What seems normal to folks here is all flip-flopped to us. All the spring imagery just seems wrong. Passover is also knows as Chag Ha'aviv or the Spring Holiday but they don't rename it down here to Chag Ha'stav (Fall Holiday). I was inspired to make ratatouille and a salad using fresh pomegranates which I would normally make around Rosh Hashanah. While the stores are full of Easter chocolates wrapped in pastel papers, there were no little girls in their Easter dresses and bonnets (the cold doesn't stop those in the Northern Hemisphere but perhaps the imagery is too much). On Good Friday we just lay low but finally got to the Parque Metropolitano, a huge public park on a hill right off of downtown Santiago. It is the same park with San Cristobal and with the zoo but we headed to some trails in the woods this time and also hit the Japanese garden. We even collected leaves for Elisa's school project.
We were invited to participate in a seder with the expatriate Israeli community. There were 12 families and over 50 people in a small room but with an outdoor extension where the kids ran around. Although we missed our friends and family and it was complete chaos, it was nice to hear the same story and tunes no matter where you are in the world. As often happens, the only time that everybody was "on the same page" was for Ma Nishtanah. A lot was different this night!
Here I am at my parents' seder in Palo Alto the same night!
On Easter, for lack of more creative things to do, we headed down to Plaza de Armas to check out the mass at the Catedral de Santiago where, in addition to seeing who I assume was the Archbishop of Santiago (complete with his kippah), we saw our favorite miner.
Oh yeah, and I went for a cat "run" with Renee at La Vega (the large market close to downtown) before Mass.
or maybe even in reverse?
We are headed to San Pedro de Atacama on Thursday for a few days to get a better feel of how the Israelites felt after the exodus from Egypt. We are planning four days not forty years which will probably be more than enough.
One major bummer - unlike in the States, the day after Easter does not result in majorly discounted Easter candy. I planned my grocery shopping trip for Monday morning and was extremely disappointed to find that instead of discounting it they clear it out!
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