things i took for granted

1. real coffee
    because instant coffee is where it's at in Chile....

2. dryers
    i have to hang dry every single item and my clothes are never soft anymore

3. fast internet
    i don't have wifi in my room. i guess there's a first time for everything, right?

4. central heating
    they only use space heaters. and i'm cold.

5. driving
    ya know

6. living on campus
    for the past 2 years it took me 5 minutes to get to class (even in high school it only took me 15 minutes once I stepped out my front door). here it takes me 40+ minutes and a whole lot of people staring at me.

7. not peeling my vegetables
    weird, i know. i never knew how much i loved eating the entire vegetable until they made me peel my tomatoes. (i guess the pesticide use is really bad here, but still....)

8. Target
    You know the loveliness of Target.

9. milk
    the milk comes in a box, unrefrigerated.
    i explained this to one of my teachers and he was like, "I've been consuming fake milk my whole life?!"

10. peanut butter
      i'm addicted and i'm almost out. (it's supes expensive here)

11. buying/having textbooks
      they make photocopies of the pages of any readings they need. they don't even have the option of buying the books. blows my mind! saves a lot of money, i guess, but it's so weird.

12. sales
      i only like sale shopping and sales don't happen here :(

13. free public transport
      students in Duluth get to use the buses for free and here I pay over a buck every time I get on the metro. it hurts.

14. English
      Spanish is hard. :)


These must be in order of importance/significance because this is the order that I thought them in. Except I reallyyyyy miss good milk.

When I was skyping Pierce at the beginning of my trip, I was complaining about how much I wanted some milk, so he took the end of the gallon from the fridge and chugged it for me on Skype. Then when we hung up he was so worried about me not drinking milk that he told my mom that they needed to figure out a way to get me some. He's so cute. And the best.


And although this seems like a list of complaints, I'm not only so much more thankful for these fourteen things but also thankful for how much I've learned and experienced while in Chile. Living in a different country has really opened my eyes to the endless possibilities that are other cultures and that it really is possible to survive on instant coffee (though I'm beyond excited to go to Caribou when I get home.)

Yay for studying abroad!