Essay on Manjar

I never quantified exactly what it was I anticipated most in coming to Chile, but if I had to hazard a guess, "the food" would be among the top three.  I haven't been disappointed.  Gabriela deserves executive producer credit for most of the better victuals I've enjoyed at this point, one month into the program.  These include:

Porotos: a stew named after the beans which constitute its thickening and star ingredient, which she claims is a national dish.  The namesake does its job; the stew is hearty and heavy, aided by spinach and noodles cooked to a sublime consistency somewhere between "al dente" and "mush."  Often accompanying are longanizas, somewhat similar to bratwurst, though a little less rich and a little spicier.

Anticuchos: The kind of kabob you might end up with after tossing a javelin into the deli section at the supermarket.  Sparing few beasts of the land, these include different sausages, beef, chicken, prosciutto, and a vegetable or two, strictly for color.

Cauliflower fritters: Exactly what the name implies, these mounds of fried vegetable open a portal to a twilight zone where Cauliflower is not only palatable, but damn near irresistible.

Completos: The Chilean answer to U.S. hot dogs, these wieners obey two fundamental truths, as far as I can tell: always do they come in a toasted bun, and always is the sausage outweighed by the condiments (guacamole, diced tomatoes, mayonnaise).

Cauli-fritters, on right.

These are just the things I remember the names of.  Fish, beef, and chicken variously prepared have led many meals, as have delicious soups (Gabriela is fond of the egg-drop inclusion), often accompanied by a salad of some or other composition, be it avocado, tomato, lettuce, beets, or any combination thereof.

But the idiosyncrasies of Chilean cuisine are not confined to the kitchen at 1653 Rep. de Israel.  Milk here comes in cardboard-carton liters, and though Gabriela assures me that it is the lesser-fat variety, it tastes more like half & half, and leaves a coating which obscures glass you drink it from.  Needless to say, chocolate milk here is reminiscent of liquified cake frosting, and one can down a carton of it with terrifying ease.  On a similar wavelength is manjar, referred to elsewhere in South America as dulce de leche.  Best explained stateside, it's carmel sauce the viscosity of toothpaste.  Comes in foil sacks weighing up to one kilogram (I'll save you the trouble: that's 2.2 pounds of caramel).

In the neighborhood surrounding Universidad Andrés Bello, cheap food abounds, though a far cry from the "fast food" that infects U.S. campuses.  Shops hock Cellophane-wrapped sandwiches various in composition: tomato, avocado, mayonnaise is a common and cheap vegetarian staple.  Chicken salad with red pepper finely chopped in is another inexpensive and common variety.  Popular among the USACers is the chicken cutlet baguette, a particularly long affair adorned with guacamole.  The tough, presumably old bread demands devoted and attentive chewing, amplifying the satisfaction of finishing the sandwich (or, conversely, compelling the mastication-weary to save half for later).  This accommodatingly priced lunch is especially responsive to aji, a pepper-sauce which has a hefty flavor slightly milder than Tabasco, which can be found in bottles almost everywhere.  

In an effort (I can only assume) to produce jobs, the process for purchasing these and many other items around town is as follows: ask man 1 for item, receive paper slip; take slip to man 2, pay, receive stamp on slip; take slip to man 3, exchange for item.  Working along with these employees is at least one chef who assembles the more complicated food items.  On one occasion, I had to go through no less than five personnel for the meager purchase of a phillips-head screwdriver.  It is no doubt a curious and elaborate arrangement to we Norte Americanos, some of us having already grown accustomed to ringing up and paying for our groceries all by our lonesome.

And, of course, there are the empanadas.  In varieties limited only by the imagination of the chef, these pasties come fried or baked and sized between a child's fist and a medium-sized purse.  The more exotic to make my list have been asparagus and cheese, a delightfully flaky affair I got in the arts-district, and a disappointing seafood version from Pichilemu which exhibited less discerning selection that I would have liked.  The standby is piño, stuffed with beef, gravy, olives, hard-boiled eggs, onions, and occasionally, something which may have been an apricot.  In a jury-rigged shopping cart parked daily outside class, a woman used to fry cheese empanadas as well as sopapillas (fried dough discs), but she has lately been replaced by a younger man whose product is less satisfying.  Word is the lady was arrested, which may be true: new guy can often be seen scanning the streets in all directions with a worried look, presumably watching for carabineros.  Regardless of who operates the cart, the salsa is consistently satisfactory, and the sole variable setting the woman and her replacement apart from other vendors in the neighborhood.  Dished out with a plastic spoon from a tupperware container, the thin, bright red sauce is an emulsion of tomato and sprigs of cilantro and is just shy of being unbearably salty.  My preferred method is to bite a hole in the empanada and ladle the salsa in, turning the pastry to coat the insides.

In other news, the Casablanca trip was postponed.  In its stead, I spent another Saturday snowboarding.  Having overcome the initial excitement of my ability, I was more aware of my own mortality this time, but I enjoyed myself regardless.

More to come.

Fond of Fondas: The Missing Memories of Pichilemu

Dieceocho de Septiembre, Chile's independence holiday.  In Pichilemu, a crawling five-hour bus ride from Santiago, my classmates and I got away from the bustle of the city for three days and relaxed on the coast.

Sunset at the beach.

Thursday night was spent at the fonda, the traditional Chilean independence day celebration, but regrettably, only fragments of the experience remain with me.  What I certainly won't forget are the effects of boxed red wine on my memory.  The 23 out-of-focus pictures I found on my camera the next morning were of little help.

What I do remember:

- Employing the skills learned in dance class, particularly the spins, among throngs of Chileans under a gigantic patchwork tent.

- Walking down a very crowded sidewalk.

- Buying something from a food stall (second-hand reports indicate that this was "a small hotdog").

- Lecturing safety at length to pair of USAC girls when they announced they were splitting off from the group to hang out with unknown Chilean men (reports the following morning informed me that this was not looked upon kindly by the Chilean men).

Thankfully, there was no news of me causing damage to anyone or anything, nor severely embarrassing myself, and over the course of the next day I found every item of value safely stowed in my bag.  It seems that, in spite of my condition, I exercised a good deal of prudence; I drank enough water to defeat a hangover, and even took my keys out of my pocket before going to bed.  It was agreed among the USAC girls, though, that my dance moves at the fonda were dreadfully lacking in precision.  Perhaps the strangest recollection I got from my compañeros was that I spent a moment devotedly photographing a pile of grass clippings on the side of the road.  No pictures were found to support this.

The fonda tent.

Friday and Saturday were considerably lower-key, the daylight hours spent on the beach and wandering through town, evenings in the campsite taking care to moderate myself.  One foray into the Pacific marked my first official "swim" in our planet's largest ocean, though I'd call it that only as a technicality- the frigid surf was more than I could bear, and after marching out up to my waist while hollering obscenities, I scampered back to dry land without even putting my head under.  Needless to say, my first surfing experience will have to wait until deeper into the Chilean summer.

Our two campsites at Camping Pequeño Bosque (little forest).

All things considered, the vacation was a success.  Out from under the blanket of Santiago smog I saw my first stars of the southern hemisphere, and saw them good.  Having lived in Montana, I can honestly say that an open Pichilemu field gives Big Sky Country a run for it's money.  After the initial shock and astonishment at the entirely foreign heavenly bodies, though, I became somewhat unsettled.  I never imagined that the night sky would be something I took for granted, but sharp pangs of displacement rippled through me as I considered the fact that the constellations which I'm used to are only "the half of it," as Jeremy Irons might say.  Considering that, I was comforted (and surprised) to find Orion had crept down from the north when I left the tent for a 5:00 a.m. bathroom run.

Sharing a tent with around ten of my companions proved an incubator for some kind of esophageal-affliction ("resfriado," says Gabriela, tilting her head back and rubbing her throat), aided in no small part by the cool coastal nights, so I now enter my second bout of bronchial infirmity in Chile.  The first, acquired during the arrival-weekend, was hastily quelled by Gabriela's onslaught of miel con limon and Tapsin, a local OTC dissolved in water, so I'm not too worried.

I've got a nice, slow week ahead of me, at the end of which I will finally make the trek down to Casablanca to visit Orlando, an old friend of my father's from his Los Angeles days.  By that time, I will have passed the one-month mark, with a quarter of my semester abroad behind me.

So far, so good.

Scholarly Pursuits

It occurs to me that little has been said of my studies here in Santiago, Chile, and nothing of my university.  So, here goes.

Every morning I wake at little after 8:00 a.m., assemble the various elements of my daily composure and walk two blocks to the Avenida Grecia bus stop across the street from Estadio Nacional.  If Gabriela is already awake, she microwaves a travel-mug of the Quaker oatmeal I bought to stop her preparing more elaborate breakfasts for me (I cannot palate guilt so early in the morning).  Lately, the mug has been accompanied by the end of a package of cookies.  Under her supervision, I never attempt to leave the house without some manifestation of breakfast, and if unforeseen developments inhibit her oversight, I always lie that I made it for myself when she asks in the evening.

Bus 508 carries me north 10 minutes to the metro, which  I ride west 10 minutes to Estacion Republica, from which I walk five minutes south to Universidad Andres Bello.  Anywhere on the last two legs of my journey I may encounter classmates, in which case we will talk together for the rest of the trip, carefully weighing the cost-benefit ratio of buying a cup of coffee before class, or offering or requesting homework aid.

Spanish Track 1 begins somewhere between 9:35 and 9:45 a.m. when a quorum is present and has settled into desks.  The class is ten strong on its best days, but students are often shed in favor of the easily-had thrills of the Santiago night life.  Catalina Tocornal, a 30s-ish paper doll of a woman, teaches us the fundaments of Spanish directly from "Gente," Segunda edición, Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007.

Class breaks at 11:30, and on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays returns for another hour after fifteen or twenty minutes of fried empanadas, cigarettes, second coffee runs and congregating with the other classes also on break.  Tuesdays and Thursdays, many kill the hours before their 2:00 or 4:00 p.m. courses.  I might use the time for a nap in the USAC offices or to catch up on reading, but there is never any shortage of classmates willing to knock back a few Escudos for lunch to "stretch out your learning muscles," as Britt says.  There is also an abundance of diversion in the neighborhood, from an abandoned, century-old house filled with artisanal graffiti to the Parque O'Higgins, a nearby horse track.

I usually sit in on nonfiction of Latin America at 2:00, puzzling over globalization and the abuse of natural resources in the continent and getting good and down on humanity, and on these days I invariably nap at my desk for the fifteen minutes between its end and the beginning of travel writing at 4:00.  In travel writing, taught by the same professor as its predecessor, we may investigate marketing techniques, venture out to Palacio de la Moneda to experience first hand the mourning of Salvador Allende, or have a native Chilean guest speaker suggest ideal locations for traditional "Dieciocho de Septiembre" celebrations (Chile's independence day).

Classes are reliably laid-back, starting times are flexible, and attendance is meekly enforced at best.  The student body is tight-knit, and there are numerous daily occasions of classmates picking up slack for one another.  In many ways, it is a utopian learning environment: study locations vary from the reverently hushed university library to the serene street benches in the company of friendly stray dogs, to bars and restaurants with endlessly delicious variations of food and drink.

I know little of Universidad Andrés Bello proper- the USAC offices, two blocks south, house the nonfiction and travel writing class, so I only have one classroom among those of Chilean students.  UAB has eight or so buildings within two blocks, some connected by walkways along the top floors.  From what I understand, the university was founded by a breakaway faction of Universidad de Chile, or maybe de Santiago, I'm not sure, but whichever it was, it was founded by Bello, whose statue rests in at least two spots around the city.  Unconfirmed reports (friends of friends) have said that we go to "the rich school," but having nothing to compare it to, I can't say.

The rest of the week is the independence day vacation, which I abruptly decided to spend in Pichilemu, on the coast south of Valparaiso.  Accommodations and activities are TBD.  Guy and Murph spent the afternoon ogling the forecasts at surfreport.com, so I may try my hand at "hanging ten," whatever that means.

Stay tuned.

Shapes and Sizes; Nobel Prizes- Bus Rides, Futbol, and an Inside Look at the Home of Pablo Neruda

"Hey dig Isla Negra... our Nobel Prize, Pablo Neruda was a crazy guy... he has a great sense of humor!!!!  I live over there for about 3 years... I love the place, in summer time it's very shitty, too meny Santiaguinos fucking around..." writes one native Chilean of this small village on the coast.  In this case, the offending party were Santiaguinos née Estadounidense, a band of excitable students from a program called USAC.

Our first class excursion left UAB at about 9:30 a.m.  The lot of us were scattered about in front of the building, clicking and clacking and pecking like excitable hens.  For the first time since orientation, our group was assembled together for a comfortable bus ride to the coast to visit one of author/poet Pablo Neruda's homes, with a pit stop in Pomaire, a popular tourist destination.  I was eating a banana which had offended its original owner, Shannon, with its mushy-ness. I overlooked its transgressions to replace the breakfast I slept too late to eat.

As the buses neared, Program Director Luis Figueroa announced through his lilting Chilean accent that one would hold 40-some passengers, the other, only 20.  Nobody's fool, I called out "dibs on the big bus!"  My swift decision-making skill was rewarded with a rowdy trip westward.  Vail had the foresight to bring along a small but potent iPod stereo, which I was awarded control of after replacing its batteries.  We descended on Pomaire primed for adventure.

Famous for earthenware cookery and empanadas bigger than your head (ignore their siren call, Luis advised; they're not as tasty as the smaller ones), Pomaire reminds one of Wisconsin Dells with its small shops, each vying for your patronage, but the similarities end there.  The teensy village didn't seem to have a building with more than one story, and exhibited a slow sweetness unsullied by grubby tourist hands or "Santiaguinos fucking around."  My wandering coincided, I think, with the school's lunch recess, and uniformed students passing by would happily return smiles and waves when offered.

Pomaire's more eclectic wares.

Pomaire homes, hills rising beyond.

Pomaire's frontispiece and our rallying point.

Unpictured, to the left, is the tourism office

But it wasn't just wandering fun and cookware watching in Pomaire.  I was in the middle of examining a casserole pan when my phone rang.  Britt and company had assembled at a restaurant.  "I'll come find you," she said, and I left it at that, resuming my interrupted pan-perusals.  Going from shop to shop, I eventually came to an intersection.  An energetic pamphlet-hander called to me, "Hola!  Tu amiga!  Tu amiga!" and pointed left.  He waved for me to follow him, which I did with equal amounts of curiosity and concern.  He led me into a building and I saw the USACers at a table with cervezas, fresh biscuit-like buns and bowls of some of the better salsa any gringo has ever sampled.

With the second round, the waiter brought Murph one of Pomaire's famous earthenware bowls (a "paila," according to wikipedia) filled to the brim with an indeterminable golden goo.  It was a pastel de choclo, a traditional Chilean dish, consisting of large chunks of chicken, hard boiled eggs, olives, pork, and the eponymous corn.  I immediately ordered one of my own and waited on pins and needles for what felt like an hour before it finally came.  Forkfuls were abetted with salsa and cerveza and contented me beyond words.

I forked over my portion of the tab and disbanded from the group under the guise of buying presents for my mom, but the selection of wares overwhelmed me, and I assured myself that hastening to decisions in my first month here wasn't wise.  So I wandered more, venturing away from the tourist trapping storefronts and into the more residential area.

I passed a clearing among the houses filled with piles of shoddy lumber and smelling of smoke, and the cars passing by filled to the brim with ceramics led me to assume that this was one of the fabricating zones for the pottery which probably sustained the economy of town.  Further away, I rendezvoused with Adriane who, too, was wandering, and who solicited most of the schoolchildren's waves previously mentioned.  Eventually, we made our way back to the rally point where I played spectator to an impromptu USAC futbol circle facilitated by Wes.  Wes has brought his ball to class before, leading me to wonder if he is ever without it.

The ride from Pomaire to Isla Negra was even more raucous than its predecessor, and we in the back of the bus rang in our arrival at the coast with a rousing rendition of "Father & Son" by Cat Stevens (and a somewhat louder and less dignified "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" by The Darkness).

We filed out and stretched and ran around and climbed on things until we had shaken off our road-weariness, and poured into the receiving area for the Casa de Isla Negra.  Inside we saw Neruda's collections of collections, his ornate living room adorned with ship's figureheads from around the world, the telescope given to him by the French government during his diplomat days, the guitars and lutes and a Mongolian shamasan which he could not play, and the narwhal tusk purchased with Nobel Prize money.

The house was interesting and impressive, but dwarfed by the awe of the black rock laden beach for which the area was named.  The lot of us spent the next few hours climbing over rocks, investigating tide pools and dipping our toes in the frigid surf, the inattentive getting soaked by crashing waves.

Pablo Neruda's waking view: enough to

make anyone a Nobel-winning poet.

Artistry on the rocks.

Countless rounds of "would you rather" ("Fly or be invisible?"  "Only eat vegetables or only eat fruit?"  Or, my contribution, "have a pet lightning storm or a pet earthquake?") and naps passed the hours on the trip back.  For dinner, a crowd of us went out for Santiago sushi, which is on par with the best I've had, and expectedly less expensive.

I arrived home ready to take a load off, but the family was just sitting down to more completos, and Leonardo was in the mood to tie one on, so the night got long.  Shooting the shit, we put down over half a bottle of Jack Daniel's, prompting Gabriela to snap some pictures with her camera, which were then uploaded to her Facebook account.  Readers will be spared.  I'm not sure if Chileans know of the pre-sleep-jug-of-water hangover cure, because when I showed up at the breakfast table the next morning in a considerably better state than Leo, Ana Maria suggested that I might have a drinking problem.

The weekend has been slow and easy.  Gabriela's cuisine never fails to please, and this afternoon really took the cake (also, there was cake).  Gabriela, Ana Maria and I put together antichucos, the kind of kabobs you'd make if you were unconcerned with health or price: chicken, beef, longanizas, chorizo, prosciutto, peppers, mushrooms and onion.  Ricardo grilled them and brought out batches which must have totaled about 40.

Before.

After.

Afterer.

And then we had dinner.

Not too shabby.  The Chilean independence celebrations begin this week, which means no class on Thusday or Friday.  From what I've heard, the modus operandi is to drink for five days straight.  If I survive, updates will follow.

Stay tuned.

Ratios of Long to Skinny-ness, Keeping Abreast of Business

PREFACE

The days between my last post and today have been "just packed."  An abbreviated itinerary might look something like this:

Friday - Snowboarding in the Andes

Friday - Jack Daniel (the dog)

Sunday - Chile vs. Brazil (0-3)

Tuesday - More dance class

Wednesday - Chile vs. Colombia (4-0!)

Thursday - My first test

Thursday - Septiembre 11

Friday - Isla Negra

Putting off reporting the snowboarding experience was an act of humbled intimidation.  Pictures offer a prostitute's fidelity to the wrenching beauty of the mountains, so, needless to say, the task before me is daunting.

But, I'm here and you're not, so you'll have to take what you can get.  Sorry, suckers.

SNOWBOARDING IN THE ANDES

I was late getting to SkiTotal, a few blocks from the final metro stop, Escuela Militar on the eastern edge of Santiago.  Guy, whose warm invitation had brought me out, was just leaving as I arrived.  As his bus pulled away, he told me what to rent and where to follow him, which I did without much difficulty.

The ride to the summit was a lesson in intimidation.  Our friendly and English-speaking driver, the same one who devotedly tapped his horn at two girls we passed, the same one whose cell phone ring was a police siren, expertly navigated the certain-death bluffs and 50-some switchbacks between us and the peak.  Straddling cavernous potholes and passing sluggish trucks (not as easy on a mountain as it is in the Prairie State) without an ounce of apparent effort, and using a standard transmission, as is the norm in Chile, his skill was highly visible.  More than once I saw him cross himself as we passed road-side shrines dedicated, I assume, to less attentive drivers than he.

Scattered up the mountain were errant burros, watchful carabineros, fascinating specimens of home architecture, and this church, even more solitary than it looks.

The views, or the altitude, or both, brought a frequent knot to my stomach.  A potato-fed Midwesterner from glaciated Illinois, I could never have been convinced of or prepared for the gory magnitude the Andes emanate.  The beauty of it, climbing the product of tectonic plate collision, crags sliding away as one's position changes to reveal endless gray-blue geography, was profound.

And the snowboarding was pretty fun, too.

It has been suggested many times that I would like skiing.  Friends and family have invited me along to some or other resort.  "I'm not sure I'd like it," I'd say, "it seems like a lot of money and trouble, and I don't know if it would be worthwhile."  In Chile, I figured I owed it to myself to see the Andes up-close, and a ski-trip seemed like, if nothing else, a means to that end.  Guy invited me along with him, Murphy, Jon, Britt, and an assortment of other USAC-ies, and I, having seen Guy's athletic skill demonstrated on his longboard, figured it was a good offer.

"Do you want to ski or snowboard," he asked.

"Do I want to ski or snowboard," I replied.

"Snowboard."

"Is it anything like skateboarding?  I've been on a skateboard without falling off once," I bragged.

"Well, no."  He went on to explain the subtle differences between the sports.  I would be attached to my snowboard, he said, by devices called "binders," which use ratchets and teeth and, I believe, were invented in the medieval era to scare the shit out of Midwesterner college students snowboarding for the first time.

Guy's expertise went beyond binders.  We reunited atop Valle Nevado, boards-in-hand, and he asked another unanswerable riddle, "are you regular or goofy?"

I didn't respond.

"Turn around- face that way," he said, and I did, expecting him to discern from my figure whatever it was he needed to know.  Instead, he gave me a gentle shove, forcing me to step forward.

"Regular," he said definitively.  What he was looking for, and what I had just unconsciously displayed, was my snowboarding stance: by stepping forward with my left foot when shoved, I demonstrated that my left foot should be at the front of the board, hence, "regular."

After a quick crash course in strapping into my binders, which turned out to be much less nefarious than they sounded, Guy told me that I wanted to emulate a "falling leaf," slowly swooping from side to side, down the hill a little with each swishing motion.  For the first five minutes I was less of a "falling leaf" and more of a "falling idiot," but I managed to spread out the amount of time between falls until, eventually, it became enjoyable.  Down the bunny hill we went, bit by bit, fall by fall, with Guy and Murph slicing expertly ahead and stopping to wait for me to catch up.  By the bottom of that first bunny hill, I was really enjoying myself.  Murph got a kick out of it when I, pleased with a particularly long stretch between falls, announced to a random lady, "hey, what's up, I'm snowboarding!"

We lined up for the lift, which wasn't a chair but rather a stick one grabbed and let drag one up the hill.  Murph and Guy went first, and I got about fifteen feet before flopping to the ground, shuffling out of the way of the next person, and looking up to Guy.  "Just keep going," he said.  I made my way back down, held on to the stick all the way back up, and set off down the bunny hill again, this time alone.

The day went well.  I got better and better until I was doing entire, five minute runs and only falling four or so times.  There was a sticky spot early on when I, having dropped a rented glove off the ski lift, traversed "fresh powder" to retrieve it.  It wasn't actually a run, but the lift operator said I could do it if I wanted to, so I mustered up the courage and set off.  The endeavor took about 30 minutes, almost none of it spent actually snowboarding, but I did find the sucker (with some help from the lift riders).

We spent all day on the mountain.  After lunch, I reunited with Guy, Murph, Jon, Britt, and an assortment of others, and we rode a five or so minute lift up from the lodge to a higher peak, and had a real good time.  I would thrill myself with relatively slow speeds, falling like a leaf hauling ass and zig-zagging from one side of the run to the other.  Guy slid effortlessly up the sides of the runs, spinning around, hopping over fences and being generally impressive while Britt dropped off the edge only to zip back up from what appeared to be an abyss.  I had a few spectacular falls, including a "yard sale," so named because by the time you've stopped flopping and rolling around, all of your equipment is spread out on the run, but no serious injuries at all.  Guy estimated my top speed at one point to be 30 M.P.H., and I knew I was enjoying myself when I realized that I was more proud than terrified of that.

At five o'clock, back at the bus, our driver took the stack of discarded complimentary hot-chocolate cups, giving the impression he knew of a nearby trashcan, but instead stuck them under the windshield wiper of the adjacent bus, grinning at its driver before hauling our exhausted lot back to Santiago.

Back home, I found a German shepherd puppy named Jack Daniel had joined the ranks of pets at 1653 Republica de Israel.  He laid between my feet Sunday night while Ricardo and I watched the Chile-Brazil game, consoling ourselves with sandwiches and coffee brought out by Gabriela.

Tuesday night was the second dance class, followed by cerveza and "completos," hot dogs Chilean style, engulfed in guacamole, tomatoes, and mayonnaise.  Wednesday saw Chile hand Colombia their asses and Thursday's test results remain to be seen (it could go either way).

Thursday was also the 35th anniversary of the Pinochet coup, which prompted mourning for Allende at Palacio de la Moneda, the seat of government in Chile and the site where Allende took his last stand.

Yesterday was the class trip to Isla Negra on the coast (not actually an island), and home one of three of Pablo Neruda, Chilean Nobel Prize winning author and poet.  It was more than satisfactory, but it's half-past twelve and I'm still in bed, so reports of seaside shenanigans will have to wait.  I did buy a kite at a gas station en-route.

Spoiler alert: there wasn't enough wind to fly it, though.

Stay tuned.

Virtual Tour

Avenida Republica de Israel 1653.  Easily the least menacing edifice in all Ñuñoa, the Casa Arévalo is a pacifist nestled among Spartans. Most of the other houses on our block sport spike-clad, razor-topped wire fences to buffer against the Santiago riff-raff whose presence is established by door-to-door begging.

An unimpeded view of the front door

Living room

Dining room, seldom used

Porotos y Longanizas, the national dish

Gabriela, as best I could capture her

Tomorrow, my first pilgrimage to the Andes.  Like the conquistadors of old, I will be there learning how to snowboard.  Brit, as she points off at the perpetual mountain chain, assures herself, "I'm gonna shred the shit out of you."  We'll see how well I can follow her example.

Orlando Avendano contributed to this article.

Casas y Classes

Avenida Republica de Irael.  For many of you, this street evokes images of the ritzy, the ultra-posh.  But I assure these presumptive readers that my home is a modest three bedroom, outfitted with only the bare necessities.

Psych, my digs are bitchin' sweet, you suckers just got punk'd.

We've got:

Gabriela and Ricardo Arévalo, my parents

Leonardo, my brother

Two cats

One dog

Wireless internet

Cable TV (watching "Stranger than Fiction" with Spanish subtitles helps me learn.)

There are doors in every wall, and when it's nice out, all of the doors are open, and the house is more akin to a giant veranda with a kitchen.  My bedroom is the largest I've had in, I think, ever.

Chile is an enigma.  Avocados and empanadas are a dime a dozen, but peanut butter, of all things, has to be imported and costs a relative fortune.  Escudo, the popular Chilean beer, is bought in returnable bottles a little larger than an American 40 oz., for somewhere in the neighborhood of 900 pesos, or US$1.75.  The subway puts Chicago's el to shame, screaming down the tracks for about 40 seconds between stations.  A one-way fare during peak-hours runs 420 pesos (US$.75).

But safety is not certain.  Just today, a girl was pick-pocketed on the metro.  Little was lost, but the message was sent.  Bags and purses are to be kept between one's legs when sitting, and worn over the chest in certain neighborhoods.  Staying out very long after dark isn't advised, particularly for women, and even more so for blondes, who have the unhappy reputation here of being "accommodating."

Still, the city spans far and wide, and offers spectacle on every block.  For the cautious visitor, it supplies a wealth of diversion.  Hearty and esoteric Moai observe silently along Avenida Liberatador General Bernardo O'Higgins, the main strip, while only gently westernized culture abounds.

Classes are begun, and their fruits grow plump already.  Enrolled in only Spanish I and Travel Writing, I've sat in on a nonfiction class and a dance class, both with thrilling results.  The first week is going well.