Well, it's been a while since my last post so obviously many interesting things have happened in the meantime. And by interesting I mean vaguely abnormal and disturbing things.

These include: being robbed, going to a disco themed party filled with excessively tight pants, being bitten by a (possibly) rabid dog on the arse, applying foot powder to my testicles, going to a disco where everyone was web footed and six fingered; and just today a 6 year old girl spat in my face.

But hey, lets get down to the real nitty gritty, I worry for Chile and their food. Maybe, it's because it's shaped a little bit like the country, maybe it's because there's some weird Freudian phallic thing going on, but it's probably because Chile is just a bit wrong, as this country is obsessed by hotdogs.

Went to hiper lider today in a quest for some decent cheese, (I could rant about the lack of decent cheese for hours, but will spare you, for now) and whilst the cheese is divided into 2 varieties, sliced and unsliced- the hotdog aisle stretched on over the horizon all the way down to the Pacific. There's hotdogs of "pork", "turkey" and my personal favourite, "bird".

And no matter what you put on them, which here includes tomatoes, onions,avocadoes and the ubiquitous mayonaisse, nothing can disguise the fact that what you are eating is 25% eyeholes, earholes and arseholes, 75% grey.

But this really doesn't affect me as a vegemetarian. So what am I left to eat... Fried dough! This is all sopapillas are- fried dough with mayonnaise on the top. It tastes as good as it sounds. If this gets boring, there's always empanandas de queso- fried dough in fried cheese which are a lot better than they sound, in a Chilean wrong sort of way. Apparently there's also something called humitas, which is mashed corn. Can't wait to try that and exhaust my food options totally. I'll be left with eating bread and aji, or heaven forbid, salads.

OK, so this is probably not an honest reflection of Chilean cuisine, this is just the cheapest food you can eat, which is what I'm on until my bank cards get sent here. I'm sure there are some delicious seafood dishes and some excellent steaks which I'll never eat. And I'm sure there's some ace vegetarian fare that won't instantly clog up my arteries. So I'm making up for all this unhealthy crap I'm eating by supplementing my diet with a steady flow of Chilean red (and pisco, beer and a little rum). Which is very, very good. There's also a festive drink called cola de mono (monkey's tail) which sounds phenomenal, but is in fact a coffee based licquer.

So that's it for now, as it's Christmas in 2 days time, I'll write about that in my next post. In April. Ciao

ET

Wow, this is not only my first blog in Chile, it's also my first blog ever and it's both fully lubricated and hindered by several glasses of Chile's cheapest red wine, so here we go.

And where to start? It's been an intense week with all the comings and goings of the induction. I've heard a lot about VE and all it's multiple facets dimensions, but today we went to our hogars and met the chicas for the first time. And as this will be the core of my experience here, it seems as good place as any.

I was proper nervous going into the institution for the first time. Obviously these girls have had a really, difficult lives and at the minute I'm on the Titanic setting off from Liverpool- the tip of the iceberg is far, far away. But I'd heard enough horror stories/reality checks to be more than a little aprehensive.

And as I wandered into my hogar for the first time this feeling wasn't alieviated. My reception ranged from muted welcome to general ambivalence to "who the fuck are you and why are you interrupting my telenovela?".

But as I meandered aimlessly from courtyard to kitchen the girls began to emerge from the intellectual mist of Venezuelan soap operas and offered such pearls of wisdom and incisive questions:

"Is it true that people from your country never wash?" and
"It looks like all your teeth are falling out" and sobre todas
"I haven't got any idea what you're saying"

And both despite and because of this I left the hogar feeling so excited about the 6+ months ahead. Whether I still have that ganas in a weeks time, I'll let you know. Ciao pescaos!