The first time I came to Chile in 1995, I had no idea that I would spend enough time in this faraway country at the end of the world. In total, I have spent something like five years here, spread out over the past 13 years. I have seen many changes in this long, thin nation. Now that I am leaving, there are things I will miss and things I will not miss at all. That fits right along with my postings here, I suppose. So after all this time of Amanda’s Chile Moments, I am both pleased to inform you, and I regret to inform you, that this is my final post. Que Dios les bendiga.
Crisis-oriented Society
As my friend Lois was giving me a ride from church to the mall today, we were talking about how Chile is a “crisis-oriented” society. In general, this means that most Chileans wait until there is a crisis to react.
Let me give an example: cell phones. We have a cell phone plan through work. Every time any of us travels out of the country, we are reminded not to make or receive calls because of the high cost. Our Chilean staff members often ask us, however, if we can simply turn off their phones after they make a certain amount of calls each month so that they don’t overspend. They just don’t have the discipline to stop calling until the bill arrives and they are in a crisis!
Another example would be car maintenance. Mark and I sold our vehicle in November last year because its engine basically melted. We chalk that loss up to the poor maintenance of the vehicle by the previous owner. Chileans often do not take their cars in for the scheduled maintenance checks, and do-it-yourself auto repairs are completely unknown here. Oil changes happen after the check oil light comes on, if you know what I mean. My friend Lois counts herself blessed that she knows many transitory foreigners to buy quality used vehicles from.
But who ever taught us who were raised in the States to be “non-crisis-oriented”? How do we learn to plan ahead for foreseeable or possible problems? We Americans hope bad things don’t happen to us and we concern ourselves with trying to prevent them, whereas Chileans know that bad things will happen to them and they don’t stress about them until they are actually happening.
FEMA, the Army Corps of Engineers, whoever. But we all know that someone is to blame for the mess that happened in New Orleans. Someone didn’t plan ahead well, and as a nation we are appalled by it.
Here in Chile, the town of Chaitén recently was evacuated because the volcano near town erupted. After most people were evacuated, a winter storm blew in from sea and flooded whatever was left of the small town far in the south of the country. The town is ruined, gone. But no one here is accusing the government of lack of foresight, no one thinks there should have been better planning. They just want the government to give them a stipend so they can start a new life in a new place. Fascinating to me: they expect the government to react to the crisis, not prevent it.
I’m going to stop writing now so I can go plan my meals for the week, make my grocery list, and thus avoid any crises in my own home. Constantly reacting to a crisis is a part of Chile I just can’t quite get into.
Not my usual post
My friend Nicole and I met at our how-to-give-birth class at the hospital in Denver before our oldest children were born. Little did either of us know that we would both have surprise c-sections and beautiful little girls born just a few days apart. We were also the only ones from our class of 20 couples who decided to be stay-at-home-moms. So we bonded over that, and now she’s in the middle of chemo for another surprise in her life, and she asked me to do this. So, of course, I am.
“The rules of the game get posted at the beginning. Each player answers the questions about themselves. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5-6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog.Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.”
1) What was I doing 10 years ago?
Hmm. 1998. I was finishing up my “last” year in Chile, wondering what my life would bring in the future, and eating a lot of ice cream in the winter. It seems that I haven’t moved very far along in life…
2) What are 5 things on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order):
Get up early to practice with the worship music team before church, find something my kids can eat at the food court that isn’t full of coloring and preservatives, drink one of the precious Dr. Peppers that we found at the store last week, finish Megan’s scrapbook except for the 1st birthday page, and check Google Reader for new postings on my friends’ blogs.
3) Snacks I enjoy: chocolate, cookies (any kind), jelly beans (but it’s been a LONG time since I’ve seen any around here).
4) Things I would do if I were a billionaire:
Give it all away. No really. You aren’t what you have.
5) Places I have lived: Kansas, California, Concepción Chile, Florida, New Mexico, Colorado, Santiago Chile. (I’m not going to count places I have only lived 2 months, because there are too many to keep track of.)
6) 3 peeps I wanna know more about:
Jessica Caughey, Renée Horlbeck, Angela Dormish.
Groceries I never buy
Today I bought groceries, as I usually do on Saturday mornings. Since we don’t have a car anymore, I walk to the store about 15-20 minutes away, do my shopping, and take a taxi back to the apartment with groceries for a week. This time Mark reminded me to buy snacks. Something about it getting colder outside makes us snack more. But anyway…
I was thinking today, as I passed the masses of people waiting in lines within the grocery store, of all the things that Chileans buy that I never buy. Like sliced cheese from a deli window. I just buy a package of sliced cheese, but Chileans buy slices from the deli almost every day for that evening’s meal. Take a number!
Also, ham. I never buy lunch meat EVER. Don’t get me started on all the chemicals that they put into your “meat” so that they can make it that shape. But Chileans stand in another line at another deli window almost every day so they will have ham (the generic word here for lunch meat of any origin) for their evening meal. Or breakfast the next day. Just let me say, “yuck.”
Then there’s the fresh bread weighing line. I do occasionally buy one kind of fresh bread rolls that don’t have shortening. But usually I buy it fresh on the day I want to eat it from the bakery on the corner by my apartment, not at the grocery store on a weekly trip. So I can skip that line too.
The only line I have to wait in (before I head to the check out, of course) is the veggie and fruit weighing line. Four guys (I’m not being sexist, they are all men!) sit there at their special table near the produce weighing fruit and veggies on their scales that print out stickers with the price. I guess that saves the checkout clerks time, but it seems to me like one more ineffeciency of Chile. And more time spent in line.
Finally I get to the checkout, and pay for the food I DO usually buy. Then I head outside and wait again for the taxi. Mark wonders why it takes so long to go to the grocery store, but I’m not worried about it. July first will be our first day back living in the States, and I can be more efficient again.
Where’s my camera when I need it?
Maybe I need a camera phone after all. I needed it on Sunday, and since I didn’t have one, I will try to paint a word picture for you.
We drove up to the butcher’s store in Doug and Carey’s Hyundai van. It’s a big store on a corner of a major street. Don’t think of these outdoor markets with slabs of meat hanging around in the open air. This is a meat store with coolers and freezers and men who use plastic gloves to cut normal slabs of meat and weigh it on digital scales.
Mark and Carey went in to buy steak to grill while Doug and I sat in the van out front with the kids. Doug and Carey have four kids, ages 14 to 7, and our three were there, too. Megan, the baby, was asleep on my lap. (Okay, so it is still Chile. We didn’t have any carseats that day.)
Johnny, age 11-ish, and Doug start talking about the guy who has a little stand out front of the butcher’s shop. I hadn’t really noticed him before that. He has a square table and a big umbrella for shade. He also has a display board of maybe 12 folk music cds that he’s selling, and a karaoke machine. He’s playing loud music and occasionally breaking in with an advertisement for the butcher’s shop. “Today only, get your steak at only $2.50 a pound.” Or something like that using pesos and kilos instead. It goes really well with his folk music, let me tell you.
Doug tells Johnny, “I’ll give you three dollars if you go over there and ask the guy to sing ‘O Canada’ on his karaoke machine.” Johnny’s thinking about it. I say, “I’ll give you three dollars if you get him to turn the thing off.” I didn’t think he would, but I should have known. It was Johnny. He’s fearless.
After a couple of minutes of thinking it over, he jumps out of the passenger side door and walks over to the 60-something-year-old man. We can’t hear what he says, but the music keeps playing and Johnny comes back grinning.
“What did he say?” “He said I would have to pay him to turn it off.” “Did you offer him part of your three dollar reward?” “No, why should I share my reward with him?” “Well, what reason did you give him to turn it off?” “None.” Silly Johnny.
Mark and Carey came back and we drove away. But it didn’t occur to me until later that it’s not normal to have a karaoke guy advertising the butcher under an umbrella on the street. Funny.
All wrapped up
Gift-giving in Chile is a time-honored tradition. And free gift wrap at almost every store is part of the tradition.
On Saturday we took the whole family for a walk to the nearby mall in search of a birthday gift for a friend of the girls’ from church. He turned four on Sunday, and this mall has the best toy store around. So after we picked out a set of five Hot Wheels cars for $9, I stood in line to pay while Mark took the girls to get some lunch in the food court.
I took the opportunity to buy a gift for Jenna’s upcoming third birthday while they weren’t looking. Then I got the two gifts wrapped after standing in a separate line/mob. No one really knew who had arrived first, and there were several people waiting around for one of the two gift-wrapper ladies to finish. But it was eventually my turn, and I sailed through the process, having already become accustomed to the routine.
“Boy or girl?” “One of each.” “Okay. Is this paper alright?” Dinosaurs and princesses. “Fine.” After a few moments of watching the process, I am internally laughing.
My mother spent a good amount of time teaching me some basic life skills: bed-making and gift-wrapping are similar. It’s all in the corners. But apparently, even though this lady is a professional gift-wrapper, she hasn’t figured that out yet.
In Chile, the most common way to wrap a gift is to put it inside a ready-to-fill envelope made of wrapping paper. They fold the paper in half and tape it together, usually along the back of the envelope. Then they fold and tape up the bottom to form a kind of thin sack. Once you show up with the gift/filler, they shove it in, whether or not the bag they’ve made is the right size, fold and tape up the top, and add a bow. They use these bows where you pull the ribbons and they sort of scrunch themselves up into a bow-like shape. Every gift uses at least a meter of scotch tape, I would guess.
Well, the gifts I bought stuck out of the lady’s pre-made sacks, so she had to actually use a flat sheet of wrapping paper. I laughed because, even though she had to actually wrap the box, she didn’t tape down the top flaps. She taped them to one another standing up, so it would LOOK like a sack! Here’s the photo:
What would you do?
I had been waiting there for 45 minutes. Yes, at a bus stop. Where else?
And I had all three kids with me. Megan was strapped on my front. Jenna was asleep in the stroller. Rachel was bouncing all over the place, still under the influence of her coloring-laced antibiotic from last week.
It took 25 minutes till the first bus came. And went. Without stopping.
Ten minutes later, another bus passed us as I frantically waved it down. To no avail.
The third guy stopped after I stepped out into the street (He was a good way back, I promise, I’m not suicidal) and waved him down.
I lifted the stroller into the wide entry and scanned my bus card. I started to roll my child down to the wide-open handicapped and stand-room-only space. I said “Thank you for stopping for me,” to the driver. I was going to be a duck, and just let the water roll off my back. It wasn’t going to affect my day that the other two drivers didn’t stop. Then the driver spoke up.
“They didn’t stop for you because you have a stroller,” he said. “Strollers are prohibited.”
WHAAAT??? “So how would you suggest that I bring my three children on the bus without a stroller?” I asked, trying REALLY hard to not get mad at the guy. After all, HE had stopped for me, right?
“I suggest you leave them home with the maid next time.”
Typical.
“Don’t you think that if I could afford to have a full-time maid to watch my kids, I would just buy a car?” I said.
“Whatever,” the driver said. “I can’t talk about this now. I have to drive.”
Yeah, but at the next stop his buddy got on, and it didn’t seem to bother him to talk then.
I figure some bus drivers still let me on with my stroller, and I can’t figure out any other way to carry a baby and a napping preschooler on a bus. Pretty soon it will start getting winter and rainy and cold, and then maybe the dollar will be stronger and I can take a taxi.
Strap it on
I have an exercise for you. Take a not-so-small-anymore baby and strap her on the front of you in one of those baby carriers. (I prefer Baby Bjorn myself, since it’s lasted through some beyond-normal use and three kids.) Then strap an almost-three-year-old into an umbrella stroller. (Again, I have to recommend a Chicco Caddy, for the same reasons as above.) Strap on the backpack full of diapers and extra preschooler clothes, wipes, snacks, etc. And strap on a smile. Don’t forget that last piece, because you are going to need it. You are going to pick up a five-year-old from school.
It takes 10 minutes to get out the door of the apartment, down the elevator from the eleventh floor, and out the front gate. If you share the elevator with another resident of the building, you will get your first chance to exercise that smile. “Oh, what a cutie,” they say. That’s good, they are still focused on the baby.
By the time you get down the street to the bus stop, another 10 minutes have passed, and another 20 people walking on the sidewalk. “Que valiente,” they whisper to each other. Now they are talking about you. “How brave she is!”
The bus could take anywhere between two and twenty minutes to arrive. More opportunities to exercise that smile come with the wait. “Can I give her this candy? What’s wrong with her?” Now they are watching the two-year-old. Keep smiling!
You pull the kid and yourself and the stroller up onto the bus. Good news: now they think you have to be crazy, so they give you a seat, even if the place is full. But keep smiling because they are watching you now. If you keep smiling, the bus people will smile back, and you can complete some good-vibe circuit that will insure that you arrive with your smile still in place when the bus reaches your stop in 20 minutes. If you stop smiling, well…don’t stop.
Once you have made it to the door of the bus with your baby strapped on the front, your kid trailing from one arm, and your stroller gripped tightly in the other, push the buzzer and get off. Then assemble the stroller without bending over (remember the baby is still on you) and strap the kid back in place (if she doesn’t kick you in the meantime). You are ready for the next leg of your journey.
Cross the street, avoiding the potholes and the “dog doodles” in the sidewalk, hopefully not against the light, and walk six blocks to the school. You made it! Halfway that is, because you are about to gain another little dynamo and her backpack, and try it all again on the way home.
Roundtrip = 2 hours. Keep smiling!
Cooking from scratch…as in NOTHING
This morning Mark and all the other staff left for Chanco, a small rural town along the beach of southern Chile where Campus Crusade is holding the annual Student Conference. It is to last six days, and is to be held at an internado – a public boarding school of sorts – that is open to us because it is summer here in Chile.
Mark is in charge of the food for the conference. That’s for 45 people, including the staff and students, every meal for six days. That also means that he was in charge of planning what they would eat, deciding how much they needed to buy, buying it, cooking it, cleaning up after it, and reimbursing all the costs later. A big job!
This evening he called me after arriving in Chanco to let me know that there is nothing at all in the kitchen there. No plates, no cups, no silverware, no pots, no pans, no serving spoons. NO REFRIGERATOR, NO STOVE! They do have a sink.
He was prepared for most of this, because rumors had begun to arrive about the primitive nature of the place before he left. But he had pretty much counted on there being a hotplate at least.
I hope the students like sandwiches.
Christmas in the Summertime
I read online that there has been a big ice storm in the Midwest, and my mom says that she has 10 inches of snow on her driveway, and more on the way. It’s hard to imagine from here. Today was somewhere around 80 degrees, a few high clouds, and a slight breeze. A lovely beginning to summer, in my opinion!
But it’s also hard to realize that Christmas is right around the corner. I mean, it’s only a few days away, and we are going to the swimming pool everyday. Definitely one of the harder adjustments for me.
Imagine Christmas without “Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow!” Imagine the Christmas decoration aisle at the store right next to the lawn chairs and pool accessories. Imagine kids getting out of school for summer break a few days before Christmas. That’s what we are experiencing here.
But not everything about Christmas is different here. Some things, especially the imported North American consumerism parts of Christmas, are still (laughably) the same. Santa still wears a thick coat, even at the mall where the A/C is on because it’s so hot. The coolest Christmas tree for sale at the store drops artificial snow from the top into an inverted umbrella at the bottom, creating the sensation that the tree is growing in some outdoor place in the northern hemisphere. “Christmas” songs still play in English in the stores, “Jingle Bells”, “Good King Wenseslas”, “Frosty the Snowman”, etc. Did you ever notice how many of them are really not about the holiday, but just about the weather?
The only place that seems to have made some attempt to reconcile this dichotomy is Starbucks. Starbucks in Chile has the red and white signs with candy canes (nowhere to be seen here, by the way) and wrapped packages, but no snow or mittens. The people in the ads wear shorts and ride their bikes through a park of evergreens. The ads don’t hawk caramel apple cider or peppermint hot cocoa, but rather dulce de leche Frappuccinos and other cold drinks. It’s Christmas, but it’s Christmas in Chile, and it makes me want to buy more Starbucks just because they actually put thought into their ads.
Here’s to a great holiday, wherever you are. Cheers!
