Archive for April, 2008

Where’s my camera when I need it?

21 April 2008 at 8:57 pm · Filed under cooking, food, jobs, laws, my kids, purchases, travel

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.

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All wrapped up

21 April 2008 at 8:37 pm · Filed under holidays, jobs, my kids, purchases

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:

 

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What would you do?

16 April 2008 at 8:08 pm · Filed under jobs, laws, travel

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.

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