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.