chopping aqui

so i have never found grocery shopping a particularly easy task..you gotta sorta juggle what you need with what you want with what you wanna spend/cook/carry...pretty complicada..now try that in spanish. in a way, all bets are off. i found that my first week here i just stuck to some really really basic shit...i figured, if i recognize it, i will probably eat it...so i lived for my first week on yogurt (good and plentiful here) bread (otra vez) and cereal (ok but nothin to blog home abt), and some fruit to round it all out. Breakfast i thought to myself...its the breakfast, lunch, onces, (kinda like chilean teatime features tea and breakfasty foods and takes place between light lunch and light dinner)and dinner of champions. or so i thought...for like a week things were cool, id have some cereal or yogurt for breakfast, bread and yogurt for lunch and maybe cereal and bread for dinner with the ocasional uno mas uno to liven things up (uno mas uno is a very cleverly prepacked meal with one little cup of yogurt and one of cereal, the packaging actually bends to allow you to pour the cereal into the yogurt) so that was all good, until i realized i was LITERALLY STARVING TO DEATH and that if i had to eat any more fucking cereal or yogurt I WOULD LITERALLY DIE. so i decided to go grocery shopping. everything is complicated when you cant speak the frickin language...of course...but shopping is already complicated and is continually compounded by the language barrier plus unfamiliar products labelled in said (containing certain amount of barrier) language plus cultural differences such as: in a crowded supermarket should i politely excuse myself as i move my cart past others or swerve past like a mad speed demon?...im actually still not sure, thats why i went to JUMBO (gracias a dios por Jumbo) chiles answer to costco, on a sunday. i dont know where everyone is on sunday, they cant all be in church, but one thing is for certain, they are not out shopping. so i avoided the madness..then there is the fact that bread and fruit are to be weighed before reaching checkout, bread in the bread area and fruit in the fruit area...i was all over that one. then there was the issue of, i wonder what that is? and would i eat it? i have decided to minimize the number of curiosity purchases to just a few in order to be certain that i will end up with things that i actually will eat. smart huh? so then theres the deal abt what will i actually eat. heres where jumbo comes in handy. there are tons of packaged and imported foods, the thing is that this food tends to be spendier so you need to decide when to bite the bullet and pay for something you have to have (chocolate, imported earl grey because your other caffiene options are lipton tea and nescafe coffee)they also had mac and cheese, some yummy breads, microwave popcorn and wonder of wonders ramen noodles. never thought id see the day when someone said to me i found ramen noodles and i would reply where...well that day has come and then some..not to mention tortillas (pretty tough to find here) and tortilla chips...needles to say i am now chillin after a delicious meal of mac and cheese...it aint gourmet but hey. and now on the joeinspired more to follow como playboy except i got my clothes on, likes and dislikes...

Me gusta
flan in a yogurt cup at the grocery store
being stared at by young chilean men
the metro, clean fast transportation plus music videos on bigscreen tvs
the computer lab where you dont pay to print you just bring paper
fresh baked yummy bread
mi maestra, la profesora preciosa


No me gusta
being stared at by old chilean men
how the buses basically pause to let you off and you jump for the curb
the wierd yogurt/juice liquid
dulce de leche whatver the hell it is
trying to understand what people are
saying when they are talking fast, using hella chilean slang and bustin out some crazy vos, essentially all the time (catchais?)
four hours of spanish class daily