People always ask me how the food is here in Chile and everyone expects me to be full of stories of all sorts of exotic foreign delicacies and strange dishes, but this is not at all the case. As a matter of fact, aside from the fact that avocado is consumed at literally every meal, Chile has a pretty nondescript typical diet. That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy the food here or that there aren’t any specifically Chilean foods, but there are very few of these true Chilean foods that are known outside of the southern cone.

Last weekend, I took a trip to Athens and loved it. The city wasn’t the safest place in the world, but the epic history and the beautiful sights were enough to compensate for the sketchy graffiti and the march in the streets. Due to the current economic state of Greece, everything was ridiculously cheap, too. I was sure to stalk up on some nice souvenirs and eat as many giant 2-euro gyros as I could. The only frustrating part of an otherwise ideal weekend was a three-hour delay on our return flight, but a deck of cards and a makeshift backpack-table made the time fly.

Having reached the three month marker, it’s slowly hitting me that I will be home in an English speaking country in the blink of an eye. Any time I am in my room alone mindlessly stalking old friends on facebook, I panic just little: there are so many other things I could be doing right now! So, for the next month I am going to live the most ‘German’ I can.

So what is the German-ist thing to do on a Monday night (besides drink Beer and argue)? See an English speaking blockbuster. Yes—a few friends and I spent 7.50 euros to see “Skyfall.”

Okay, granted I may have let myself insert a line or two about Lord of the Rings thinly across my blogs, but I’ve tried to avoid writing about it as much as I want to. And it’s not that I just wanted to write about all the ways that being in New Zealand brought me closer to the novel or the story. It hasn’t just been good. There were pitfalls relating to seeing ways in which the movies became a simple economic advantage to the country.

After a surprisingly restful 8-hour bus ride through the night, we arrived in the tiny city of Pucón, tucked away in the south of Chile at the base of the enormous Villarica volcano. Climate-wise, it makes sense to think of Chile as an upside-down version of California: Cali’s dusty southern San Bernardino region corresponds to Chile’s northern Antofagasta desert region, which means that the southern lakes region of Chile corresponds to rainy northern California (Chile’s a bit longer than Cali, so a more appropriate comparison might be to the Seattle region. Either way the point is rain.

I went to Berlin and Prague a few weeks ago, and I’m finally getting around to writing about it. My friend and I had a several panic attacks throughout the trip including one before we even left Paris. Sometimes traveling by yourself is hard.

On Thanksgiving morning I woke up, looked at the time on my phone, and closed my eyes again. Seven minutes to get to my internship. It’s never going to happen. I stayed in my bed for a couple more minutes.