looking for home

Whenever I am far from home, after I've gotten used to all the novelties, I start looking for similarities to try to approximate a parallel existence in the other place. It's starting to happen here in Chile, and the first thing I looked for was fake meat. It is impossible to find soy burgers or garden burgers or chik nuggets or tofu dogs. People say that sometimes you can buy soy burgers on the street, and I saw a tattered flier announcing Temuco's veg fest (which already happened of course). But its all a bunch of mysterious murmurings and I had just about given up. But the other day I found the "Chinese" restaurant that I'd been told serves vegetarian food and lo and behold there was soy meat! Each item under the heat lamp was 500 pesos, about $1 US. So I bought two triangles of soy meat sandwich. Other offerings included lasagna, quiche, pansit (!), and egg rolls. Later in the week I discovered an opened bag of TVP left in the kitchen of my new house and cooked it up with some rice. I can feel the infusion of protein into my body once again!

Also included here is a photo of a stack of books in Temuco's only used bookstore, which isn't really a full bookstore but there is a stack of used books and vintage magazines amongst cheap clothing and school supplies. Ah the feeling of leafing through old books and not knowing what you'll find! I am slowly piecing together my parallel existence, though nothing will ever compare to Seattle's bookstore and fake meat options.