Encuentro de Estudiantes Internacionales

I feel I accurately represented the spirit of the United States of America today with S'mores and Rice Krispies treats.

The 7th annual Encuentro de Estudiantes Internacionales was essentially an international student fair held in Casa Central's gym to celebrate Día de la Cultura. Each country prepared typical food, played music, had a table, you know how it goes.

There are 180 exchange students from the United States. Guess how many took the initiative (or were able) to do this? 2. And as you who know me so well have guessed, I was half of the gringa crew. In typical Ellen fashion (and Chilean fashion too) I slept an hour late and accidentally cut my set-up time in half (my partner could not make it until later). Other tables had exquisite dishes, fun decorations, and, well, people; I had a mountain of hard rice krispies treats. The other gringas had obligations and our communication failed, so we were a mess.

Things went up from there though. We managed to make a display and almost had our food ready when we had visitors. First Cristian, then Caroline, Javi, and Carolina, who were all in my Millersville Chilean lunch group last semester. Then more, intercambios, Chilean friends, and curious/hungry Chilean students. This seems like an ordinary and possibly dull event, but it was not, as I will thoroughly explain. At Millersville, I do a lot of stuff like this, and am accustomed to running/helping at university events where the general student population wanders around and where I inevitably run into people I know. This was just like that, but better, because I was a part of the PUCV student community. I wasn't just visiting, I was living amongst the student community. How excited I was to see my Chilean friends, friends from another culture into which I am integrating! I have friends here, good ones. Chileans. I am a part of this!

Chileans are fascinated at the concept of the s'more: the cooking on a stick part, and the part where you combine crackers with marshmallow with chocolate. I am fascinated by dipping chips into mayonnaise and ketchup sauce. We're even. I was thrilled to explain the concept of these foods for the first time in my life, well the second, Javi and I made rice krispies treats last semester. And every single one of them loved it.

At one point, as I was putting together my improvised s'mores (no graham crackers here), a lady with a microphone asked to interview me, with camera man in tow. I immediately said yes, but was honestly terrified at the thought, just as I would be for an interview in English. I managed to make it through, but had to ask for a question to be repeated and I think I answered one that she never asked. Ah well. I am incredibly grateful for the practice I had last semester in my Spanish class, where we role-played and interviewed through headsets while sitting at different computers, which at first I had hated. But it paid off.

AND we were asked to speak to the whole gym about the US. I summed up my American culture the only way I knew how; by pointing out that we have no palta, don't drink tea, and don't have the beloved micros.