Beautiful Chile

After 4 months of living here things are starting to come together.  We have gotten used to the strangest of things, traveled a bit, learned to cook the food, gotten tan, gotten in shape, gotten used to the men yelling and hollering at you, we have even gotten used to the earthquakes. Though the “used to” list can go on for an entire blog, the most important of that list is the traveling. Even though summer brightens the city and makes things tolerable we get our energy and sustainability from Travel. Santiago, is a big city, full of hidden treasures and very pleasant things, but it is a big city and sometimes you need out. Seeing Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonalds everywhere doesn't make for exotic living. Going to a small town to hike a beautiful trail then stopping by a tiny restaurant with three tables to have some empanadas and a beer as you discuss the energy crisis in Chile can change your life. Now, I only understood about 65% of what the group was saying, with spontaneous translations from my student, but the energy in the room was so powerful. It reminded me of the scene from Motorcycle Diaries when they camped with the mining couple and started to understand what was really going on. That’s how it happens here.  The trek to Cajon del Maipo was inspiration and got us absolutely pumped for our trip to Patagonia! Here are some pictures from this hike:

Just 2k up...

Mineral Water, we were completely drawn t these, they taste awful

One of my students, his wife and their friend took us to this very majestic place

surfing on a glacier

so lucky

Hermosa!

Aceitunas

Crossing the Chile/Argentina border is quite a hassle, lots of getting out of the bus, then back on then back off and so on and so forth. Things become even more of a hassle when you're smuggling olives across the border. 

While on a lovely wine tour in Mendoza, Argentina, Andrew and I sampled the most amazing olives(aceitunas) on the planet. Chile, unfortunately has the blandest olives on the planet, so we decided to take our chances on smuggling two kilos back into Chile. 

We didn't think it would be a problem but we asked the bus driver anyways. He clearly said "No, No Olives!" (plus some other things, but I could only translate that much). I started to panic, I needed these olives to be happy, if you know anything about me you know I can not live without olives, I need the salt, I need the brine, I need it all! I convinced Andrew not to throw them out, I thought maybe we could hide them in the bus in the bathroom or something. He eventually talked me out of hiding them, he thought it best to claim them and if they throw it out they throw it out, its only $12. We were stressing about it, we didn't realize how much we missed them before we went to Mendoza. A nice Chilean woman told us we should be fine so we felt good as we put our backpack (holding the containers of olives) on the conveyor belt to be examined. We got pulled aside, Andrew had to empty the bag out and show them everything we had tried to smuggle on (we also took apples) while I made a run for the bus and waited for him to emerge. Once I saw him he gave me a thumbs up, we got the Olives across, we were in the clear. 

A few minutes later we were busy celebrating about to crack open a jar when the bus driver comes stomping  in the bus saying "Before we left, someone asked me about olives, I need to know and you need to come with me!" Since the olives got approved by border patrol Andrew didn't raise his hand, a few minutes later he came down the aisle and told us to follow him out of the bus. Andrew and I didn't even look at each other we were so scared and confused. He led us to this big black duffel bag that was sitting on a table wide open FILLED with cigarette cartons, wine bottles, and cheap little happy meal toys "this is yours, isn't it" "no its not ours, our bag is blue" he starts taking out the cigarettes and a wine bottle shaking his head and walks away (apparently someone on our bus didn't claim their bag after they saw it being searched). We got back on the bus and everyone was chattering but stopped once they saw us, of course we were sitting in the last row. I could tell everyone was upset that we were causing such a delay. Andrew and I sat in silence for a solid five minutes. After our hearts settled we opened up some olives and had a beautiful ride home, these Olives were totally worth the trouble, and possibly another trip in March! 

More on Mendoza later, for now here are some pictures!!

OLIVES!

Heaven on earth

Wine tours

Bye Bye Chile

On the boarder of Chile/Argentina

Terremotos

We have grown to love Terremotos while we have been down here. its Pipeño (a type of sweet fermented wine) with pineapple ice-cream. It's very sweet and very strong, and you are advised to only have one glass. It's called a "terremoto" because it makes your legs feel shaky, like an earthquake, which is "Terremoto"s literal translation.  

Who knew an actual Terremoto would be slightly more terrifying than the after shocks of that delicious drink. 

Today 2:15pm October 11, 2012....I was sitting at our kitchen island, frantically making lesson plans, three hours before my class (which turned out to be cancelled because of protests, a fact I discovered after I already arrived at the University, but lets save that one for later) and I heard this haunting noise. I could try to describe it but imagine the sound you would hear if the ground were to shift, its exactly how you imagined it. I, of course thought that three grown men were running laps in the apartment above me, why else would my hanging light be swinging back and forth? Then I lift my head and see the apartment buildings outside my window swaying back and forth and I froze, then I really felt it. I realized I was swaying back and forth. 

To give you a full visual, I was still in my boxer shorts and a tank top, some wool socks and my rainbow flip flops (my feet get cold). Now imagine me standing in my front doorway, door open, eyes closed praying "Dear God, Dear God, Dear God, I am going to die!" out loud. Luckily, everyone else in my apartment building were either not home or didn't feel it necessary to run to their doorway and cry, so no one saw me. 

After the noise stopped, which apparently meant it was over, I calmed down, only to realize my building was still swaying, so I sat in the doorway for another minute till me and the building calmed down. All in all, it was probably the scariest moment of my life to date. My chest is bruised from my heart trying to beat it's way out of there. It was 5.7, which apparently is pretty common, so most likely I'll feel them again, this time I know I won't die, so I'll try to enjoy it.

Andrew on the other hand didn't feel it at all. I called him 1,000x before I could get a hold of him. I was starting to freak out, but when he answered he said "Oh hey babe, whats up?"...WHATS UP?-I yelled back. He was on the subway and didn't feel it at all. So naturally he thought I was making it up.

We are both safe and alive, and making terremotos tonight.

VIVA CHILE

Dieciocho is the biggest Holiday in Chile (Sept 18th Independence Day), it's the 4th of July on speed. It is said to be an even bigger celebration than Christmas, which was upsetting at first because I love Christmas  but then I experienced Fiestas Patrias now I know what all the fuss is about. It's like the 4th of July because there are BBQs and red, white and blue everywhere. It is unlike the 4th of July because it's way better. Americans(northern) do not know how to celebrate. This past 4th of July was 110 degrees and you only got one day off of work, Dieciohco landed on a Tuesday, the partying started Friday the 14th and lasted till Friday the 21th...and no one went to work those days.

We were able to go to three Fondas, which are basically food and drink stands surrounding a dance floor, fondas are surrounded by games and carnival rides, very similar to a state fair only everyone is super drunk. The best Fonda we went to was with our Chilean friend and her American husband at Parque O'Higgins, which hosted this year's national fonda. We sat around drinking Terremotos, white wine with pineapple ice cream (tons of different variations, very sweet and very strong), while watching men and women young (5 years old) and old (82 yr old woman) dance the Cueca to a live band, every once in awhile there would be a cheer "CHI-CHI-CHI-LE-LE-LE VIVA CHILE". We were absorbed in the atmosphere and were very lucky to be a part of it. The next day we went back to the Park and kept riding that good feeling and the terremotos, luckily we had our camera because I could describe it all day, but you had to be there to actually feel the celebration.

Tons and tons of meat at the Fondas, I mean I am a vegetarian but not on Dieciocho

Choripan Andrew's favorite

 We could see the smoke from the BBQ from our roof 3 miles away. Thats a lot of meat.

we were not daring enough to try this selection

Guess who rocks at Carny games? I won a bread fan and some 'Ron' which is rum only this one smelt like paint remover.

Tons of Kites, we learned that kiting can be a sport, some people soak the strings in this liquid with glass shards so when it's flying it cuts down other kites, very extreme.

I suggest anyone wanting to visit Chile should come during the September Holiday, and be prepared to drink sweet drinks and eat lots of meat. Its hard to imagine our life here going back to normal after such a unique experience. 

Living the High Life (seriously on the 20th floor)

So this whole Karma thing is pretty hilarious. Seriously, so funny.  I know I should be upset and frustrated but it’s just so comical that I can’t. We have moved into our new Apartment and we LOVE it! We love that we can cook without 14 Brazilians breathing down our backs making fun of us in Portuguese because their dinner is going to be eons better than ours. We LOVE that we don’t have to wear wool socks and sleep in Zero degree sleeping bags every night. We love that we are 20 floors up and not face to face with tear gas and protesters (ask me about that one later). Yes, yes life is good.

We have been dying without internet. Not only because we really wanted to hear familiar voices,  creep on facebook, watch Netflix and waste hours of precious time online, but it has been very hard to lesson plan without it. So I’m getting ready to head out the door to work (2 hours early so I can steal some University wifi) when the front desk calls and tells me that the internet guy is waiting downstairs. I literally start shaking with joy. I go down and after 15 minutes of me shaking my head saying “no hablo Española!” the man follows me up and starts working on the most elaborate internet hook up known to man! He seriously takes 2 hours, so now I am running late to class. He can sense my anxiety and keeps telling me “lo siento”.  Thirty minutes before I have to be in work he gets the internet to work and asks me to use it, I go to my gmail and one of my students had emailed me saying they got a call from the Universidad saying classes were cancelled due to Student Protest(and probably a lot of tear gas).  Phew. I immediately relax and for the next hour I am living in bliss, video chatting Kelli, facebook chatting Nikki, answering week old emails, watching The Office on Netflix, living the good life. Andrew gets home and we cry together sooooo happy. He runs out to the store for a bottle of wine and while he’s gone I decide to make some dinner, I turn on the blender and all the power goes off. Internet and all.  So that Karma thing…its hilarious, right?

I overindulged, I had too much of a good thing. Maybe I should have picked between Kelli and Nikki (getting a little ahead of myself), perhaps I should have picked between my blender and the computer charging. Once again making me rethink my priorities, my love for food and my love for television have always been an amazing pair. I loved nothing more than eating some roasted garlic on an amazing baguette whole watching Tony Soprano shoot someone in the head. Maybe I have to give one up? My life keeps changing here in Chile.

I’m only slightly joking about everything above, my blender is from the U.S.  and is too powerful for this little Chilean outlet.

Internet 

The Flight to Santiago

I have always wanted to fly somewhere without a return ticket.  To have the thrill of taking off, not knowing when or if you would return.  For our flight out of KCI we had return tickets, but they were fake.  They said we were returning home on October 1^st, connecting through Toronto.  The fake tickets were from a booking agency called Student Travel Authority.  They sell flights for students and people under the age of 26.  We had combed through a bunch of booking sites trying to find the cheapest tickets.  Ticket prices varied widely, from around $500 to several thousand, all one way.  While combing through these sites we discovered that whenever you looked at flights from STA they would send you a quote for the trip.  The quote was formatted like an itinerary with flight numbers and departure times.  The status next to flights on the quote said “confirmed”.  Who knows why.  We were lucky to stumble on this early in our trip process.  When you enter Chile you have to prove that you are leaving the country within 90 days unless you have a work visa (which we don’t).  We printed off the STA quote for this and practiced together, you know if anyone asks, “October 1^st, Toronto”.  The morning of the flight I was so nervous, leaving home for a year and all the emotion of good byes and the anxiety of the trip.  We couldn’t figure out how to use the self-check in kiosk so this worker came over and was helping us get our passports scanned on the machine and get checked in.  It was taking a while and he was guiding us through the screens, just like notifications and boiler plate and such, and he said while looking at the screen, “Santiago huh?  How long you going for?”  I thought he was just being chatty, (I am a chatter, I love to chat), I eagerly responded “one year!”.  He glanced up from the screen at my face and said, “so you have your return tickets booked?”.  “No,” I said realizing immediately what I just did.  He stepped away from the kiosk and went back behind his monitoring saying, “let me look at Chile’s visa requirements”.  “We are returning to America on October 1^st, and then we are going back for another 9 months,” I said.  “Oh, OK,”  he said, business as usual.  He moved back to the kiosk and continued quickly clicking through the screens, explaining what everything meant as he went along.  I held my breath and thought about the fake tickets in my bag.   I wondered if he would ask to see them.  He paused briefly on a screen explaining visa requirements for Chile.  “Oh, OK, here we go” he said.  He scrolled down through the text, squinting to read the tiny print.  I tried to control my breathing.  I was once told that you’re only lying if you don’t believe in what you are saying.  He scrolled more.  The screen had in bold the words “proof of onward passage”.  The worker said to himself and “OK you’re good on that” and briskly punched the continue button.  Sweet.  I smiled to my self.  And laughed in my head thinking “I’m such an idiot!”.  Nearly blew that one there.  But the fake tickets would have held up right?  We said goodbye to my parents, who I love very much.  The good bye was tear-filled.  When I hugged my mom her shoulder pressed against the lump in my throat.  They were so sweet about it.  They said have fun, and this would be an adventure for us.  We all started parting but looked back and waved with tears in our eyes.  I wouldn’t see them for a year, at least.  I had spent the majority of my  life, the last 13 years, living in Northeast Kansas.  I had moved from the small town where I went to went to high school to the town of Lawrence, where I went to college, just an hour away.  And now it was time for my wife and I to fly to South America to start our new jobs teaching English to Chileans.

Our journey started at 4:30 on a mid-July morning in Kansas City.  A little over 25 hours later we would arrive in Santiago.  We had an 8AM flight out of KCI (had to arrive extra early for international check in) and then a 6 hour layover, and then a 5 hour flight to Bogota Colombia, and then a 6 hour overnight flight to Santiago.  Our flight to Bogota was by far the most spectacular views I have ever had from an airplane.  We were lucky enough to have in flight TV on both the flight to Colombia and to Santiago, but I didn’t use it much on the flight to Colombia because the sunset was absolutely gorgeous.  It was totally surreal, and totally peaceful, yet still laced with the anxiety of being 50,000 feet in the air.  I don’t love flying, I love going some place new, but flying has always kind of been scary for me (frankly I’m more of a road trip kind of guy!). I took my first flight at age 22 to go to DC for a wedding and it was an exhilarating but still scary experience. (I flew a couple times under age 3 but don’t remember so it doesn’t count!).  I wish I could have taken a picture of the sunset outside our jet on the way to Bogota, but there isn’t really any good way to do that is there?  I was a really serene hue of pick brushed on airy clouds.  I have never seen the ocean from that high up and the water looked so different from up there, so textured and yet so homogenous.  I felt like I could see ripples of waves but I don’t know, maybe it was just my eyes playing tricks.  After the dramatic sunset we flew right past a storm.  There was a gigantic anvil shaped cloud just to the West of our plane.  I was looking over at it amazed at the shear size of the it when I saw shots of lightning bouncing around inside the cloud, throwing light against the insides of its translucent walls.  I watched raptly as this continued for several minutes, strikes of lightning coming in sparse 30 second or 1 minute intervals.  I felt so lucky to have been able to catch that.  I love observing nature on the ground, mountains, streams, fields, but I have never really thought much about the nature that occurs outside our view, above our sight, above the highest mountains on Earth, up in the land of giants and the heavens.  Then I discovered another interesting part of flying over the ocean at night, which was that you would pass over an island and see networks and concentrations of light, even from 50,000 feet up.  You could track on the in flight GPS shown on the headset TVs and see which islands we were flying over.  We flew over Jamaica and Cuba and got great looks at the night lights, I tried to guess if the cities we were flying over were cities we knew, like maybe Kingston or Montego Bay.  I never thought you would be able to see the lights like that, even from so high up.  It was amazing.  With the sunset and the lights and storm I felt lucky to have had a mid evening flight for our journey. 

Saying Adios

I'm sitting across from Andrew at D.C. Dulles during our five hour layover and for a moment I totally forget that I have said goodbye to all my friends and family. It  has been an exhausting couple of weeks leading up to this day (yes it is taking us a day to reach Santiago) but at this moment I feel relieved. I could not have chosen a better travel buddy, even when he is practicing his Spanish out loud while I'm trying to type.

It was sad saying goodbye and realizing I won't see all my dear friends/family for a year+. I'm upset I will miss my brother's graduation,first year of high school, weddings, births and other goodbye parties, but if we waited around for those milestones we would have never left to come back with cool stories. 

This has been a dream that Andrew and I have shared since almost the day we met, and it is beyond awesome that we get to fulfill it. I am certain that we are going to get addicted to this feeling and possibly chase it for the rest our lives...we could also really hate it and come back within 3 months, but I doubt it. 

So from D.C. we have a 5 hour flight to Bogota, Colombia for an hour lay over then another 5 hour flight to Santiago, Chile, where we will be met by a taxi and taken to our hostel from there it will be an avalanche of activities and meeting other participants and getting lost in Spanish. We are pumped and ready to rock.

Keep you posted!!

Mary y Andrew