what's black and white and red all over??

It's a not a newspaper -- it's my Chilean diet. Inordinate amounts of black tea, white bread and red meat. I CANNOT believe how much tea is drunk in this country. Tea at breakfast, tea between classes, tea after lunch, tea after school, tea before bed. Adults, children, everyone. Every time you go somewhere, no matter what time of day it is, someone is bound to offer you a 'tecito'. People keep telling me tea is good for you, but I don't know how much anti-oxidation my body can take.

Any positive health effects of the tea are bound to be offset by the negatives of the bread and meat. Yesterday Alyssa, the project coordinator in Chile, invited the Puente Alto team (James, Shayne, Sinmi and me) over for dinner. Alyssa is vegetarian -- it felt so good to eat CHEESE and VEGETABLES. And the bread....my downfall. I love it, but I eat far too much of it. My favourite is this dense disc that looks kind of like a squished hamburger bun with tiny holes poked in the top. It's my breakfast, part of lunch, and dinner.

Breakfast is a quick affair at around 7:45: tea and bread, choices of various jams, marmelade (made with the membrillos in the garden) or butter. Lunch is the big meal. We eat in the school cafeteria. Some kind of beef with rice or mashed potatoes, salad and bread. This happens at 1:30 (in fifteen minutes!), by which time I am so ravished that everything seems delicious. And it's warm, which after 4 hours in a classroom that I swear has some complex system of reverse-insulation, is very appealing. I generally get home from school at about 6:15, and an hour or so after that we sit down to 'once' ('eleven' for the non-hispanophones). Dinner is skipped in the Santiago tradition of big lunches. 'Once' looks a lot like breakfast, tea and more of the devilishly yummy bread. My host family is originally from southern Chile, and they tell me that there people lunch at noon, dine at 5, and have 'once' before bed.

I hear good things about the seafood here, so I'm hoping to get down to the market some time and eat some good Chilean fish. I'm getting treated to various delicacies at home -- last weekend we had cordero asado al palo, literally a rack of lamb on a spit. Will post a photo eventually. This weekend we're making empanadas, undoubtedly with more beef.

I hear the kids screaming and reggaeton has started to pump upstairs, so I think it's lunch time. Off to get my daily shot of iron and empty carbs!!