How to mathematically explain why things always speed up when they are about to end?

If I were to invent a formula (perhaps there already exists one that I am unfamiliar with) for that phenomenon of time speeding up unnecessarily and unfortunately...this would be it.

5 months = a long time right?
4 months go by
5 - 4 = 1

1 month left.

Where did the 4 months go? I have no idea, but here I am with a little under a month left of my study abroad experience and I don't understand why time seems to go by so much faster now. Of course it has its slow moments like when I am freezing and studying or when I am trying to get home via public transportation, but on average it has speeded up exponentially and unexplainably.
Al fondo, this is a very philosophical math formula, making it more theoretical and likely, impossible to prove in any way, but I have a feeling that the majority of people would agree with my proposed theory despite the lack of cited literature, research or fact.

It is purely based on human feeling in relation to time. Time is relative until we put meaning to it. These 4 months past have meant so much to me, but now I am forced to recognize a real and imminent end to the experience that I know as study abroad. It is confusing really. I havn't seen my family in forever so clearly I am excited to see them, but what about my chilean family? When will I ever get to see them again?

Clearly we have diverged from the mathematical into the pathetically sappy and preoccupied frame of mind. I shall leave you with this, the whole business of time speeding up? it's good. it means that the time spend was good, it meant something to you and now that time has relevance. Before it was just the passing of units that we call minutes, the sun rising and setting in the southern hemisphere and gravity pulling the waves of the pacific in and out. Now it is my past, memories and and whole year of experiences worth so much to me. And there is more to come, hence the unnecessary-ness of this sappy sappy post.

 thinking man (made of tape) aside the polluted Mapocho river

exams are creepin'

Y'know that feeling at the end of the semester when it feels like every single professor in your life has realized that they only have about 6 class days left to give you homework? Result being that you are drowning in a sea of paper and notes and books. Yea well that feeling exists in Chile as well.

it is raining

this is actually a good thing in Santiago seeing how in the 4 and a bit months that I have been here I think it has rained ONE other time. It doesn't rain much here. Did you know.....Chile is home of the driest desert in the world! The Atacama desert. real dry

Hopefully I will be going skiing next week in the Andes!!! That would be the epitome of awesome, I just have to buy the ticket. Also rent skis, no way did I bring those down here.

My host family continues to be the cutest and best host family every, me and my 'brother' went running yesterday with the dog. My sister is going to the states this friday with her boyfriend and my host parents are just the nicest. It is now cold enough, however, to merit using the little portable gas stove (THANK GOD) I love that stove, LOVE IT! It saves me from sitting in the living room and studying/freezing simultaneously.

Anyways, I gotta go catch the D18 (bus) to get to the metro to go to class. I only have one class today (Narrativa Chilena y hispanoamericana) and we are going to talk about Roberto Bolaño's book Los Detectives Salvajes. It's a pretty good book I only wish I had been able to read more of it as of this point in my life....only read like 80 pgs. before the quiz. shoot.

this is study abroad
<3

What is a chori-pan?

I just realized that my blog is not on the SMC study abroad bloggers page. hmmm, what to do

Anyways, what is a chori-pan?
that is a fantastic question because it has two main answers
1) delicious
2) chilean
and this is why I love it

Basically, there is this bread here (BREAD HERE IS SO GOOD) called a Marequeta.
Secondly, there is this thing called a chorizo which SpanishDict defines as: cured pork sausage, flavoured with paprika...
that is mostly accurate, however, to further define this wonderful food that I have no idea why the states has not yet lied about inventing...


it is a little sausage thing that is almost too orange to be considered real meat, but very tasty, best eaten with ketchup and mayo and possibly palta (squashed avocado)
You put said sausage-thing inside a halved marequeta and BAM: choripan


~because without the bread, it's just chori
and without the chori, it's just pan~


  here it is...the magical food of chilean asados

Chiloé, how I wish I could stay

So, sorry I havn't written in my blog for so long. I know all you very dedicated followers await with baited breath my chilean adventures and yet, I continue to disappoint with blank spaces in the months and months I have not written. jk, thank's mom for being the only one who reads this.

Anyways, so I went to this island last week called Chiloé, which is about as close to Patagonia as you can get without exactly being in patagonia. It was absolutely amazing! I went down there with two friends, a backpack, some noodles and no return ticket. Unfortunately there was a set return date as there are these things called classes that we sometimes have to go to despite being abroad and fancy free.

I am going to elaborate mostly on Chiloé so as not to overwhelm all of you with the significant amount of things that have happened since I last wrote. Besides, Chiloé is by far the most interesting thing that has happened to me since the last time I wrote. Today I am just doing homework, case and point. Going to Chiloé also means returning broke apparently, so I'm out of the mix for a little bit, I even needed to beg some pesos of a german tourist just to get on the metro to go to class...that's a lie. It would have been funny though.

We took an overnight bus ($20.00US) to get down there which was significantly less comfortable than my bed, but adequate for broke travelers, plus they wake you up in the morning by handing you a little alfajor cookie (which are super delicious). Arriving in Puerto Montt was extremely exciting as would have been arriving in the middle of an uninhabited desert....just to get OFF THE BUS. We walked around Puerto Montt for a while, artisans markets, fish markets, etc.
We decided to eat lunch near the fish market, fresh seafoood right? So one of my friends says "let's get erizoz and locos because they are tipical food here! yay!" Mistake #1. didn't ask what erizos were, Mistake #2. said yes anyways. Erizos, for all of you who don't know are in fact sea urchins, raw, with some lemon and salt. disgusting. I ate one and then had to gulp down some bread and pisco sour just to get the extremely nasty flavor OUT. But yea, the locos were pretty good.
After this adventure, we got on a bus to Castro, a little town in Chiloé which is famous for it's palfitos (houses on stilts in the water..they are probably the coolest things I saw in Chiloé!) Stayed there two nights, visited the Parque Nacional Chiloé...it was pourings, but nice. We stayed one night in Ancud at the best hostal ever! visited the Fuerte San Francisco there....ate some Curanto which is again, typical food of the region. And after all this we made our way inland to Puerto Varas, and Frutillar- a cute little german town...literally, the cute little children go to cute little german school and everything is tiny and cute.

Conclusions:
1) People from the south of Chile are kinda like the southern states...really hospitable and nice. Some man invited us on a journey to the island Quinchau simply because he had room in his jeep. We could have been a band of young, seemingly feminine murderers for all he knew. good thing we weren't.
2) Curanto is actually good despite it's somewhat strange and disgusting sounding presentation (all forms of meat cooked in a pot...chicken, pork, beef, clams, muscles, other stuff)
3) I must go back!!

pictures to follow, however as a result of this trip I have a mountain of homework the size of volcán Osorno...entonces, nos vemos más rato.

The Bus

haha, you're funny Chile

So, for all of you who plan on doing some Latin American traveling, pay attention. 

The bus in Latin America is a very important thing. There is always an acceptable social dynamic, acceptable way of hailing and acceptable way of paying for the bus.

Let's start with paying...in Ecuador everything goes. If you have 25 pennies, by all means pay the bus chofer in pennies. He is not going to be happy, but he is also not going to complain; it is money after all. In Chile you do NOT pay with coins. There is a special card that you have to buy called the Bip and it costs about $1.25 to ride the bus, gross. The funny thing is when your Bip doesn't have any 'saldo' or money on it. The machine makes an obnoxious beep beep beep letting EVERYONE on the bus know that YOUR card doesn't have any more saldo. You then proceed to give puppy dog eyes to the bus driver who usually (but not always) just lets you stay on his bus. phew, part one.

Part two: how to hail the bus in the first place. . . busses in Ecuador will stop anywhere. Literally anywhere you maybe, possible stuck your arm out a little bit into the road you will have a bus waiting for you. In Chile there are designated bus stops and if you are not at a bus stop, there is no sympathy from either the bus driver or the general populous of the bus. It is also socially acceptable to push and shove your way onto the bus, instead of acting like the adults we are, even though EVERYONE knows that the bus is going to wait until everyone is on to start moving. For some strange reason people feel the need to elbow their way onto these busses that, in the end, just aren't that packed. Or....at least they're not 'Ecuador packed'

Part Three: acceptable bus behaviour

DO NOT TALK TO ANYONE YOU DON"T KNOW OR ELSE!! haha, JK, though it is not an official rule, it is considered quite strange to strike up a conversation with the person sitting in the seat next to you just for conversation's sake. It is also (unfortunately) acceptable to ALWAYS take the outside seat of a pair of seats FIRST so that when another person arrives and wants to sit in that window seat, they have to ask the other person to move..squeeze by them when they only swing their feet into the isle and then proceed to do the same thing when they need to get off. JUST SIT IN THE WINDOW SEAT FIRST PEOPLE.

People are strange. However, it is common to give old ladies seats on the bust when they get on which I like. Despite all the woes of city busses, they do have that going for them. I'm pretty sure the drivers just get bored sometimes though and drive as violently as possible just to watch their passengers fall all over the bus. I'm sure it would be amusing if I were sitting in front with a seatbelt too sir, but I"M NOT. 

Anyhow, random musings on busses. That picture at the top was taken in Pucón and has nothing to do with the topic. . . neither does this one.

Mid-Semester = Midterms

Despite the fact that I'm in Chile, I still have midterms like a normal person...or normal college student.
In fact, I have my Geography of Latin America midterm (I suppose that's what it is anyway) this monday. Unfortunately my computer needs some sort of special file to open the stuff to read....so I havn't studied yet. The studying will also be put off until at least tonight because I am going to an ASADO!!! (BBQ) where there will be delicious CHORI-PAN! (a little sausage thing in bread with mayonnaise and ketchup...so so good) I'm pretty sure we could make chori-pan in the states, I was just introduced to the wonder of it here in Chile.

I can't quite feel the pull of finals yet, but I can see them on my calendar a short month and a half away and I am scared. I have a final paper in my independent study class a a culmination of all we have done (aka lots of individual research, surprise), I have a test in spanish, a test in Geo, and a final project AND a test in my spanish literature class which is SUPER hard (but also probably the best class I have) ahhh

Besides all those tests though, I am going to Chiloé on the 23rd of May...as you may recall we were going to go the 2nd, but clearly that didn't happen because of various things. Oh well, we are still going. Tomorrow we are going to celebrate mother's day by going to my Chilean grandmother's house for lunch and..I dunno what else. Probably just that, I don't think we'll be doing anything too fancy.

Well, hate to go but I'm gonna be late for this Asado...I'm not sure why it is in the middle of the day, but some things in Chile just go unexplained.

un abrazo fuerte for all of you crazy people who read this -K

sudden cold... lack of central heating system

Lots has happened since the 10th of April when I last wrote (sorry)
As you can imagine there is plenty going on in this country where small earthquakes are a twice a month deal, there are student protests every other week and fall is slipping into winter. gross. I'm not a fan of winter without snow. Instead, here the snow only falls on the distant (but not that distant) Andes and in the (actually) distant Patagonia. Hopefully I'll get to ski on some of that in June :)

To continue with the goings-on-in-Chile topic, today there was a government permitted student strike that was supposed to be normal, non-violent and all that. However, watching the news this evening there was a burning bus, someone getting chased by police on a motorcycle and someone unconscious being carried by four men from the scene. I feel so safe. Actually as long as you just avoid the center of town you are usually fine. I am REALLY good at avoiding the center of town during strikes ever since my first experience with tear gas. I must say it just wasn't good enough to repeat....ever. It was terrible

So I was lucky enough to get to visit Pucón in the middle of April. We actually went on what was called the 'viaje semestral' or the semester trip in which 'Syracuse University' brought us to Pucón and paid for lodgings and some food etc. It was fantastic! There is a gigantic volcano that you can see from everywhere, there are all kinds of touristy (but awesome) adventures like sip lining, kayaking, white water rafting and thermal hot springs to visit! We had an awesome time! We stayed at Hotel Sol y Lago which was comprised of cute cabin-apartment things. There was also a pool there, but it was freezing.

Coming back to Santiago was a bit of a noisy let down after, but I am now re-accustomed to city life.  Normal things such as waiting for the D18 bus in the frigid morning, forcing yourself onto a really full metro, riding said metro to class, going to class where SO MANY students get there late (must be a chilean thing) etc. The city is exhausting (in good ways too) but Pucón was a nice break.

Thankfully, there are more adventures in the near future to be had because me and two other 'gringas' are planning a trip to the island of Chiloé, very very far south. There are penguins on the Pacific coast side and cool houses on stilts on the Atlantic side so I am super excited. We are going to take an overnight bus to get down there because it takes so long, I'll never get used to sleeping on a bus or a plane. Just can't do it.

the beach! Algarrobal

Volcan Villarica! Check it out!

One of Pablo Neruda's 3 houses. He is probably one of the most famous Chilean poets. He likes tall houses

Anyways, that's all for now. Sorry to throw it all at you at once, but I think you can handle it. Heres some pictures to make it all better.