el perseguidor

i had an excellent day yesterday. at about 3, i met with ilana and abby to eat lunch at a thai restaurant in bellavista (which is quickly becoming my favorite section of santiago). it was delicious. we started off with a bowl of coconut soup (which i had been craving) and shared two entrees of pad thai and curried chicken w/jasmine rice. we topped it off with something akin to mango creme brulee. pretty much the best meal i've had in santiago so far. then we went to another friend, rochelle's, choir recital. they performed some gabriel garcia lorca poetry in acapella and later accompanied by a guitar. it was really beautiful, as it was interspersed w/students reading some of his letters and journal entries as well. then it went from good to awesome as we headed to a jazz club in bellavista (www.elperseguidor.cl). it was a little pricey, but the band was off the chain. you know its a good show when you can't stop smiling the whole time they're playing. there was a drummer, a bassist (stand up and electric) a guitarist, a sax and a trumpet. they played everything from funk to latin to sultry soul and they rocked every song. youtube Cristian Cuturrufo is all i have to say.

i love toast.

so growing up with buttery oven toast, i had always rejected toaster toast's inability to melt butter into delicious little pools of salty oily goodness. maybe my home toaster was set too high or too low, but in my search for comforting breakfast foods in chile's bare gastronomical landscape i have discovered i love toast. grab it hot out of the toaster, juggling it as you quickly spread the "light margarine - with more butter taste!" (the smell of which always reminds me of go-go, my grandmother) across its crispy face, then a splat of homemade orange plum jam. enjoy the crunchy outside, one face of which has been softened and sweetened, and sink into the chewy inside. wash down with your cup of milky green tea w/ginger, which you found at a random chinese import shop near your favorite metro stop. breakfast is back. there are some chilean foods i've found that i like though:

pan de miel (honey bread) - for about 30 cents i can pickup a fist-sized powder sugar dusted flattened ball of bready goodness. after the biscotti moistness of the majority of chilean "cookies" i love being able to sink my teeth into something instead of it breaking off in my mouth. it is lightly spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg, which reminds me fondly of gingerbread.

"digestives" - like animal crackers for grownups, these guys come in four palm sized disks per package and go down perfect with chocolate milk. they have the wholesome texture of graham crackers, but are a little moister and lightly sweet. i still haven't quite figured out how to ask for them in spanish - i usually just get them from the vending machine. 

vegetariano - i got this sandwich at a restaurant one time. sandwiches in chile are not meant to be picked up. if you try to fit them in your mouth, you will fail. they are served w/ a knife and fork and laugh at the idea of portability. this sandwich was about 7 inches tall of quesillo (a soft, fresh white cheese) avocado, green peppers, and tomato on toasted wheat bread. i make a reasonably sized, americanly hand-held version at home.

cao cola - artur's powdered chocolate milk. there is only two milk options in my house - whole and lactose free (which always smells traitorous), so when i blend the never dissolving cao cola in my glass of full fat milk i get a double dose of goodness - bursts of sweetened cocoa powder and the comfort of milk fat. 

frac bi cappuccino cookies  - i try not to buy them anymore, b/c i can and will eat the whole package in one go. from the moment you open the package, you know these thumbsized guys are going to make up for all the nescafe in chile - they smell more like coffee than anything you've encountered so far. and they do. oh yes, with their dark oreo textured outer cookies lovingly protecting the "bi" layer of creme and coffee inner goodness, they soothe your lack-of-real-coffee troubled soul better than any starbucks. 

nepolitana - all the comfort of an empanada (hot cheese, tasty bread pocket) but with flavors! tomato, ham, and some green stuff - it actually mixes flavors in a way i thought chileans were terrified of. will hold you over three more hours till lunch. 

all that to say i'm doing pilates in my room on a nightly basis now :) 

some non-foodstuffs i'm liking about santiago.

artisan markets/street sales. even when it all starts to look the same, i can't tear myself away. my love of bargain shopping + junk+ random finds+pirate nature (attracted to shiny things) makes me cross the street to walk by the hippie street vendor with his hemp jewelry and gypsy scarves or realize i've just spent two hours wandering through santa lucia. again. several of the vendors know my face now. but its awesome - with the crafts people, there's new stuff every week and you always find some booth you didn't know existed before. 

walking. if my bag doesn't weigh a ton, i love to walk where ever i can (in the daylight, mom). you get people-watching on the move, find new corners that you love, bits of architecture, new shops or events. i feel powerful when i'm on the move - i know where i'm going, or at least where i'm wandering too - finding a good gait, the wind in your hair, good shoes. you're rolling. you also get a lungful of pollution, but i think its worth it. 

people watching on public transportation. i love flirting with babies and toddlers. do the long glance and grin - look away - look back grin again b/c they're still staring at you. give the mom a "your kid's adorable" smile if they notice you.  

street art. as i'm sure you've gathered from my photos, i like the patina of graffiti that the corners of the city will take one. some of it's boring and trashy, but there are some clever diamonds in the rough that i love finding. 

knowing my way around. there is definitely a sense of satisfaction in knowing which micro to get on, where to get off, how to pronounce the street. going somewhere new is like solving a puzzle, and then adding that piece to my knowledge as a whole. 

okay. so i'm about to go thai food lunching and vintage shopping with some friends. so try not to be too jealous and i'll write up my negatives list later... :) love you all.

mendoza, argentina

we had a couple of days off last week for the chilean labor day so a few friends and skipped over the border to argentina for the weekend. okay, so the skipping part was a lie, because it definitely took us 14 hours to get there on thursday, but that was because a brazilian fruit truck tipped across the winding two lane over the andes and blocked traffic for 4 hours solid. we built an awesome snowman during this period. then another 2 hours at the border stamping passports and such. i think about a quarter of santiago decided it would be nice to go to argentina for the holiday. but i made it back sunday in 8 hours, which is about right. the drive is truly gorgeous though - each hairpin turn opening up another thousand feet of snowcapped, achingly beautiful mountainside right out your bus window. there is nothing quite like a mountain that makes you think "majestic" and seeing nothing on the horizon but blue sky and dozens of snowy peaks is pretty much breath taking. so being stuck on that road for four hours wasn't quite tortuous. the lack of bathroom on the bus is another story. 

after crashing in our hostel by 11 thursday night, we were serenaded to sleep by the party that went on until about four in the morning in the patio outside our window. we got up bright and early for our bike tour of the local wineries and had some interesting conversations at breakfast with a few hardcore partiers who were still going strong at 7 in the morning. apparently the night life in argentina is such: the discoteques fill up around 2:30, past which it is illegal to enter (in mendoza, at least) and then you party till the club closes at 6 and hang around for a bit until the panaderias (bakeries) open at 7. needless to say, we did not indulge in this insanity during our brief stay. that bike and wine tour was wonderful - we rented bikes for the day and rode through the sunny countryside, with the andes anchoring the horizon. we had tours of family vineyards and sampled their specialties, had a leisurely and delicious meal on table made of wine barrels in the shade of a bodega and ended with a artisan chocolate and liqueur workshop. it was wonderfully laid back and relaxing after the smog and crowds of santiago - and much cheaper too! i really do like chile and santiago - but weekends like this make me realize how much more i want to travel. listening to the argentinean accents after hearing only chileans for two months was a bit like waking from a dream - they spoke at such a reasonable pace and with the exception of a few lisping accent quirks, so clearly. i didn't miss hardly a word the whole trip. the next day we wandered through the city of mendoza, which is about the size of birmingham. it has the charm of an old southern town - tall, established trees line the streets and crinkle the tiled sidewalk, hodgepodge buildings of various decades and even centuries rub shoulders. once more, we had a huge, delicious and totally affordable lunch before ambling through a few of the many parks and a large local artisan fair. after coffee and cake we headed back to the hostel to get our list together for dinner, or rather, breakfast-for-dinner.  we had all been craving american breakfast for a while, so in the hostel's community kitchen we made mounds of french toast with honey and cheese eggs. delicious. i'm so glad to have found cooking friends here. we celebrated cinco de mayo yesterday with a huge spicy feast of chicken enchiladas, fajita salad, fish tacos and several pounds of guacamole. as always, more pictures on flickr. 

maipo

yesterday i went for a hike in the maipo valley - a beautiful valley that ends with a glacier covered mountain peak. the area is very rich in mineral deposits, which gave a rich array of hues to the mountains and rocks that had fallen from them. the valley was strewn with boulders from the receding glacier and numerous rock falls. i went with a group of mostly americans (one girl from england) who where either intercambios or had graduated recently and were teaching english down here at an english institute for adults. getting there was a bit of an adventure in itself. we met at the metro and then found two collectivos (group taxis with a fixed fare) to carry us to our destination "cascadas de animas (waterfall of souls). when we arrived there we were told that our guide would be here in an hour and it would be about $10 per person. and that we couldn't go anywhere without the guide. balking at the obvious extortion, we caught the next bus to san gabriel, where we were told by our collectivo driver that all the gringos go and that it was free. free sounded good. we got off at a random corner that our driver assured us was san gabriel. after asking a few of the amused looking inhabitants, we were directed down a road that would take us to "some paths to climb." one of our members had a guidebook and found our location on the map. we seemed to be near a place called "banos de morales" which had hiking trails, hot springs etc. so off we went, trekking up the dusty mountain road, our eight gringo selves. after about twenty minutes we hit a snack shack with a bathroom and we decided to check our progress. there we learned we were about 20 km from banos de morales. at that point we decided hitchhiking would be our best option. four of us got in the cab of one nice young couple's truck, but they said the other four would have to wait, because riding in the bed of the truck op these unpaved roads would be too dangerous. i was in the cab, and the couple was from santiago, headed to the banos morales for the weekend. about half way there we were passed by another truck - whose bed was filled with our compatriots, blowing and bouncing dustily in the wind. we all got there in one piece, albeit some pieces dustier than others. then we began our hike - which was pretty much straight up until we crested the valley.  the first five minutes separated us into the fast and slow hikers. the fast hikers made it to the lake before we had to turn around to go catch our bus. going back down was a totally different challenge - i ended up running/bouncing down about a third of it. when we had the breath we exchanged stories about our travels  and experiences. dave, a practicing buddhist who grew up in vermont, had been traveling bolivia, peru and argentina for two months before coming to work as an english teacher here in santiago. he told us about the "hostel scene," five day machu picchu hikes and sketchy bolivian street food. danielle told us about moroccan whiskey (sweet spearmint tea - b/c they don't drink alcohol there) and spain (where she has studied for the last year). i managed to rip the seat of my linen pants when attempting to wash my hands in the lake. fortunately my scarf covered the 11 inch rip nicely. the bus back was dusty and crowded and quite entertaining. dave and i switched ipods and is now hooked on architecture in helsinki. our fellow passengers were quite enamored with us. they ordered their grandchildren out of the back seats so we could all sit together, sang us a chilean folk song, gave us  a liter of coca-cola and showed us where to get off for the metro. then they all said goodbye as we disembarked and waved farewell out of the window as they pulled out.

no soy un nugget ("i am not a nugget")

so two of the guinea pigs had babies. and they're pretty much adorable. and totally edible.... i will be sure to let you all know how that meal goes down. on a related note, we had chicken again today, because a cat got into the hen house.... 

i met today with the teacher i'll be teaching english classes with for the rest of the semester. she is young, sweet and eager to teach. i think it will be a really good experience. the school is called st. francis of asisi and it was really funny to see little monks with bald pates cut out of construction paper on the front of all the elementary classroom doors. i'll be helping to teach the lessons to classes of 40 4th graders, and especially helping with pronunciation. kind of intense to be "the example" on how to pronounce a language. 

i got my bip escolar yesterday (yay for 25 cent fares because i'm smart and po). on a whim i got off the bus about halfway to try to find a bookstore that sold pocketsize maps of the city. mission accomplished and now i no longer have to pull out my comically large full sized map when i need to check a street, which should come with a giant sign on the back that says "i'm lost! please take advantage of me!" i also walked the rest of the way (about a mile and a half, i think) to my destination, which was very pleasant. there is a sense of accomplishment that comes from recognizing your way around a city that was previously a jumble of similar looking streets and indecipherable systems. as i noted my progress in my now discreet pocket map, i thought about other cities i'd like to conquer. and how to travel to them since i'm going to be pretty broke for the next few years. any suggestions would be welcome : )

i'm loving my new family. the only problem is i only know about half of their names, because the 93 yr old aunt calls everyone "hijita" (diminuative of daughter) and the mom and the maid refer to the aunt as "la tia" or "abuelita" ("the aunt" "grandmother") and the mom refers to the maid as "senora." the husband calls the wife "corazon" or "amorcita" (my "heart" or "little love") so i know neither the aunt or the maid's name, and i wrote down the mom's name somewhere... the husband's name is william (billy for short) and he works up north during the week as an agronomist, so i only see him on the weekends (which is why i know his name, he is talked about in the 3rd person). and artur is the 3 yr old. he gets reprimanded enough that i picked his up too. he is pretty adorable, but have 8 younger siblings makes me less than susceptible to the charms of a 3 yr old. he knows this. he can sense my rebellion to the authority of his winsome smile alternated with menacing frown. i will NOT give you my cookies. NO. MINE. okay. the only reason you got the cookies was because your mom came in, and i cannot politely override her unspoken assumption that i will give you my cookies because you are 3 and you don't know any better than just to take them. but i am soooo on to you. i saw that gleam of victory in your eye. it's on. i am going to hide my cookies way better next time.

the maid is great - she's a wonderful cook - i almost never have to put salt on anything and i always clean my plate. its all very fresh and well-seasoned (whereas i think the only spice chileans are really familiar with is salt). she also is a marathon talker. i think she utilizes circular breathing during our "conversations" because i can get in a word about every 10 minutes. which is fine, because sometimes i totally lose the thread of comprehension and the entires plot-line takes a dive for about thirty seconds until i pick up some context again - oh so we went from the time you got robbed at knifepoint which is where that scar came from to the new chinese herbal remedy for something that you heard about on the discovery channel - i have no idea how that happened, but you are smiling, so i'll smile too...  she's super sweet though - always making sure i have enough to eat - she doesn't want me to lose my "watita" (little belly) on her watch. i'm going running again tomorrow morning...

new pad.

roosters do not say "cock-a-doodle-doo" in chile. i don't know who invented that well enunciated phrase to come out of the rooster's beak for children's books, but i doubt he or she was ever awakened by one. at four in the morning the sound a rooster makes is that it is being stepped on. by something heavy. heavy enough to expel out all air in a harsh an raucous cacophony that sounds nothing, i repeat, nothing like "cock-a-doodle-doo." i think i'm going to put my free ear plugs from delta airlines to work, as this will be a daily occurrence for me now. the tradeoff being fresh eggs every morning. this i can live with :) they live in the backyard, their pens almost completely shrouded in greenery, as well as those of their neighbors, the guinea pigs (to whom i apparently shouldn't get too attached). my new house is pretty much amazing. inside and out it looks almost like it was lifted directly out of some decorating magazine from the seventies. pictures will be posted soon. even the appliances in the kitchen are from that time period. the peruvian couple i am living with is super sweet - they have really welcomed me in as part of the family, including letting them know when i'll be home, and calling if i'll be late, so they won't worry. they only have one child, a three year old boy, who is rather jealous of the attention i'm getting, but i think we'll get along fine. the house belongs to the father's 93 year old aunt (hence the decor) and they have a maid that keeps everything on its doily. 

for those of you who don't know - chile is a bit at odds with all of it's neighbors, who are jealous/have had many physical and or political disputes regarding territorial lines and rights. therefore living with a peruvian family will be a bit of a sticking point for some things. the chilean attitude towards peruvians is much like many american's attitudes towards mexicans - that they are "small, dark and ugly" as one student told me the other day. obviously this is a stereotype, and certainly not true in the case of the family i am staying with. i can already feel a bit of the tension though - when i was telling him what classes i was taking, when i got to "chilean culture" the father said "well you won't learn too much there" with a wry grin. later when i was talking to him about biology, he asked me why i had come to chile to study and that peru was actually much more ecologically diverse and better for field study "it is poorer though" he added. 

next level of immersion

i'm moving today. i'll be living with a peruvian family in las condes (a very nice area) - apparently they wanted me from the beginning, but they had family guests up to this point. so off i go - i still know almost nothing about them, except they don't speak any english. and out comes my crutch. i've basically been speaking english at mireya's, so i'm going to have to take a deep breath and really kick into espanol gear in my brain.  i think the trickiest part will actually be reorienting myself to getting places, as i'm going to have to learn whole new areas of the micro (bus) system, which brings out whole new levels of self-doubt that i never knew i had. i took a couple new buses to get to a friend's house yesterday and my thought process is this: check my note, yes, this is for sure the bus i am looking for. check it again. yes. oh! that's the bus. isn't it?! yes. for sure, yes, get on! (sit down) did i get on the right bus? (look for confirmation somewhere inside) begin double checking landmarks as i go. okay. i'm on the right bus for sure. now where do i get off? ok. i know where that is. try to gauge how close i am. realize i have no idea. glue face to window and check sign name at every street. silently curse the old man who has fallen asleep at the window, blocking the majority of my view. for 30 minutes. feel doubt as to whether i've missed the stop and am now looping back around the entire route. there's the stop! i knew it. now what bus am i looking for....   

the only thing that makes me smile when i think about transantiago at the moment is that soon (fingers crossed) i will be getting a student discount on my bip card, which is like 75% off, which will be amazing, since my biggest expense right now is definitely transportation. why did i not get this before, you might be asking... well, because i was a bit illegal. yes - i had my visa and everything, but what no one told me was that i had to register myself with the international police and then get fingerprinted and get an official chilean id, called a cedula. now that i have completed the kafka-esque task of threading my way through the chilean bureaucracy (about 7 hours of line-waiting and attempting to explain my ignorance in spanish) i will soon be rewarded with my cedula, with which i can apply for a "bip escolar." yay.