Té y Comida
I used to never drink tea in Colorado. But here, I find myself drinking three cups a day. Té (tea) is very popular in Chile. I learned it can be found in pretty much any household. Chilenos drink té for breakfast, for once (before dinner), and any time in between. In fact, I am drinking tea as I type this.
In my current family, we don't eat dinner. We eat breakfast, which consists of cereal or bread, and then when it's time to eat lunch we are starving. I find that people here eat way less snacks in between meals, causing them to eat bigger meals. That is definitely different and hard for me to consume so much food at one sitting. On the other hand, my first Chilean family in Recoleta, did eat dinner. They had breakfast, lunch, once, and then dinner at about 11 or 12 at night, even on week nights! One night, after once at 5, my first family had prepared dinner and we all sat down to eat at about 10 o'clock. I was the only one digging in so I had looked around curiously and they said how it was too early for them to be eating dinner. It was ten at night, people! What a culture shock that was.
After breakfast comes lunch at about 2 in the afternoon. Lunch is the biggest meal of the day; it consists of a salad, a main entree, bread, and usually fresh fruit for dessert. We also tend to have multiple servings of the main entree. Traditional main entrees in Chile are rice, lentils, some kind of meat, potatoes, pasta, or all of that! Eating all that food makes you tired (and happy), so my family relaxes or takes an occasional siesta.
Then, once. My all time favorite meal. (Once is pronounced the same as the number 11 in Spanish. I find that italicizing the word 'once' makes it easier to read so you don't pronouce it once, as you would in English.) In my family, we eat once at as early as 7 or as late 11. We have green tea, fresh bread, pastries, and fruit. I like putting scrambled eggs or fresh avocado on my bread. That's another thing, the avocado here is to die for and there's plenty of it!
¡Vamos a comer!
