had. It is called mote con huesillo, which basically means mote with dried bone. It is made from the grain mote and ? with a dried peach. It was kind of sweet, but not overwhelmingly so. I won’t say I was the biggest fan of it. I think it mainly confused me, do I drink it? Do I eat it? Who knows.

When learning about the history of Chile it was easy to feel frustrated and emotionally drained. I heard many stories about unspeakable horrors from survivors of the dictatorship. I witnessed the places where hundreds were killed and tortured. I joined with thousands at the national stadium to mourn and remember this dark part of Chile’s history. It’s important to me to talk about this because this isn’t just Chile’s history. The United States fully backed Pinochet’s military coup and helped to implement the oppressive neoliberal economy that still remains today. The United States is intertwined into not only Chile’s but many other Latin American countries’ history. Yet, as a student raised in the United States, it took me traveling thousands of miles away and seeing firsthand the pain and violence to understand this relationship. 

The national holiday was also a great reminder that after learning about terrible atrocities for weeks, the Chilean people are not beaten down. They are alive and well, and sure know how to party.

Bienvenidos a Chile

Bienvenidos a Chile

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After a wild couple of days, missed flights, and extra flights (shoutout to hurricane Dorian) I finally arrived in Chile for the first of three countries in my abroad program. Here I will get the chance to learn about the Human Rights movements in Chile with consideration to the cultural and historical context and with a specific focus on women and indigenous people’s movements. During the program, I will be having homestays. My first homestay is an incredible family who lives in Santiago. I live with a mother (Kekah) and father (Ricardo) as well as three siblings (Paula, Sebastian, and Amanda). Luckily for me and Julianne, another girl from my program, Kekah is a great cook who makes us a homecooked meal every night! The following is a mass conglomerate of some of the food I’ve experienced in Santiago from both my host family and also when I’ve gone out to eat, but mostly from my homestay because homecooked food is always better. I tried to include the food that I thought was particularly interesting or unique!

This is pebre which is a super common food in Chile. It’s kind of similar to a not-spicy pico de gallo that you put on bread. This is super common in restaurants as part of appetizers and also it is delicious.
This is a picture of a delicious soup! This recipe comes from the south of Chile, where my host father is from. He claims that the best meat in Chile comes from the South. It contains vegetables and meat (a theme in a lot of the food from the South but that is for another blog). Also side note, the egg wasn’t originally part of the soup, but when my host mom found out that I was taking a picture for my blog she insisted that this was the best way to eat and that it would look better. She also cut up a lemon for my water just for the photo. She’s adorable.
Another food that I have consumed a lot of since being in Chile is empanadas. They are very versatile and can basically be filled with anything. Our host mom typically fills them with beef, onions, a boiled egg, and a single olive in each empanada.
This is a dessert that is long pieces of fried dough covered in powder sugar. It was sweet, but not too sweet. My sixteen-year-old host sister found them very amusing because the translation of their name, calzones rotos, in English means broken underwear. That being said, I literally ate half this plate.
This dish called Pastel de Choclo. Choclo means corn and it was basically a bowl of assorted things similar to the empanada filling, but this was cooked in a creamy sweet cornbread
I’m gonna be honest, I don’t know what the name of this dish was, but I thought it was interesting. It was rice with some sort of seafood mixed into it and lil shrimp on the side as well as tomatoes. It’s really common that no matter what the dish is they also put out a plate of tomatoes like a “salad”.
This is a Venezuelan arepa that I got from a super cute little restaurant. I wanted to add this to my post because the immigrant population is important to the culture and history of Chile although this narrative isn’t often talked about.
I have also had an absurd amount of juice in Chile, but often this juice is super pulpy with chunks of the fruit still in there. This is a photo of some awesome basil lemonade featuring my even more awesome professor who is teaching two of my classes and travels with us to all three countries.

So far Chile has been an incredible experience with lots of delicious food!

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Study abroad in New York?

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Hello folks. It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for– another abroad blog. Join me through escapades and adventures eating lots of delicious food throughout it all. That’s right people; this blog will be focused on something we all need in our lives, food. 

 

My “abroad” program began a bit unorthodox and the first two weeks were in New York City. While New York isn’t exactly foreign, there was no shortage of fantastic food adventures. We’ll start off with one of my favorite hacks. For the rest of the program, we will be living with host families that will feed us, but in New York we were given a daily stipend to buy our own food with. Thanks to my mother, I instinctively began trying to figure out how I could make every penny count. My best food purchase? Talenti gelato. The gelato itself was merely okay, but the Talenti gelato container is the perfect Tupperware for traveling. The majority of days were full from the beginning to the end of the day and once I left the hostel in the morning, I wouldn’t be back until that night and that’s exactly when having a container for leftovers or for food I cooked in the hostel kitchen came in clutch.

a simple afternoon snack of fruit, granola, and yogurt in my handy dandy container

 

Leftover Falafels with rice on the subway? I think yes.

 

While I did save money, I did my best to still take advantage of being in a diverse city with amazing food. Above is a lovely place I went to with bomb tacos. Delish.

 

Whole hog BBQ

 

Mochi ice cream– matcha, passion fruit, and thai tea flavored ~very aesthetic~

 

Street Gyro- delicious, but messy, to eat

I have learned so much from these first two weeks of my program, I’ve had the opportunity to meet incredible people and organizations that are fighting for human rights in New York. I had initially written off these first two weeks as nothing more than an orientation, but as I hope my selection of food helps to exemplify, New York is an incredible city full of diversity and life and I’m grateful to have gotten a taste of it.