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