One Last Visit

In early June we made it down to our favorite cabins for one last visit. Thanks to the Kreuzers, we had a good excuse for another Fulbright reunion, all three of them were celebrating their birthdays this month. It was so good to see them again, especially since they hadn't been able to make it to some of the last few get-togethers. Here, Nathan is looking at that big cake with all those candles, probably thinking, "I can't believe this, I have to blow out all these candles when I'm only turning two years old! Fortunately he had some help from his mom and dad, which was only fair, especially since he and his dad share the same birthday.


It had begun to snow Saturday morning, so it sure looked different around the cabins than it had when we were there last summer, in February, or even just three weeks ago on our previous visit. The girls and I only had gym shoes with, so we wouldn't be doing any hiking this time. That was fine with us, it felt good just to hang out in the cabins near the wood-burning stove, relaxing and spending time with good friends, especially knowing this would be the last time we'd all be together for a long time. Probably until July 2008, when we all get together in Portland, Oregon for our first annual Chile Fulbright Reunion (we Americans are such planners!) As soon as they mentioned Blues Fest and Beer Fest, I was booking my air travel. Seriously, though, this is one incredible group of people I sure don't want to lose touch with.

We had a good game of Scrabble going, Melinda and I were great partners, handily beating Doug and Bill and Catherine and Dan. We knew there was going to be trouble when Bill innocently asked, "Does it have to be a word?" and Dan quickly quipped, "Yeah, we're kind of sticklers on that!" Doug rolled his eyes and looked around the cabin for a new partner, "Hey Nathan, wanna come and help Daddy?"


No matter how you spell it, a weekend at Cabañas Los Andes with Fulbrighter friends always comes up F-U-N!





Click here to see more fun photos:
http://picasaweb.google.com/bdoody61/LastVisitToTheCabins

A special thanks to Dean and his wife for always being such wonderful hosts on our visits to their cabins. You can check them out at their website: http://www.cabanaslosandes.com/

Chile, All Ways Surprising

I woke up one Saturday morning recently and followed the wonderful smell of panqueques into the kitchen where Bill was almost done making breakfast. He told me he had been awakened by a strange dream with horses neighing all around him. I walked to the living room, opened the curtains and went out on the balcony to see what kind of day was in store for us. Much to my surprise, the park right below us was filled with horses. Big, beautiful horses with shiny, well-groomed coats. I woke the girls, and they came running to the balcony to see the amazing sight. They quickly ate, dressed, and then ran down to the park to see what was going on.

It turned out there was a horse-jumping competition going on in our park, Parque Inés de Suárez, all weekend long. What a fun day we had, sitting in the beautiful sunshine of a clear, fall day, watching these gorgeous animals jumping so high and graceful.

Like waking up and finding there are beautiful horses flying through the air right outside your window, Chile is full of surprises.

This should come as no surprise, actually. After all, the year-old advertising campaign aimed at promoting tourism, exports, and investments in Chile and in giving the country a new image is called: Chile, All Ways Surprising. Giant banners proclaiming this slogan greet travelers at the airport. Chileans are, apparently, very proud of their ability to surprise the unsuspecting tourist, business person, and investor. I'm not so sure I would want to be surprised in all those situations, all the time (as the word play in the slogan seems to be hinting at). For example, as a tourist, I like to know that I can count on bus and train schedules. As an investor, I would want to know that this democracy is a stable one, with no surprises lurking around the corner.

Still, the slogan is right on the mark. Chile is very surprising, and this has been a year full of surprises for me and my family, practically each day holds a new one. Certainly, there are times when surprises are very nice: horses in your park, a going-away party thrown by colleagues at the school where I was working, having one of my hard-working students win a scholarship to visit the United States. Also, the madness of Chile's geography, the beautiful landscapes, and the delicious wines, fruits and vegetables never cease to amaze and surprise me.

There are also the quirky surprises that are a lot of fun. I recall a day in Santiago when, riding the micro (Chilean for bus), a clown got on (think big, red nose, a painted-on smile and very large shoes) and proceeded to entertain the passengers. They especially loved it when he stuck a toilet plunger onto the roof of the micro and hung on to the handle for dear life as the bus careened around the city streets.

Some of the most peculiar surprises are those that result from miscommunication in the foreign language. For instance, once I was in the teacher's lounge at the school and there was a man there trying to sell insurance to the teachers. After we had established that I was in the country temporarily and didn't need insurance, he asked me -"Cuándo dan los SIMCE?" At the time, I didn't know that the SIMCE was the name of the national test given to Chilean students, and, by pure coincidence, my students in the class I had just come from had been talking about the Simpsons, the tv cartoon they love so much. Well, I couldn't imagine why he would be asking me about the Simpsons, but since it appeared he was, I told him it was on every night at 7:30, something I had only minutes before learned from my students. In my defense, the verb dar means both to give (as in to give a test) and to show (as in to show a television program). Later I chuckled when I realized my error; at least I hadn't inadvertently bought myself some comprehensive, though unnecessary, health insurance.

Misunderstandings like this can result in a happy surprise, the "surprised chuckle", or a very unpleasant surprise. I recall the reservation I had made for a group of us to stay in a house owned by a colleague's mother when we were traveling in the south, in Pucón. When I heard the woman on the phone quote me the equivalent of $450 US dollars per night, I thought that was a bit pricey, but I had heard that Pucón was one of the more expensive areas of Chile, and I had also heard that this was a very nice house, so I told her we'd take it. I can still remember the faces of John and Joe, particularly, after we arrived and we were being shown around the house. They had this look of intense disgust, like they wanted to strangle someone. It's not that the house was bad, it was actually rather charming, just not $450-a-night worth of charm. The woman could sense that something was wrong, so I explained to her that we thought $450 a night was too much. She stared at me in disbelief for a moment before she could spit out that the price she had quoted me was $45 a night, not $450. I'm not sure if this misunderstanding was the result of language or of the exchange rate calculation (math is not my strong point). Also, it's difficult to categorize this type of surprise: happy on the one hand (we didn't have to pay as much as we thought), but definitely on the other hand, very unpleasant (especially for this humiliated Spanish teacher). Those types of misunderstandings used to happen a lot more when I first got here, now I understand Chilean Spanish much better and, of course, know a lot more about their culture. I've also gotten much better at calculating the dollar equivalent of prices in Chilean pesos (basically, just multiply by two and then take off the last three zeroes).

That brings me to one last variety of surprises: the rather frequent, irritating type that, with a little bit of planning and organization, could be avoided and thereby give the traveler in Chile a much better impression of the country. Now, I realize that back home we are a little crazy for structure and information. For example, toward the end of each school year my school prints up a new calendar for the next three years. Rarely, if ever, have I needed to know what days off I'll have that far in advance, but I sure do appreciate and rely on the current year's calendar. Well, here in Chile I have yet to see any school calendar. In fact, at my school we would be told about the date of an obligatory Saturday meeting just the week before. Surprise! Forget about planning anything for the weekend. And it's not just at the schools, it's on the national level. There was a national holiday, set for June 4th. I'm not sure exactly when they changed their minds, but my colleagues and I heard that we would not actually be having that day off just recently, a couple of weeks before the supposed holiday. Apparently, someone decided to create a new holiday to celebrate and honor the Virgin of Carmen, on July 16th, and discontinue the celebration of Corpus Christi. The only problem being that it was not communicated to Chilean workers in a timely fashion.

The way the new transportation system, Transantiago, has turned out for the majority of Santiago commuters is another example of a very irritating surprise, but that is a topic for another blog post. For now let it suffice to say, if you are one of those people who don't appreciate surprises, you'd better not come to Chile. Don't say you weren't warned, it's posted all over the airport.

May Birthdays

A bunch of May birthdays and a long weekend at the end of the month provided us with a good excuse to get together with the other Fulbright teachers and families. Monday, May 21st, the Chileans would be celebrating their national naval heroe, Arturo Prat, with a day off from work and school. So the Friday before, Bill drove the "We're not the jet set" white mini bus with the Heiners and Terry, who had flown in from Antofagasta, to our favorite cabins. After I finished up with work and the girls were home from school, my friend Rossana and her daughter, Josefina, came and picked us up and we, too, headed south towards Chillán. We got to Cabañas Los Andes very late that night, but the cabin was toasty warm with a roaring fire, and Melinda had some spaghetti on the stove all ready for us. We had been to these cabins before in the summer, in February, and it felt great to be back again.

We woke up on Saturday to a beautiful, sunny day and decided a hike up to Shangri-La was in order. We had visited this old, abandoned hotel at the end of a trail marked by a wall of black volcanic rock on horseback in the summer. Now it was even more beautiful in its crisp, fall colors. Trees stood draped in sage-green moss and the cloudless sky was an inviting blue. High up on a ledge, it felt like we were on the top of the world. It was a nice hike, about three hours round-trip, and we worked up a pretty good appetite by the time we got back.


There were fifteen of us in all, occupying three cabins. We did some furniture rearranging, carrying the dining room tables and chairs from two of the cabins into the third one, creating one long table for our fabulous feasts. Saturday night we enjoyed soup, chili and Dan's famous longaniza (no Fulbright party is complete without them), and then sat around the cabin singing along to Dan's tunes on the guitar. It was so nice to all be together again, the last time had been in January at English Summertown. We were missing Annie, though, who was out on Juan Fernández island, and Marisol, Doug and Nathan, who had already made plans to visit the north of Chile this particular weekend. Besides Rossana and Josefina, we had two other newcomers to the group: Catherine's brother Gary and his wife, Elizabeth. Elizabeth is a pastry chef at a very exclusive Polynesian resort on the island of Hawaii, and she made a delicious chocolate macademia nut pie for our dessert on Sunday night that I am still dreaming about!


On Sunday, May 20th, we celebrated Dan and Roxy, whose birthday was that day. We sang a memorable song we had written for Dan which featured some of the highlights of his year here in Chile, and Roxy had a fun scavenger hunt which led to some candy and a pair of earrings. We also had three other birthdays to celebrate: Melinda and Sarah had each had a birthday earlier in the month, and Elizabeth's was coming up the next week. We sang "Happy Birthday" in English and then in Spanish, and then Elizabeth taught us a drum chant where we sang in celebration of each of the five who were celebrating their birthdays.


In addition to a big birthday bash, we were also celebrating Thanksgiving. Perhaps you are wondering why we would be celebrating Thanksgiving in May? Remember that here, in the southern hemisphere, it is now fall, and when we were celebrating Thanksgiving in November, it was a gorgeous spring day, much warmer than what we are used to. In fact, I remember the Thanksgiving of the year before we came to Chile. Sarah and I were in the Thanksgiving Day parade in Chicago with the Barefoot Hawaiians, on a sub-zero day. When I saw those fire dancers race out at the last minute, just as we were up next in the parade, clad in nothing but a little grass skirt, I froze in my step and nearly died of frostbite just looking at them. Well, we celebrated a typical fall Thanksgiving this time, not too hot and not too cold, but plenty to be thankful for.


On Monday we relaxed at one of the hot springs up the road from the cabin. Now, that's the way to end a wonderful, long weekend!

For more photos from our weekend celebration, click here: http://picasaweb.google.com/bdoody61/MayBirthdays

The May birthday celebrations continued well into June, when we finally got around to hosting birthday parties for the girls with their new Chilean friends. Sarah had a fun party with her three best friends here: Cami, Cata and Javiera. The girls all made pizzas and then played games and ran around outside.

A couple of weeks later, Roxy had her party with all the girls from her class. All seven of them came over to the apartment and they watched a Steve Martin movie while they ate pizza from the nearby Pizza Hut. One thing we are so looking forward to upon our return is some delicious Chicago-style stuffed pizza.

An Outing with the Rudolf Steiner School

Homeschooling for the first three months that the girls got here certainly had its advantages and disadvantages. But we're all very happy they're in school now, conversing with their new friends completely in Spanish. The school year here in Chile started at the beginning of March, and we found a school that is perfect for us. It's a Waldorf school, and though the girls did not attend a Waldorf school back home, I have always been intrigued by their philosophy of learning and teaching. "When children relate what they learn to their own experience, they are interested and alive, and what they learn becomes their own." http://www.awsna.org/education-intro.html

I like the fact that they use a more developmentally-based approach to presenting material, no academics in kindergarten, and certainly not in preschool like you see in some of those creme de la creme kind of places in the states. At a Waldorf school, kids can be kids without their creativity, imagination and individualism being squelched. Roxy and Sarah were particularly happy to learn they wouldn't have to wear uniforms here as kids do in nearly all the schools in Chile. In fact, there's one student who normally comes to their school wearing a big top hat. There's a strong focus on the arts; music, dance, drawing, painting and sculpture is a big part of the curriculum. In their trabajos manuales classes, Roxy has been making games and toy cars out of wood. Her mini Cooper replica is coming along very nicely. Sarah is rightfully proud of the cross-stitch work that she, herself, designed and has been working very hard on. On a larger scale, Sarah's class has been busy making a two-story playhouse. It wasn't so much Sarah's thing, putting on tall, rubber boots and sloshing around in the mud and adding straw to make the bricks that form one wall of the playhouse. Nonetheless, she does think the adventure of building a house is pretty cool. This type of hands-on work and physical movement is, I think, especially well-suited for students immersed in learning a foreign language. Both girls wish they had started at the school earlier, when they first got here. Of course, they weren't saying that at the time. Live and learn.

Recently, Bill and I had an opportunity to accompany the students, teachers, and some of the parents on a memorable school outing. On a gorgeous fall day, eight buses took us all up into the mountains not far from Santiago. When the buses could go no further, we got out and hiked about an hour up to a big plateau where a large area had been cleared of (most of) the rocks and cow pies, making a huge playing field for the afternoon games. First the students sat in groups with their class and had a morning snack. That is another thing I like about Waldorf: their attempt to encourage healthy eating habits in the children, attempts that go a little further than many public schools with their vending machines full of junk. Bill brought some of his world-renowned hummus which, paired with pita bread or celery and carrot sticks, makes for a snack that is exquisito.

When everyone had had their fill, a whistle called all the children into a huge circle, where they arranged themselves by class. The first graders then presented the loaves of fall bread that they had baked, with help from the freshman class, to all of the other teachers so that it could be shared with their students later in the afternoon. It was a beautiful symbolic gesture of community: sharing a delicious, hearty bread baked in a spirit of cooperation with older students helping younger students. Then the children all joined hands and united their voices in beautiful song. All so very Waldorf.
http://picasaweb.google.com/bdoody61/Singing

I was not emotionally prepared for the afternoon's games, and it's lucky I wasn't invited to join in, because I most certainly am not physically prepared either. The students, from the itsy-bitsy fifth-graders to big and burly seniors in high school, together played a game called bulle. Bulle, apparently, is German for bull, and this game of charging bulls makes Quidditch seem tame! One person is chosen to be the bulle at the beginning of the game. He looked to be one of the biggest and strongest kids in the group. All the other kids are at one end of the field, and the bulle is in the middle, facing them as he calls out, "Ein, schwei, drei, bulle!" (The students are also learning German at the school). At this point all the kids race across the field, trying not to get caught by the bulle. But it's not a simple matter of just getting tagged by him. He must lift you completely off the ground, and then you become a bulle, too. In this manner the number of bulles grows until there are about half bulles and half kids trying not to get caught. That's when things really get crazy. With so many kids of all different sizes running in all directions, I held my breath each time, certain that someone was going to get hurt. Then the game continues until the last person has been captured. Fortunately, no one did get hurt and, in fact, they all had a great time. Click here to see the craziness: http://picasaweb.google.com/bdoody61/RoxyRunning.

Here are more photos of the school and our excursion:
http://picasaweb.google.com/bdoody61/WaldorfSchool

A Weekend in Mendoza

When I first discovered we would be going to live in Chile for the year I was so excited to finally be able to travel to South America. Then I made a list of all the other countries I wanted to visit while I was down there: Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina, and of course, Perú (I simply couldn't leave the continent without having first seen Machu Picchu). Well, the reality was quite different. First of all, Chile is deceivingly large. It may be a skinny little country, but it sure is long- nearly 3,000 miles long. Living here this year has made me want to learn all I can about Chile and see as much of it as possible. Secondly, the long school year here has made it difficult to visit as much of this country as I would like, much less see any others. My summer was a very short one. Chilean students attend school almost 50 days more per year than their North American counterparts. However, because of all the "down time", even in the best of schools, I can't say that those extra 50 days mean any more learning for these students. The third limitation on our traveling was, of course, financial. Certain things, like groceries and housing here are quite a bit less expensive than in the states. But I wouldn't say that traveling through Chile is any incredible bargain, especially for a family of four living on half of their usual salary. Anyway, we were very pleased when a long weekend finally presented us with an opportunity to drive across the Andes and pay a visit to Argentina.

Early, well, okay not so early, on Saturday morning we set off in our "We're not the jet set" huge white mini bus with our Chilean friend, Carolina. First stop, San Bernardo to pick up Melinda, John and Amelie. Next stop, breakfast at a great little place along the highway,

(I can't remember the name of it, but just look for this huge statue), for some of the best pan amasado I've had in Chile. That, with a hard-boiled egg and a cup of tea was the perfect road-trip breakfast. Next stop, Portillo, the Chilean ski resort that you saw at the top of this blog post. It was beautiful in its solitary majesty this morning. But in a couple more months when the mountains are all blanketed in snow and the lake is frozen over, it will be swarming with skiiers, skaters, and snowboarders.

Last stop before Argentina, the border, where we sat for five whole hours, inching our way toward the customs officials. Apparently, that's what happens when you travel from Santiago to Mendoza on a long weekend. Happy to finally be in Argentina, we went buzzing right past Aconcagua, the hemisphere's highest mountain, not even knowing what we were missing. Not to worry though, we caught up with it two days later on the way back. Aconcagua is an indigenous Quechua word which means "Stone Guardian". At an altitude of almost 7,000 meters, the highest mountain outside of the Himalayas, it is quite an impressive guardian of the landscape. One of the huge glaciers we could see was the "Glaciar superior" which is 300 meters thick. I would have liked to hike a little nearer to it, but we definitely weren't dressed for the lower temperatures up there. Also, we were all experiencing a strange symtom of the high altitudes we were at: swollen teeth. I had never heard of this before, but I assure you it is most uncomfortable.

Mendoza is a beautiful city, and it felt good to be out of Santiago again and breathe in some fresh air. We wandered the tree-lined streets, ate at an outdoor cafe and walked around Cerro La Gloria. Sunday was Bill and my 17th anniversary, and we celebrated that evening, first with a fierce game of Scattergories in the cabin. Then John, Melinda, and Carolina stayed behind with the kids while Bill and I went to a tango bar. Even though we certainly don't tango (remember, Bill and I are challenged with the Hokey Pokey), it was so awesome just to watch the couples in this sensuous dance. I remember a Chilean woman was once comparing the lovely Argentinian tango to her country's cueca ("which is simply a cock chasing a hen around"). At times everyone was out on the dance floor and then the dancers would take a break and we'd watch while a professional pair of dancers would mesmerize us all. Bill and I sat at a table with a couple from Viña del Mar and a delightful woman from Mendoza, Vivi, who was there celebrating her birthday with a friend. What a great anniversary celebration we had!

*****

On Monday, we went and visited a nearby vineyard, Chandón, which makes espumante. Espumante is like champagne, but since it's not made from grapes grown in that region of France, they can't use the name. Still, I would think they could have come up with something sexier than espumante. Anyway, it tasted very good, and prices for everything are so much better in Argentina than in Chile, so I bought several bottles to bring to our big Fulbright reunion at Los Andes cabins toward the end of May.

We were up and out of the cabin extra early on Tuesday morning, hoping to beat the crowd at the border. Bill drove the first hour in darkness, and the sun was just beginning to rise as we got into the mountains, and what a glorious sunrise that was.

Click here for more photos from our weekend in Mendoza:
http://picasaweb.google.com/bdoody61/Mendoza

How's Bill holding up?

Some of you have been asking how Bill has been doing this year in Chile. Sometimes the question seems filled with apprehension (the poor guy, so far from home, not speaking the language, is he doing allright?) Well, rest assured, Bill is doing just great! It's been a party ever since the day that he and the girls arrived on September 18th, the Chilean independence day celebrations, las Fiestas Patrias. This is celebrated a lot like the fourth of July except that it lasts for several days. Then, let's see, backtracking through the Andes: a couple of weeks later we went skiing on one of the last days of the ski season. Next we went mountain biking in the Elqui Valley. We had also been on several horseback rides through beautiful country in the south. There were quite a few bird-watching expeditions, including one to La Campana National Park, just outside of Santiago, where Bill saw a giant Andean hummingbird which came buzzing right up to him. And, of course, there's all the fun stuff we did this past summer that I've already written about in this blog.

He's been to see two really good concerts, one of which was Roger Waters in the National Stadium. We had both wanted to go, but the tickets were a little expensive and it was on a week night. I, of course, had to get up early the next morning to go teach. Bill has the luxury of going back to bed if he likes after getting the girls and I off to school. Anyway, we didn't get tickets, but the night of the concert Bill took a different route on his usual evening jog and ran over by the stadium, thinking he'd hear some of the concert while running around the building. Well, as luck would have it there was a guy out there selling tickets for a really great price, so Bill got to see the show after all. Back at home, not far from the stadium, I thought I could hear him singing, "Wish Sue Were Here"! Then, last week, he went to see Jethro Tull in a small, intimate venue with our friend John.

He's been working pretty hard on his Spanish. Though the girls and I laugh and roll our eyes at his accent, he's actually quite good at carrying on conversations with people. For a while in November and December he was teaching private English classes to some Fulbright doctoral candidates hoping to be studying in the U.S. next year. He has become good friends with one of them, Giancarlo, and they still meet and converse, sometimes in English and sometimes in Spanish.

Bill can often be found in the kitchen, doing one of his favorite activities: cooking amazing meals, mostly vegetarian, for his family and any of my colleagues I happen to bring home with me. He always makes so much, I don't even call ahead to tell him, we just show up at the door. Everyone at work marvels about what a great chef Bill is. Here you can see him at work in the kitchen: http://picasaweb.google.com/bdoody61/KitchenSongs/photo#5068315271536131058

Sometimes Bill will meet a friend for lunch, and then the girls and I have to fend for ourselves. The girls are actually very good cooks, unlike their mother, but by the time we all get home from school at three o'clock, we're hungry and want to eat right away. In Chile, the main meal of the day is lunch, and it's usually eaten sometime between one and three o'oclock. Once, Bill had the audacity to go and leave us for five whole days. While we were surviving, barely, on week-old leftovers from the fridge, Bill was enjoying an amazing trip to the southern tip of the continent. I'm going to let him tell you about it:

The first thing I noticed when I arrived in Punta Arenas was the wind. It seems to be almost visible as it forces all to bow to its mighty presence. The mountainous landscape is also very impressive. This looks to me like the area where the soft smooth Coastal range and the hard stark Andes come together, mingle for a time and then queue up in separate lines to make their journey north.

My traveling partner, John, and I made our way by bus to base camp in Puerto Natales. We were met by our hotel owner, Miguel, an accomodating man of Croation descent who drove us to the Southwinds Hotel and got us set up with our room. Beset with hunger, we made our way to the Pizza restaurant called Mesquite Grande. John had been down with his family earlier in the summer and had said this was the best pizza in Chile, and I do say I have to agree. They serve an awesome selection of brick-oven pizzas similar to the California Pizza Kitchen back home. This place quickly became my favorite dining place for the trip. After filling our gullets we made plans for the next day.

The next day the rain let up and we were greeted by the bright rising sun. Even in the crisp morning air you can feel the effects of the hole in the ozone layer as the powerful rays of light beat down on you. And those winds.... Well lets just say they turned it up another notch from the day before. This morning we were headed on a tour to Argentina and the famous Perito Moreno Glacier.

We arrived at the border of Argentina and were greeted by a runaway Chilean sheep and winds that nearly blew us over. We had registered for the trip as Chileans, so they would not accept my Estados Unidos passport at the border, and I was kind of bummed that the guard wouldn't stamp my passport. But they got a good laugh out of the fact that this Chilean could not speak Spanish too well. I was just glad I didn't get locked up with that illegal alien sheep.


We also had a brief stopover and a break from the winds in El Calafate, Agrentina's fastest-growing city. It is situated in a valley next to Laguna Nimez ( the largest lake in Argentina). Unfortunately we didn't have time to explore this peaceful place but I would love to come back.

Next it was off to Parque los Glaciers and the breathtaking Perito Moreno Glacier. Upon arriving at this beautiful park I was again reminded why I so dislike bus tours. Everywhere we looked there seemed to be another photo op. There were condors flying above, and rainbows appearing out of nowhere, but on a bus there is always a schedule to keep. Fortunately for us, though, we were going to be stopping at the highlight of the park: the majestic Perito Moreno Glacier.



This giant river of ice is one of the few glaciers in the world that is still expanding. It loses two meters a day but gains six. It also boasts a five-km wide face . We boarded our boat to view the glacier to close up and were treated to three nice ice drops. The last one created a mini tsunami right in front of us. Our skipper quickly maneuvered the boat around to take the ten-foot wave head on. I'm glad I got the big splash on camera. For more pictures of the Glacier check out these pics: http://picasaweb.google.com/bdoody61/Glaciers

The next morning I bid my traveling partner good-bye. John had to get back to work the next day. After leaving the bus station I noticed I had a little problem. There I was, all alone, with no plans for the day. I started thinking what a waste of time this is, to be in this amazing part of the world with nothing to do. I've got to do something. I kept thinking I should rent a car and drive into the mountains. The more I thought, the more nervous and anxious I became. Then, all of a sudden, I realized what the problem was. I was thinking again. So, following in the footsteps of another great American (Forrest Gump), I picked up my backpack and started walking. The winds were gone on this serene morning so I walked to the bay, did some journaling and had a great quiet time. I continued walking around most of this beautiful city and had one of the most peaceful days of my trip. Our friends John and Melinda have both commented on how they would have loved to do a Fulbright in Puerto Natales and I fully agree. Here are a few pics of the town. http://picasaweb.google.com/bdoody61/PuertoNatales

Next came decison time. Should I continue on with my peace and solitude or accept the lunch offer of my gracious hotel owner Miguel. He knew I was alone and wanted company so he asked me to lunch with him and Miguel Jr. I was feeling a little apprehensive with my interpreter John gone and knowing that neither Sr. nor Jr. spoke a bit of English. I sat on the decision and soon the thought came to me that I should get out of myself, so it was off to lunch.

Thank God that sometimes I actually do listen to that inner voice because we had an awesome lunch. And it wasn't just the great meal of salmon a la pobre (salmon topped with grilled onions and two sunnyside up huevos). We actually had a wonderful conversation. I was even able to get across some obscure stories; like how the gangsters in Chicago always used to sit with their backs to the wall so as not to be easy targets for their enemies. They just loved that story.


The next morning I met up with my guide, Marcos, whom I immediately dubbed the mayor of Puerto Natales because of his popularity with all the locals. We rented a car and headed for the park, Torres del Paine.

Well, what can you say except that it is everything that has been written about it and more. That "more" is the description that words are too small to wrap themselves around. Along with the breathtaking views, precious flora and fauna, and crystal clear waters we drank from, there was a deep sense of spiritual wonder.

One day is not nearly enough to breathe in this amazing experience. But I highly doubt that one week, one month or one lifetime is enough either. http://picasaweb.google.com/bdoody61/ToresDelPaine

"You will often meet with characters in nature so extravagant that a discreet poet would not venture to set them upon a stage."
-Lord Chesterfield

Amelie's First Birthday!

Hard to believe that little Amelie is now a one year-old. I still remember seeing her for the first time, wrapped snuggly in her mother's sling as we stood in line at the airport in Atlanta waiting to board the plane headed for Chile. That was nine months ago. We didn't know each other then; we didn't know we were headed for the same place, on the Fulbright Teacher Exchange Program. I remember looking nostalgically at that mother and baby, thinking of myself thirteen years ago. Who would have guessed that soon our families would become very good friends. In fact, now, my daughters feel like Amelie's big sisters and just can't see enough of her. Amelie is an adorable and incredibly fun baby to be around, it's true. In fact, I have on several occasions offered a two-for-one trade to John and Melinda: one beautiful baby girl in exchange for two sometimes sweet, sometimes sassy pre-teen girls.

So we agreed to have Amelie's first birthday party here at our apartment complex on Saturday night because we have this nice sala de eventos. Next to this big party room is the large grill and picnic table area where we have had parties before. We figured if it were still nice out, we could sit outside and enjoy the crisp, fall air and if it got too cold, we could go inside to the party room. Everything was all set: Melinda, party-planner extraordinaire, already had made and sent the invitations to thirty-some guests, the animal-themed decorations were made, the menu was set and started, cakes baked and decorated, etc. Several of the Fulbright teachers were coming in to Santiago from all around Chile for the big event. A Spanish-teacher friend of Melinda's had even made the trip all the way from Boston. Everything was ready to go, but then the plans began to unravel. . .

Walking home from a visit to our park on Friday evening, the night before the party, the conserje stopped us as we entered the gate. He told us we could not get the key to use the party room the next day without paying $166 to clear an old debt from the previous owner of the apartment. At this time we were informed that we would also need to pay a $100 deposit to use that room. When we reserved the room about six weeks before, we were not told any of this. All we were told was that it would cost $20 for the use of the sala de eventos. So, basically, we were now being told that to use the room we would need to cough up almost $300 on the spot. Up until this point we had enjoyed a very good relationship with most, if not all, of the conserjes from this complex. It seemed rather unjust to extort this money from us in this manner.

The strange story of our apartment is a long one, but here is the shortened version. I rented this apartment from a woman named Carmen, who gave me a six-month contract because she did not know what would be happening with the apartment after that. She knew she would be losing the apartment in a remate (I didn't know what that was at the time, but have since found out is an auction as a result of foreclosure) but she didn't know exactly when that would happen. In December three people appeared at my door: a man, his wife, and their lawyer. The man came with copies of legal papers, claiming that he was now the owner of the apartment and that I should not pay Carmen any more money. He left, having assured me I could continue to live in the apartment tranquilamente, but he did not have a contract for me to look over, nor did we discuss the new rent amount. I had rented a furnished apartment, but the furnishings were Carmen's, not his. When rent came due again in January I contacted Carmen about the situation and she insisted the apartment was still hers at that point. I called the "new owner" back and when I told him this he screamed so loudly into the phone that I had to hang up before serious ear injury resulted. I told them both I would pay when they decided who was the actual owner.

I finally resolved the mystery by going to a government office where they have updated copies of all property titles. It turned out Carmen had still been the owner until mid-January, so with the security deposit we had paid up front, she was actually overpaid by about two weeks. The new owner, shown to be some company, did not actually take possesion of the apartment until February 5th. I have no idea who those three people who came to the apartment really were, but we have heard no word from any new landlord since. Hence, we have had no one asking for rent money now for several months (and also no one to call to have a new water heater put in. The one we have is leaking in the kitchen and a warm shower has become an unpredictable event).

It turned out there were outstanding debts on the utilities and on the gastos comunes (like condo association fees) when we moved in to this apartment, and it was the gastos comunes that they were trying to get us to pay in order to use the party room, even though that was a bill incurred before we ever moved in. After talking to the conserje I went upstairs to call Melinda and tell her the bad news. She didn't mind, in fact she said that was just as well, we really didn't need the big party room because most of the family (John's Chilean exchange partner's family) had just called her to say they weren't going to be able to make it to the party. So we decided to proceed with the party the next day in our rather small apartment.

Our Fulbright friends starting arriving, and Amelie was in a great mood, thoroughly enjoying her big day. I remember the doorbell kept ringing, announcing that some guests had arrived downstairs, and we would buzz them up. The apartment was getting more and more crowded until it was about twenty-five people over capacity. Everyone who had been invited had arrived, even those who had called the night before to say they wouldn't be able to make it! Luckily, Melinda always makes plenty of food for her parties. We quickly ran out of chairs but there was no way we were going to run out of delicious food! There were people eating at a makeshift table out on the balcony, the kids were sprawled out on the floor, there were people in the hallway, and even some eating in the spare bedroom!

After everyone was done with dinner, we moved the party, cake and presents out to the park behind us. It was a beautiful evening in the park, and everyone had a great time celebrating Amelie.

A Vendimia Celebration

We enjoyed a beautiful Saturday in late March, one of the last really warm days of the fall, in the town of Curicó, about a two-hour train ride from Santiago. This was the second time I had taken the train here in Chile, and both times it was a very pleasant experience. The train is clean and punctual, and la Estación Central in Santiago, designed by Gustave Eiffel and opened in 1897, is quite impressive. The beauty of its wrought-iron roof, open-air outdoor feel and palm trees gently swaying give the traveler a great send-off. This is now the only train station in Santiago, where all trains leave the capital for the south. There are no trains that head north any more. There used to be another train station in Santiago, the Mapocho Station, where trains departed for Valparaíso on the coast to the northwest. That station was closed many years ago and is now a cultural center. So on Saturday morning at the Estación Central, we met John, Melinda and Amelie, and our train pulled away at 9:30 am sharp.

We had a fun train ride, the girls happily playing with Amelie. Once in Curicó, it wasn't hard to find all the action. We walked the six blocks or so from the train station to the city's central plaza, a very pretty one with fountain, statues and plenty of palm trees. The plaza was buzzing with music and dancing (cueca, of course), and food vendors grilling meat for anticuchos (shish kabob). And, of course, the wine vendors. All of the nearby vineyards had a booth in the plaza, so you purchase a wine glass and sample lots of great wines. One of the highlights of the vendimia is the grape-mashing contest. Up on the stage are three large barrels, and teams of four compete to see who can make the most grape juice by stomping around in the barrel with their bare feet. While two guys stomp away, another keeps filling the barrel with grapes and the last one opens the spigot in the barrel from time to time to fill a pitcher and then dump that juice into a giant vat.












We had a great day, enjoying all the music and the dancing. In September, for the Fiestas Patrias, we first saw everyone dancing the cueca. After so many months living here, seeing the cueca danced again, with all those pañuelos twirling, was quite inspiring. It made me feel, well, Chilean! We would love to return to the wine festival again next year and stomp on those grapes ourselves and maybe even dance the cueca in the street.

I'm not so sure Sarah would want to return, though. She had an unfortunate incident while we were walking back to the train station that night. We were crossing an intersection when suddenly we heard a scream and turned to see a child laying in the street. It took us a moment to realize it was Sarah; she had just been knocked down by a drunk driver, luckily the driver of a bike, not a car. She got up, very shaken, but just skinned up a bit. John, however, was not as fortunate. Though in his case there was no driver of the vehicle, and he was the one who had had a little too much wine. I think John may very well be back next year for a chance to stomp on those grapes!

Here are some photos from our day at the vendimia:
http://picasaweb.google.com/bdoody61/Vendimia

Fun around Santiago

With school starting in just a few days, our next group of visitors, Carole, Christy, and Ashley, arrived from Chicago on Monday, the day after Sally and the gang left. It's a bit irritating to get to the airport and discover that the plane is two hours late, even though we checked the airline's website before leaving home, and it showed the plane on-time. This happened with Sally's flight, too. At least this time we knew better than to have breakfast at Gatsby's in the airport. Carole's flight finally arrived, and they all had their luggage, so we swooped them up and set off to the apartment. Since I needed to be at school for a meeting on Wednesday and the new school year was starting on Thursday, March 1st, we decided to stay in Santiago and do short excursions from the city. Roxy and Sarah were happy to finally be able to show some guests around their new city. The kids took a dip in the pool, had a tea party out on our balcony, and walked around our neighborhood. We took them to visit the girls' music school and the school where they would soon be going, to el Cerro Santa Lucía and then to the Mercado Central for a delicious seafood lunch. We toured the Palacio Municipal de Providencia, which was having an interesting display of armour, visited Pablo Neruda's house, La Chascona, and did some shopping in the Bellavista neighborhood.

The first day of school I only had one class to teach, a group of juniors. I was happy to see that my schedule had been reduced from the 38 hours I was teaching last semester to the 30 hours as stipulated by our contract. Then I was told that one of the 7th-grade classes had been cancelled due to the low number of students in that grade. So I got to school on Friday at the usual time, 7:30 a.m., even though I no longer had that first class. I figured I'd do some planning during those first two periods. Then one of the other teachers casually remarked to me that they had created another 8th-grade class, and it would be at the time of the previously-scheduled 7th-grade class. Of course I would be teaching this new course, and I wondered why no one had bothered to tell me about it. By now I'm used to this lack of information and communication, and I try not to let it bother me. Mostly, I was glad they had created another 8th-grade class, because now the classes were smaller and much more manageable. Instead of 45 students in a class, the classes are closer to 30.

My schedule is so much better than last semester! I actually have some free time during the day instead of teaching classes straight through from 7:45 until 2pm. Also, I'm done on Friday at 12:35, so after my last class on Friday, we jumped in the van and headed for the coast: to Valparaíso and Viña del Mar. In Valparaíso we stayed at the very comfortable Hotel Ultramar and ate dinner that first night at J Cruz, a quirky Valpo restaurant serving chorillana (a big mountain of pork, onion, fried egg and french fries) that everyone at the table eats from a common plate.

In the morning after a very good breakfast in the hotel we drove the narrow, winding roads of Cerro Bellavista until we found Pablo Neruda's house, La Sebastiana. The views of the city from the house are truly inspiring, and his collection of antique furniture and knick-knacks collected from around the world is intriguing. From there we walked around the dock before settling in at Bote Salvavidas for lunch. The food was good, (especially the desert!) and we were able to watch all the activity going on in the port. Before leaving for home, we made another stop - to the beach at Viña del Mar, where we relaxed on the sand, and Sarah and Ashley played in the water despite the cool temperature.

We had a really nice visit with our friends, and taking them to the airport on Sunday night was sad. Summer was truly over; I would be back in school again on Monday morning, and the girls were starting school on Wednesday.

Click here for more pictures from our excursions in and around Santiago: http://picasaweb.google.com/bdoody61/SantiagoExcursions

More Fun with Family

After the morning's boat ride and penguin and whale-watching we had a great lunch - more seafood, of course. This time it was loco, a delicious shellfish that probably doesn't have an English translation, seeing as it's only found in Chile and southern Peru. Then we were ready for the beach. Fortunately, we left the van behind and took the vehicle with four-wheel drive, or we'd still be there trying to dig ourselves out of the sand. It was an amazingly beautiful beach, and for a long time we had it all to ourselves.



The next day we went four wheeling again, this time to the sand dunes. The kids had a great time running up the dunes and then rolling down. Even Nana was having a blast; she really liked going off road, though she didn't feel much like rolling down any dunes with the kids. We were hoping to see some guanaco, but there were none to be found. We did, however, spot a tarantula in the road. Also, we saw some goats drinking from a fresh-water spring that was right at the shore of the ocean, a rather unusual geological phenomenon, I would think. We stopped at the home of a family that Rodrigo knew to buy some goat's cheese. For generations this family has lived in this isolated spot out in the desert, and taking a look around, it was evident their lifestyle hasn't changed much for the last hundred years.

After our ride out into the desert it was time to head back to La Serena where we would again spend the night before driving back to Santiago tomorrow morning. Before we left, though, one last magical moment in the north: in the clear, late-night sky at Mamalluca Observatory we saw the planet Saturn. What an awesome sight!
On the way home that next day we took a little detour to Fray Jorge National Park. We took a short hike through Fray Jorge, its dense forest vegetation in stark contrast with the semi-desertic climate surrounding the park. Sally and Jan particularly liked the mist blowing in off the ocean and the result it had on their neatly-coiffed heads.

Once in Santiago, we still had a few more days to enjoy, but our time together was going much too quickly. I had a meeting at the Fulbright office on Friday, so Bill and the girls took everyone sightseeing to Cerro San Cristóbal. In the evening Roxy and Sarah had their first-ever big concert: I took them to see La Oreja de Van Gogh, a band from Spain. We had been learning songs off their new CD, Guapa, in the car on this last trip. Everyone else had been getting pretty tired of hearing it again and again, but it was fun for us to be able to sing along at the show.

Saturday our guests went shopping to el Pueblito de los Dominicos and on Sunday we went wine-tasting at a vineyard just outside of Santiago, Concha y Toro. This is where the Casillero del Diablo wine is made. I first heard about this wine when, one day in my first month of teaching here, I walked into the teacher's lounge and there was a broken bottle of wine on the floor. No one seemed to know whose it was or where it had come from, but someone said something about "Casillero del Diablo". I still wasn't understanding a lot of what people were saying in those early days (Chileans have a rather unique Spanish), but I was fairly certain that the tiny little locker allotted each teacher was called a casillero. So I thought that they were explaining that there was a devil in someone's locker who had knocked the bottle out. Actually they were lamenting that someone had lost an expensive bottle of that particular well-known label of wine.

On Saturday night the wine was flowing and the pisco sours, too, as we celebrated a wonderful week together. We invited our Chilean friends and our North American Fulbright friends to join us at our apartment for an asado (a barbecue). The only ones missing were Catherine and Dan, with his guitar. All of us Fulbright teachers realized our incredible summer was coming to an end, everyone would be leaving for their Chilean towns for another semester of teaching, and no one was sure when we would all be together again. We have become quite a close family here together this year in Chile.

Click here to see some silly videos: Sally and Jessie doing the penguin dance, the kids (and Sally) playing on the sand dune, and Lucas acting crazy at Fray Jorge National Park.
http://picasaweb.google.com/bdoody61/KidsAndSallySillyVideos

Here are more photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/bdoody61/TripWithLucasAndJessie