Volcanos in Chile - one more thing to worry about

Last June, the volcano Puyehue erupted causing havoc in southern Chile but even more so in Argentina where the ash stopped most flights for a while and apparently covered a lot of the more scenic areas in the south like Bariloche.  Since then there has been at least one more active volcano, Hudson, that has erupted even further south.  Chile has 36 "active" volcanoes including the highest one in the world.  It looks like active is considered anything that has erupted in the past 12,000 years but many of them have erupted in the past century!

Volcan Puyehue is in the Lake District where many Chileans spend their summer holidays.  Part of the reason that it is so beautiful down there are the views of the volcanoes and the landscape created by the volcanoes.  We are planning to spend at least a week in that region and I have casually asked people which volcano is set to erupt next so we can avoid that area ;-)  There is one in particular that is very active, Villarrica, and is really close to the biggest tourist city in the south, Pucon (we will avoid that city for many reasons).  

Volcan y lago Villarrica

There are outfitters that lead hiking trips up the volcano but always include a disclaimer saying that it could erupt at any time - great.... I am still bracing myself for mild tremors in Santiago that apparently are quite frequent but we have not been blessed with one yet.

In addition, there are a lot of extinct volcanoes including one that we see every time that we drive somewhere, Cerro Manquehue.  It has been extinct for 16 million years so I think that we are OK.  Elisa actually went to a birthday party today on the face of the volcano in an area called Santa Maria de Manquehue.  A stunning "older" (meaning built in the 1980s) affluent suburb with a lot of forested area (pretty rare in Santiago) and incredible views.  Bad news is that our car huffed and puffed getting up the mountain.  I am not sure how it will do with five of us and our luggage on our journeys this summer.

Cerro Manquehue

#100

I gotta get a life!  We are definitely looking at this as a record of our year and hope to print it out using some on-line service to make it a book of memories as told by Mama.  I guess that keeps me going.

So as part of blogspot you can count your "hits" and see your audience, at least their country of origin.  Some  countries are obvious (U.S., Chile, Uruguay, Canada, and Israel) but there remains a mystery as to who in Russia, Latvia, El Salvador, Romania, Germany, Spain and others is interested in my family's experience in Chile. Intriguing or creepy depending on how you look at it but I guess that is the nature of blogging.  Who are you guys and how did you find this?????

As of November 27, 2011, a bit over four months after starting this, I have had 4, 601 (or 4.601 for the non-Americans) hits although at least 2,000 are my parents, in-laws and a few die-hard friends.  The average these days is about 20 hits/day.   Again, somewhat inspiring but somewhat odd.

I will continue onward - anything else you'd like to know about Chile????  Nine more days of school left and then we'll start exploring a bit more, I hope.

The challenges of learning in three languages at once

So we chose a school that we thought would make sense because it had some classes in English, had Hebrew and some Judaica thrown in and was mostly taught in Spanish.  I did not appreciate several things when we made that decision:

1.  Elisa was just beginning to read in English when we left so she is completely mixed up.  We read books in English together at home and she has started to read words like "take" in Spanish so they sound like "takay."  They had a day of reading for the first grade and Elisa shared a story that she "wrote" in Spanish - pretty cool.

Dia de la lectura

2.  I can barely help Elisa with her lenguaje (language arts) homework, can pretend to help Jonathan, and cannot even fake it with Renee.

3.  Rob has had to step in more to help out with Renee and Jonathan's homework.  She had a test in Social Studies on the history of governance in Chile.  Rob sat down with her and reviewed the Spanish text and helped explain everything to her in Spanish.  What is interesting, or perhaps not given the history, is that Chile's current government looks very similar with three branches of government, senators, and representatives etc.  She also had to study something about human rights but it looked like it was emphasizing the rights of children rather than a look at the history of human rights in this country.  Not sure when that is introduced.

4.  Renee was writing down her assignments by subject and she titled one "Inglish."  I'll have to admit that spelling in Spanish is a lot easier but boy are they going to be messed up for a while.

5.  Renee and Jonathan both have final exams this year spread out over the next few weeks (school ends 12/9).  I am helping them out with math, science, Hebrew, and Torah; we are letting them figure out English, and Rob is helping with lenguaje (language arts) and social studies.  Renee is covering the chapters in Shmot (Exodus) that have to do with the exodus from Egypt, thank goodness.  The hard part is that the text she has is Hebrew on one side and Spanish on the other and the workbook that includes some commentary (Rashi etc.) is all in Spanish.  My Hebrew is much better than my Spanish but I am having problems getting through it myself.  Luckily grades really don't matter this year so we are telling them all to just do their best.  I did finally break down and print out the section of the Torah in English - thank goodness for the internet!

6.  I think that I have already mentioned that Jonathan's favorite subject is lenguaje (language arts in Spanish). He is really enjoying the challenge.  He just finished reading Las Brujas (The Witches by Roald Dahl) in Spanish and apparently understood most of it (he has read it before in English).  He is now attempting the first Harry Potter book.  Pretty amazing.

A Chilean Thanksgiving

Some of my most memorable Thanksgivings have either been when I lived abroad or in grad school - both times I had to be creative either because of cost or availability of ingredients.  

We planned a feast with our friends from California Deidre and Ed and their girls and they had a guest who had arrived this morning, Katy, who joined us as well and was surprisingly alert.  The food challenges were more along the lines of having a small oven and refrigerator. I opted for just a turkey breast (although they had full turkeys available as well) to fit in the oven and fridge.  For some reason they sell the cranberry sauce in the can here but no fresh cranberries so we had both the true "molded" sauce complete with the can rings as well as a more chunky variety.  Sage and thyme are both available so the stuffing was easy.  Deidre and family brought a great squash soup laced with aji verde (a hot green pepper), some relative of the sweet potato casserole that I doctored up with marshmallows, broccoli, bread, ice cream and wine!  I was also able to find cranberry juice which we combined with agua con gas for the kids.  We were all traditionally stuffed so it worked.

My annual handling of a bird (or part of one)

All the adults grew up on the East Coast so we reminisced about snowy Thanksgivings while it was 84 degrees outside

The "traditional" peach kuchen and an apple crisp

We (at least the adults) were all grateful to have friends with whom to celebrate, the health, finances, and will to take a sabbatical, and the lovely mountains in the background!

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Dust, dust and more dust

We are only in the middle of Spring and I am already sick of the dust.  Apparently, it gets really bad in the summertime.

I have resisted getting our car washed but we park it underneath our building and there has only been the occasional rain/drizzle (which we probably won't get again until the fall) so it has gone from white to brown.    Why do people purchase white cars anyway?

Clean me - please! (porfa is short for por favor)

I have spent summers in Israel and California where it doesn't rain and somehow they don't have all of this dust.  You even see nanas sweeping it off of sidewalks every morning.  It definitely makes sandal wearing a bit more tricky or at least encourages you to wash your feet more often.  I also am avoiding wearing anything black.

It sounds like, as would be expected, it is due to a combination of construction dust and vehicle emissions.  There are definitely efforts to curb the vehicle emissions but I haven't read anything yet about regulations on construction dust.

Rob and I go a bit wild

So my birthday is in two weeks and since Peter Gabriel was coming to town I asked to go see his concert  for a present.  He has adapted his songs to a full orchestra and is doing a South American tour right now.  It was really interesting how he used the orchestra and the video cameras and videos to make a really amazing show.  He also made a good effort to talk in Spanish which was really appreciated by the audience.

New Blood Orchestra

Peter Gabriel, the conductor, Ben Foster, and the pianist highlighted

Although I stated that we went a bit wild it was definitely pretty tame.  I'd say we were about the average age of the audience.  People were wearing suits and there were definitely no "strange" odors or lighters being held up for encores ;-)  My last big stadium concert was the Grateful Dead at Soldier Field quite a while ago which was a different world on many levels although the average age might have been the same ;-)  Here's a quick video of some of the concert taken from our phone - Digging in the Dirt.

The venue, Moviestar Arena (sponsored by a cell phone company), is located in one of the major public parks right south of town, Parque O'Higgens.  What we didn't realize was that although google maps showed that it would take 25 minutes to get there we were traveling in rush hour and it actually took 1.5 hours.  Given my calm personality I just whistled the whole time while we were in traffic - NOT!  Next time we will take public transportation.  There is also one of the largest amusement parks in Chile in the park - Fantasilandia.  It looked a step up from the St. Joseph County Fair but not too far up.  I am sure that we'll hit it sometime this summer.

Piojos

- that would be lice.  We are on alert because Elisa is having a scratch-athon but no little critters or their eggs yet just some flakey skin from a sunburn, I hope.

That said, being who I am, I immediately went to work to figure out how they get rid of lice down here.  Apparently, it is quite prevalent and most school kids get it several times a year.  Given that and cheap labor I was pleasantly surprised to find an entire industry devoted to ridding your child of lice.  Starring the Charlie's Angels of lice removal:

Which angel are they missing?

Here is just a short sample of what is offered.  These places don't list their prices but I saw a shampoo and comb-through for anywhere from $6-$20.  As any parent who has done this knows - it is well worth it!

http://www.licecleaning.cl/
http://piojos.cl/
http://www.liceclinic.cl/

I am looking for a career change. Do you think that I could make enough doing this in Northern Indiana to offset the risk to me and my family?

UPDATE:  She has them.  The rest of us don't, for now.  Since I have time I am just going to do the normal home treatment but I must admit I went over to meet Charlie and get a quick head check from the experts.  Nothing there but a massive head of hair.  The best part of combing out Elisa's hair is that I am doing it on the balcony with a view of snow-covered mountains.  I haven't mentioned them in a while but amazingly with 85 degree weather down here they are still snow-covered.

Correction to October 16th blog - Grandma and Grandpa Arrive

I was trying to find a word for an errata for a blog and after some searching realized that the nature of blogging does not lend itself to corrections.  That said, Max Kirsch, a budding ornithologist and family friend, wrote me a correction to my penguin ID in a previous post.  In the interest of keeping all of our facts straight here is the report:

"About that Magellanic penguin picture on your blog a few days ago -- I'm sorry to say, but it's not. It's a Humboldt penguin. 

Magellanic penguin

The penguin at the zoo

Humboldt penguin

The Magellanic penguin (first picture) has two black bands on its breast. The Humboldt penguin (last picture) has only one black band on its breast, and it has more pink at the base of the bill and between its bill and its eye, and its face is more completely black. The penguin you saw (your picture is in the middle) has the characteristics of a Humboldt penguin. "

I stand corrected.  Thanks Max!

A few more notes - the Magellanic ones are found way in the south and the Humboldt, which are much rarer, are found only on the Pacific coast but all the way up to Peru.  They are actually "cousins" and both part of the same "banded" genus of penguins - that must have been my confusion ;-).  There is actually a large colony about 4 hours away from us.  I just spent some time on the web looking at different types of penguins - they sure are cute.  Field trip?

Chilean Fashion

As several of my friends know I was worried that my South Bend wardrobe would not fit into Santiago and that I would not be able to find clothing in my size here.  In retrospect, both were valid concerns but I quick realized that it just didn't matter - ah, the wisdom of age.

People are very conscious of their social class and the way that they dress is usually a strong indicator of class so people are very conscious of how they dress.  The typical Mom wears high heel black boots, leggings or tight pants and some type of "tunic" top that covers the tush and usually beyond.  Of course, it is getting hot out so we'll see some new wardrobes soon.  So far it looks like a Flashdance revival with three inch heeled sandals and black bra straps showing.  I'm not going there.  Men dress pretty conservatively in suits and ties for business.  I have rarely seen either men or women in shorts but I assume that will change soon or else that they sweat a lot.

As I was waiting for Elisa to finish her swimming lesson the other day I asked some down-to-earth Moms what their normal swimsuit attire was for the outdoor pool here.  I mentioned the Lands End skirt look so in fashion at our community pool at home and they all cringed.  They didn't buy the tankini either.  Eventually we got to the point that they offered to go bikini shopping with me so that I would not embarrass my children ;-)  I am not sure what will embarrass them more - my Lands End suits or a bikini!  Photos may not show up in this case.......I am reminded of my friend April Lidinsky's radio essay for Michiana Chronicles - "Skirting the Issue" - boy I miss those essays - but I see that they are all available as an MP3 now!

Renee and I keep joking that I never know which classmate she is describing because they all look alike (this is beyond the school uniforms and the adolescent need to conform) with the same long hair pinned up in the same way.   She recently learned that in addition to flat-ironing many of them chemically straighten their hair - that option never even crossed her (or my) mind for a 12-year old.  They are all envious of her naturally straight hair ;-) I keep thinking of the Gary Larson cartoon below that I swiped off of the internet.  I am not sure when and if this happens here...I commend Renee for going against the grain but it is not easy at her age and definitely not easy here.  I do have to point out that she hasn't asked to get her hair cut yet but it will never get as long as the Chilean girls' at least not this year.

A Collection of Observations (#2)

As I mentioned earlier, I keep a list of interesting observations and write them down as they happen.  Here is the latest collection:

1.  I was reading a book to Elisa and it mentioned the President and his daughters.  I asked her who our President was and after giving her the first letter she said "Obama? I thought ours was different down here!

2.  Summertime!

Summer is almost here!  The ice cream bicycle complete with a bell is here!

There is also the cotton candy option

3.  Based on an informal survey, Renee is apparently the only one in her class who hasn't been to some form of Disney.  Ironic.  The culture down here is very US-based (vs. European) with a lot of Starbucks, Home Depot-esque stores, etc. so I guess that it is not that odd that there is a focus on Disney but there are more interesting places to visit in the US!

4.  Oy!

Signs found in women's bathrooms - guess that on any given day 1/4 of  Chilean women of a "certain" age need to "Maintain their secret" 

5.  When my folks were here they went to a cafe that opened at 8:30 but were told that it opens at 8:30 for the cleaning crew not to serve coffee.

6.  On a similar note, I went to get a watch battery changed at a small store (maybe 6'x6") where one person changed the battery, one person wrote up the receipt, and another person was the cashier.  I am getting used to this division of labor but in this case the cashier was finishing her lunch in the corner and nobody else could accept the payment so I had to wait.

7.  They sold  American-style pumpkins here for a week.  $11 for one that would cost $2 in the States.  I was a sucker and bought it and it yielded 72 pumpkin seeds and rotted before Halloween.  Ah well - it is spring after all.  Perhaps we should have constructed something out of asparagus?

8.  Advertisements - There is a lot more advertisement on what look like private cars here.  My favorite one is one that is usually parked near the kids' school and has a sign that says "Yo tambien soy un Dog Lover" ("I am also a dog lover" but I think it is promoting a brand of dog food.)  The best is that part of the advertisement is a well placed Golden Retriever.  Perhaps if all else fails I'll get a dog sticker for my car instead of a dog?  Less fur to clean up.

I need a dog (are you getting the theme)

9.  I went to do some "tramites" near Rob's work and while transferring between metros there was a band playing as part of a program of the metro system to bring art to the metros.  The band had two percussion players, a trombone, trumpet, accordion and guitar and from what I gather was playing rock music with a Chilean/South American twist.  A huge crowd gathered to watch them and seemed to recognize their music - I love that part of being in a big city.  Google to the rescue again Las Pata e Cumbia.

10.  La edad de pavo (the age of the turkey) - This is the term used to describe adolescence.  Based on my initial observations as we enter that black hole it sounds about right.

11.  I got my first telephone polling call.  It asked if I was for or against homosexual marriage.  Didn't expect that one!

Horseback Riding on the Outskirts of Santiago

Our three huasos (Chilean cowboys - sort of)

I am not a lover of horses and Elisa couldn't care less so Rob, Renee, and Jonathan headed for a horseback ride through the hills surrounding Santiago today.  There was a choice to go out to Cajon de Maipo where we were a few weeks ago but it would have been 2 hours each way for a 3 hour ride and it seemed excessive.  The runner-up included some views of Santiago sprawl but also of the beautiful surrounding hills and got horseback riding out of the system for now.  

Jonathan says:

I saw on the left side a bunch of houses and on the other a hill going steeply up.  The horses were pretty cooperative and knew their way around so I didn't need to steer that much and it was easier than Prairie Winds [a camp that he went to last summer where they had horseback riding lessons].  It is also a horse therapy (hippotherapy) place.  It looked like the hill was really tall and we were really high up because we could see everything down below but we really weren't.  It was really hot but surprisingly I didn't even drink half of my bottle of water.

Sprawl

A horse break

A human break - fresh cherries from the morning Farmer's Market 

More sprawl but happy children

Getting to know you

Meanwhile, Elisa and I had an unsuccessful bikini shopping trip (for me).  Oy!

This is a sabbatical?

The pool in our building opened today.

Don't share this one with the Dean or Rob's chair ;-)  (I was just informed that Kelly, Rob's grad student who is an avid blog reader, shouldn't read this either - she is hard at work on a paper and Rob is supposed to be working on it too!)

Elisa and Tali (her Chilean friend who was born in Boston)

e......

I have been trying to find a simple explanation for why Spanish speakers cannot pronounce words in English that start with "st," "sl," "sp," etc. and have to add an "e" sounds on to help say it.  They have some words that already help out such as: estadio, esquiar, escorpion, escultura, and especial.   Rob and my Spanish teacher point out that it is difficult for native Spanish speakers to pronounce two consonants together so we hear words like (with contributions from the kids):

estop
eslash (when spelling out a web site)
esock
estart
eSpiderman (they actually use both Hombre Arana and eSpiderman)
estupido
estretch (from Pilates)
estrapless (from a Bat Mitzvah)
eSprite
esmall (Renee's bathing suit size)


I may never be able to say these words again without adding the "e."  Maybe I can use my observation to help tutor ESL kids back in South Bend.  Maybe.

Elisa wanted to add "Elisa" -  Doesn't quite fit the pattern but I'll include it ;-)