Seashells by the seashore

I will be very impressed with myself if I don't gain weight during this trip. Even on overcast days, the lure of an ice cream shop on almost every street is just too much for me. It helps that it is so cheap. On a good day, I can get a pretty big cone for 390 pesos, about 80 cents. Other days, like today, I have to settle for a big cone for 950 pesos, a little less than 2 dollars.

While the ice cream is cheap, it can be a pretty steep trade-off. I can get a sizable bottle of pisco, the best alcohol known to man, for about 1200 pesos, and it will last Kacie and I until the party ends sometime after 4 in the morning. Similarly, we can get a "juicebox" of relatively good wine for the same price, or even splurge on a 1.5L bottle for 1500 pesos, just under 3 dollars, and that will make a satisfying beach day for five of us.

If I choose to go with the pisco instead of the helado, I work it off dancing. Last week we went out every night from Wednesday to Saturday, meeting friends everywhere we went. It's not that bad, really; Wednesday is gringo night at Cafe Journal, Thursday we have Huevo Jueves (Huevo is the name of a club), and Friday and Saturday are just a given. This weekend the plan is to go into Santiago and check out the hip-haps there.

When I'm not with the group, I'm not sure what do to with myself. My class schedule is far from strenous: I don't start until 2 on Monday, only have one class Thursday, and have none on Friday. On the overcast days I can't make myself go to the beach, so I normally sit on the porch and read. I've been consuming literature almost as fast as the ice cream. Lunch isn't until 2 or so, and I don't really wake up early enough to leave the house for anything practical before that, so it's a lot of just chilling around.

I tried my hand at cooking, but it was an epic fail. I tried to recreate the mac'n'cheese recipe that I perfected this school year thanks to my dad's gift of a Costco flat of Kraft. I walked up and down the noodle aisle in the Santa Isabel (supermarket) looking for the signature blue boxes, and finally realized that they sell mac'n'cheese in bags here. This is actually a funny story in and of itself; they sell everything in bags. Ketchup in bags, mayonnaise in bags, soup mix in bags, yogurt in bags. What don't they sell in bags?

I finally settled for two bags of shells and cheese and stopped at the deli counter to get some real cheese to put on top. I wasn't sure what to get, so I just read the label of the cheese closest to me, which turned out to be a kind of sharp havarti. At home, I had a hard time finding the right pots and pans, we didn't have taco seasoning (of course not, these people don't care about Mexican food), and didn't know how to work the gas oven. Instead of crispy, spicy, delicious mac, we had dry, awkward shells. The boys told me it was really good, but I think they were just trying to save my ego. Either that, or they were just grateful for the free food.