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.
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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.
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:
